Made a typo in an application and now I’m worried

[Ritakk]

I sent an email and I misspelt the word “for” as “fo” it wasn’t in any part of the application just for the email that I sent with everything attached. Have I messed up?

I assume that you're including me in the 'they'?

I took issue specifically with your advising someone new to applying to teaching role to 'not lie' on the application form and tick a box saying that you don't have a disability if you know that you might need adjustments later on.

I haven't said anything about you being accepting or unaccepting - just that this specific piece of advice was incorrect.

Which it is.

christinarossetti19
No, I wasn't referring to you. The OP has form across several usernames for getting personal with posters who give any perspective that they don't agree with.

Telling the truth at appropriate stages in the process is best all round. In my experience, workplaces don't suddenly become accommodating and accepting if they weren't already. There's a lot of schools that might follow the legal side to the letter whilst still being a poor place to be.

@LolaSmiles correct me if I'm wrong but what I've taken from your posts is that, although the legal side may say that people don't have to disclose a disability, it may be a better idea to do so because if the workplace is going to be unsupportive of your disability, it's better to know that sooner rather than later if it turns out you do need further support.

I think the reality is, although workplaces have legal obligations when it comes to disabilities and not being discriminatory, workplaces can be run by very flawed individuals who can find ways to make your life difficult and push you out. So maybe being honest is best in order to suss out how supportive the workplace is before you commit to working there.

Though of course, if you don't want to do that, you don't have to.

MissPrimaryCrafts
Exactly that. Workplaces can follow the law to the letter and still be unaccepting and uninclusive places to work. School cultures can vary substantially. It's one reason the advice to people thinking of leaving the profession is to try another school before leaving if they still enjoy teaching. Plenty of people can have apalling experiences in one school, but go on to have a great career once they've had a fresh start.

If somewhere is likely to be reluctant to appoint someone with a disability, they're highly unlikely to be a beacon of inclusive practice on appointment either. If schools want rid of someone, they can find a way. The old TES forums were full of situations like that. Acknowledging what happens is very different to thinking it is acceptable.

Okay, it wasn't clear who you were referring to.

MissPrimaryCrafts the key point is that people should only disclose a disability when they want to ie when they need an adjustment.

It was poor advice to tell someone to not to 'lie' on an application form that they don't have a disability if they know that they may need adjustments later on.

LolaSmiles said that she declared hers on her new starter form, which is much more common than on the application form and, either there or at interview, is probably the best point for most people.

However, I work in this area and the most common time for people to declare a disability is when it's causing them a problem at work eg performance management. This is across all sectors - people may disclose them earlier in public and third sector, but not always.

It's important that people don't think that if they haven't disclosed a disability during the recruitment/new starter process, that they shouldn't/can't later on.

Some disabilities (like mine) only need a very specific adjustment which wouldn't be necessary in every workplace, so I would only disclose it if I needed the adjustment, not if I thought that I might need it sometime down the line.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had not declared a disability which later caused problems with performance, the employer would still be within their rights to pursue performance management strategies? Your performance has been below standard and as far as they were concerned, the reasons for this could have been addressed sooner, but you have allowed it to get to this point and they have not had the chance to put adjustments in place to support you?

Yes, employers can and should pursue performance management strategies, although when someone declares a disability they need to take that into account in the implementation of the strategy.

For example, in LolaSmiles's example of a teacher making errors in marking and reports and parents complaining... Yes, of course this should be approached as per performance management policy although if someone discloses that they're dyslexic (or have another disability) the next step should be to adjust for that disability eg have someone proof read, more time to write reports, maybe writing feedback online with a spell checker and printing out etc etc.

This should be regularly reviewed and adjusted if need be.

If someone doesn't disclose a disability (either because they don't have one or don't want to) the next step would likely be being sent on some sort of training and some targets for improvement.

The organisation could have have addressed things sooner ie when errors started emerging rather than leaving it a couple of terms, and given someone a chance to disclose a disability then.

It's the individual's responsibility to disclose their disability and the organisation's to manage performance promptly.

In reality, it's usually systemic rather than individual problems that cause a delay in performance management, eg 1:1s being postponed due to workload, hazy performance management policy, managers not being trained/feeling confident in implementing it.

No, it doesn't always work like this in the real world, which is called disability discrimination and not the fault of the individual.

HTH.