Who to tell about job hunting?

[elizabethrosa]

If you are considering applying for another job in education, who do you tell in your school?

You don't need to tell anyone. It would be entirely up to you if you chose to discuss it with a trusted colleague, or whether you wanted to check ahead to ask someone for a reference, but technically you don't have to tell anyone.

I’ve been spoken to by my line manager for not discussing it with them. I did discuss it with the head however.

You only need to tell anyone you will be putting down as a reference (one of whom always needs to be your current HT). There’s no need to tell your line manager unless you want them to act as a referee. It would be very rude to put someone as a referee without asking them first as references are often taken up in advance of interviews in education.

Thank you. I haven’t even applied yet. I only went to visit the school. Line manager is annoyed that I didn’t talk to them about visiting.

I would be willing to be that the HT mentioned your conversation to your LM, who was embarrassed that they didn’t know what was going on with their team in front of their boss and they therefore took out the embarrassment on you. That’s a them problem!

All advice above is correct. You need to have a conversation with your HT as you will use them as a reference.
It would be courteous to have a conversation with your line manager but this is not a requirement at all.

Thanks so much. I did try to speak to line manager but was ignored. I always planned to ask them for a meeting when I’d made up my mind about applying.

As has been said, probably your line manager was embarrassed that they didn't know!

Sometimes, equally, when schools don't want to lose anyone, they can behave in odd ways. If your line manager ignored you then it's easy to say "I tried to speak to you on (date) but you were too busy".

Sounds like it would be a good idea to move on!

I have apologised to line manager and explained I did try to find them and when, but it basically wasn’t accepted.

Yeah I think it is a good idea to move on. I’m a bit worried about references now though.