How long should a teaching CV be?

Two pages, and unusually for any field that is a floor as well as a ceiling: schools expect the qualifications block, the placements and the subjects, and a single page usually means something a head needs has been cut.

Do supply and short contracts hurt me?

Not if you group them. One entry naming the agency or the authority, the period covered and the range of schools and subjects reads as breadth; the same work listed as eleven separate jobs reads as instability, and it is the layout doing that, not the work.

Teacher CV: Subjects, Key Stages and Outcomes

Teaching is the field where a job title tells a reader least. Teacher covers a trainee and a head of department, so the CV has to carry the specifics itself: the subjects, the age range, the qualifications you can take a class through, and whether you have led anything.

The part most teaching CVs leave out is the outcome. Attainment, progress, attendance, a cohort that improved on the one before it: these are recorded somewhere in every school, and quoting them turns a description of your duties into evidence.

Say exactly what you can teach

Put the subjects and the age range in the first two lines, and add the second subject you could cover if asked. Schools hire for the timetable they have, and a candidate who closes two gaps is worth more than one who closes a better single gap.

Subjects, age range and the examinations you have prepared classes for.
Your qualification to teach, with the awarding body and the year.
Special educational needs experience, which is asked for far more often than it is offered.

Show what the pupils did

Two or three lines of outcome are enough, and they change the register of the whole document. A cohort that moved from one grade band to another, an intervention with a measured effect, a club that grew: each is a claim somebody could check.

Results against the previous cohort or the school average, not in the abstract.
Anything you led: a subject, a year group, a project, a colleague you mentored.
Digital tools by name, because remote and blended teaching is now a filter in its own right.

Common questions

How long should a teaching CV be?: Two pages, and unusually for any field that is a floor as well as a ceiling: schools expect the qualifications block, the placements and the subjects, and a single page usually means something a head needs has been cut.
Do supply and short contracts hurt me?: Not if you group them. One entry naming the agency or the authority, the period covered and the range of schools and subjects reads as breadth; the same work listed as eleven separate jobs reads as instability, and it is the layout doing that, not the work.

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Say exactly what you can teach

Show what the pupils did

Common questions

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