Is this vacancy a 'closed shop'?

[OccidentalPurist]

Now both my DCs are at secondary school I'm looking to go back to work. Their school emails all the parents with any job vacancies that come up and, although I've never considered working at the school before, a job has come up that I think I have the experience for and would enjoy doing.

I do wonder though if the school are legally bound to make each vacancy public, but will typically end up offering it to either a current employee or someone already in the profession in our community.

I wondered if there were any teachers out there or people who've had experience of this who could offer any advice.

Applying is a lengthy process and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting my time. While many mums I knew ended up working at my DC's junior school, I don't know of any who've ended up at their secondary school, and the vacancy is for a reasonably demanding role.

You could apply the logic that a job is already someone else's to any job but the fact is, you don't know if you don't try!
In my dept a post went out that was viewed by everyone in the dept as being guaranteed for a specific person, the advert even seemed as it was written with this person in mind....to our utter shock it was offered to someone out of county.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't not apply just because you think someone else already has it in the bag because you just don't know if that's the case!

Thanks NewDOOFUSfor19. The main reason I'm asking is that a friend, who worked for the local council some years ago, once mentioned that they had to make all vacancies public
even though they almost always went to people already in the organisation.

It made me wonder if this was the case with all public sector jobs, including schools.

I'd assume it's the case with LEA schools. Impossible to know if they've got someone else in mind unfortunately. But you've nothing to lose by applying other than a bit of time spent on the application.

I work in the NHS so very much feel your pain!