Is there life after dismissal?

[TheNaturalBronde]

Having to be very vague
Are their any stories of someone being dismissed in a manner that might have to be mentioned to future employers?
(genuine mistake) (education sector)
Mentally doing quite badly atm feeling like my life is over…

This is bullshit
Employers must be truthful, that is it.

Contact your union asap. If this was the first mistake you should be able to get an agreed reference that is factual

Honestly op. If you were there for a short period. I would just leave it off your cv altogether .

You can't do this in education. They want to know everything, including student holiday jobs, decades on from when you actually did them.

Some mixed results here all appreciated no Union but I will contact ACAS,

If you give permission for your ex employer to be a referee then no they dont just give start and end dates. Education providers are required to get a reference (they ask specific questions) from the last employer where the person worked with children.

They may ask for this information but there is no way for a future employer to determine whether you have included every employer you've ever worked at, including temping, holiday work, short term roles etc. Some of us would have CVs running to many pages long if these were included.

OP I agree with the advice to simply phase this one out. I'm sure there are other things you do with your time that you can point to account for what you did in any small gap between jobs without lying if you are asked.

If you continue to work in education, please don’t take the advice to phase this off your CV as then you’ll have lied from the outset and, if that is discovered, you’ll be dismissed from that job too. After all, if you can’t tell the truth in a job application, can you be trusted to tell
the truth in a safeguarding situation?
Counter intuitively, the fact that references which are more than just start & end dates are provided in this sector can work in your favour as it gives your employer a chance to write lots of lovely things about you and explain why the incident which led to your dismissal was out of character etc.

Just miss it off your cv. If it causes a gap say you were providing end of life care for an elderly relative. No one is going to ask you to elaborate about that at an interview. I know someone who did it to cover 6 months in prison. Went temping for a year and then got offered a permanent job. There are ways and means.

Some of us would have CVs running to many pages long if these were included.

And teaching application forms often are pages long.

A friend was recently asked to account for a month's gap in 1991 - he took a holiday between summer job and uni. He couldn't prove it, but they asked, and he could tell them. You definitely can't leave recent jobs off, though - my current job (not education,) asked for my HMRC record.

Yeah in education it’s a much tougher knit system for obvious reasons the down side of that is it’s not a perfect system, people often get stuck in the system rather than fair treatment and can lead to people returning to settings who shouldn’t and e.g witnesses experiencing harsher treatment than the original subject etc I’ve seen it play out a few times.

I may be looking outside this sector for a while.

Oh wow that’s quite ambitious !! although it can be different in different sectors

Oh sweetheart, please hear me when I say your life is not over, even though it feels unbearable right now. Whatever has happened, people do come back from these situations, even dismissals that feel career ending. Many roles don't require DBS disclosures for past employment issues, and how you explain what happened, what you learned, and how you've grown matters more than the incident itself to future employers.
But right now I'm more worried about you than your career. Please reach out to someone today, whether that's a friend, family member, your GP, or the Samaritans on 116 123 who are free and available 24 hours. You don't have to figure out the work stuff while you're feeling this low.
One step at a time love. Are you safe right now?

I was governor of a school where the head was sacked for misappropriating funds and got a job as a headteacher elsewhere straight away.
The general response seemed to indicate this wasn’t unusual. Actual teaching is the place of worry the least about references tbh. Warm body in front of the kids and all that.

I work in education. My HT appreciates candidates being honest. A phone call before application and a discussion counts for a lot. We are all human and mistakes can happen.

I worked in a school for 3 months and left under a cloud (not sacked but mutual bad feeling). The school is not on my CV and I have never called for references from it. No issues re DBS.

NOT saying the OP should do this, but I have. This happened less than 10 years ago.

I am thankyou , just about, I have a good support network I just feel so ashamed and angry too, at the unfairness of life sometimes.

If you are planning a job in education you need to be truthful otherwise likely to be dismissed if you got the job. Someone on here has suggested any gaps to say looking after a granny or something- terrible advice imo. It pays to be honest. Try to stay positive and there will be something. If it was a school setting: teacher/ ta look to do supply as a way forward. Good luck.

Get another low pressure job / volunteer / go self employed for a while. You’ll keep busy & reduce CV gap & be able to get other references.

You cannot leave it off your CV for any job in an education/childcare setting, they will want to account for every month, one of my DCs has just had to spend hours sorting through and dating a list of overlapping, part time, casual student jobs over several years for a part time non-teaching role in a school, references are requested, followed up and are more than just dates confirmed, it is suitability for working with children etc. But also, if you are honest and explain what happened it may be OK, they want that conversation though, any sniff of a cover up is a red flag.

You will be OK, there are other jobs, this happens to other people, it does not make you a bad person

If you know you will be dismissed from a school it's much better to resign early and do an agreed reference with your union as part of the process. Has the process actually concluded yet? If not I'd look to go that way, so long as it's not safeguarding, in which case working in a school again is unlikely given the safer recruitment requirements.

Should add there is a teacher shortage, and if it's not horrific, you may find a school that will take you, even if it's not one you would have chosen, there may be a way to rebuild.

It depends on the sector. If you are dealing with children or vulnerable adults then stricter criteria apply. Also banking/financial. Teaching in a college or uni not so much. Taking time out to care for a relative would be difficult to prove or disprove unless you were claiming carers allowance.

Is this nonsense really still being peddled in 2026?