Finding part time posts

[LolaSmiles]

I'm fortunate enough to be in a part time leadership position but am considering a change of scenery.

Part time in my current role happened after returning from maternity leave, but there's almost no part time positions being advertised in my area for classroom teacher or leadership unless you go through an agency, which I don't want to do as I've got UPS friends being paid M2/3 through agency.

When I've looked online some advice is to apply to full time roles and then ask for part time if they offer it, others have said to ask in advance if somewhere would consider part time.

Can the Mumsnet teacher hive mind offer any advice or experiences?

As with your experience, part-time usually happens when someone has already worked FT at a school, and then requests to go PT, usually after maternity leave. I have managed to secure three part-time teacher positions on UPS3 when moving schools, but they came up at the very end of the year in June/July. Luckily, I was able to go for these, because I was in a fixed-term contract at wherever I was working at the time. All part-time positions seem to be fixed-term where I live.

I have contacted schools about whether they would consider PT for a FT position, but it's always been a polite no. I do know someone who applied for a FT position and then ended up in a job share because the other candidate they liked also wanted PT.

Is there any urgent need to leave where you are? PT leadership positions are like gold dust.