Struggling to secure a teaching interview? Many strong candidates miss out—not due to lack of ability, but because they don’t fully understand what schools are looking for. Written by a Deputy Headteacher with extensive recruitment experience, this 28 page practical guide offers clear, honest advice to help you stand out and secure more interviews. Inside, you’ll learn how to: Make a strong impression during school visits Effectively evidence the person specification Avoid common application mistakes Strengthen your responses with real examples Whether you are an ECT or an experienced teacher, this guide will help you approach applications with confidence and clarity.

Here is a School Self Evaluation (SEF) for FE and Skills Settings that has been aligned with the NEW Oftsed Framework 2025. Each section covers the main areas of investigation from Ofsted: -Safeguarding -Inclusion -Leadership and Governance -Contribution to Meeting Skills Needs -Curriculum, Teaching and Training -Achievement -Participation and Development Each section is pre-populated with expected, strong and exceptional standard criteria to support the completion of a personalised SEF. This is 13 page document is to serve as a template and needs to be edited to refer specifically to your setting. It provides a sound baseline to build upon.

This comprehensive document is designed to help teachers, subject leaders, and school leaders monitor and track pupil progress across Reading, Writing, and Maths throughout the academic year. It combines clear data recording with actionable insights, making it easier to identify gaps in learning and plan targeted interventions. Key features include: Year Group Summary: Quickly capture cohort context, including total pupils, gender splits, SEND, and disadvantaged pupils (PP). Termly Tracking: Record attainment and progress for each pupil every term, highlighting those Off Track, on Track, or achieving More than Expected Progress. Closing the Gaps: Identify pupils working Well Below or Towards the Expected Standard and plan specific actions to support them. Group Analysis: Compare attainment and progress across key groups (girls/boys, SEND, PP, higher attainers) to ensure equity and targeted support. Action Planning: Provides space to record interventions, teaching adjustments, and strategies for challenging more able pupils. Integration with Assessment Tools: Designed to complement the Termly Core Subject Assessment Cribsheet (available separately) for consistent and reliable data analysis. By using this template, schools can efficiently track progress, highlight trends, and make informed, evidence-based decisions to improve outcomes for all pupils. It saves time, supports accountability, and ensures that gaps are addressed proactively.

Here is a School Self Evaluation (SEF) for Primary Schools that has been aligned with the NEW Oftsed Framework 2025. Each section covers the main areas of investigation from Ofsted: -Safeguarding -Inclusion -Curriculum and Teaching -Achievement -Attendance and Behaviour -Personal Development and Well-being -Leadership and Governance -Early Years Each section is pre-populated to support primary schools in evidencing the expected standard of strong standard. With some suggested points of reference. This is 14 page document is to serve as a template and needs to be edited to refer specifically to your setting. It provides a sound baseline to build upon.

This crib sheet is designed to support teachers, subject leaders, and school leaders in efficiently inputting, analysing, and interpreting pupil achievement data. It provides clear guidance on how to assess pupils at each attainment level (Working Towards, Expected, Greater Depth) and ensures consistency across the school when recording end-of-term or summative data. With step-by-step instructions, the crib sheet helps users: Track pupil progress: Identify knowledge gaps and monitor whether pupils are meeting age-related expectations. Analyse trends and gaps: Quickly highlight patterns by cohort, gender, SEND, disadvantaged pupils, and higher attainers, comparing progress over time and against benchmarks. Inform teaching and interventions: Use data to make evidence-based adjustments to curriculum planning, teaching approaches, and targeted interventions. Support reporting and communication: Provide clear, structured data for parents’ evenings, end-of-year reports, and leadership meetings. By making data analysis straightforward and actionable, this resource saves time, ensures consistency, and empowers educators to make informed decisions that directly impact pupil outcomes.

These visual aids support the cognitive domain required in answering questions relating to the KS2 content domains. Each content domain has a colour and a visual which supports a range of learners to associate the skills required in answering a question to a question type. It breaks down the ‘wordy’ content domain into something more simple and use friendly. these should be displayed, feature next to questions on sheets and on slides next to question types. They will need teaching explicitly before full roll out. Dyslexia Sparks (a dyslexia specialist school) stated how fantastic these were in aiding dyslexic learners who already have barriers to overcome when it comes to reading. The colours are also progressive from KS1 - please see my other resource.

Fully editable excel writing assessment frameworks for use across school. Each child can have their own tab with a record of the skills used. Conditional formatting will show none (pale orange) to secure (bold green) with shades to show emerging in between. These work much better than paper copies and are much more efficient (especially when used as a Google sheet!) Literacy leads can access these across the school and monitor assessment as well as gaps in attainment. Please see INFO tab for details.

An incredibly powerful (fully editable) writing survey that will help to pinpoint exactly what needs developing as part of your writing journey. This will help to gauge levels of enjoyment and will reveal reasons behind high or low levels of engagement. It also provides data on pupils perceptions of their writing, the purpose behind it, their understanding of audience. It will also reveal their levels of confidence as well as preferences. I found this to be an incredible tool in auditing the writing journey at our school. It informed staff training and we have since made great progress in enhancing the opportunities that we give pupils when writing in our school.

Here is part one of a package based on Trauma Informed Practice. Trauma-informed practice in education focuses on understanding trauma’s impact, supporting affected students, and creating inclusive, safe environments. Trauma-informed approaches to managing behaviour start by asking ‘What has happened to you?’ rather than ‘What have you done?’. Trauma Informed behaviour policies are now a requirement in schools. Slides in the form of Powerpoint, as well as a pdf version. This was delivered to staff on a training day and took around about an hour. Subsequent parts are available in my shop. This is aimed mostly at Primary Schools, but it could be used, if not slightly amended to be used, in Secondary Schools.

Here are four lessons based around Michael Morpurgo’s Christmas story, Coming Home. You should have the book to accompany these four lessons. There are lots of opportunities for children to dicuss reading and demonstrate the content domains in reading - written responses are not essential! Ideal for Christmastime, filler lessons, supply. Planned with Y3 and Y4 in mind. ppt, word and pdf format included

Here are some lesson slides that accompany Michael Foreman’s book War Game. With two follow on written activities, these lessons are ideal as filler lessons or Christmas timetable lessons where you still need structure and to develop reading skills. These were planned with Y3 and Y4 in mind. You will need the book to accompany these lessons. NB these were made on google slides. Embedded are some youtube videos for ambience (WWI sounds). These work on the google slide version but I am not sure if they work on the PPT? Feel free to remove or play alongside after searching on youtube.

Here is a great reading game to support the reading of the incredible book, The Day the Crayons Quit. Slides are included to accompany the game and will also include a writing activity to finish. Ideal as a lesson filler, transition activity, off-timetable task. Great for pupils Y2-Y3. pdf and ppt format Storybook NOT included

Trauma-informed practice in education focuses on understanding trauma’s impact, supporting affected students, and creating inclusive, safe environments. Trauma-informed approaches to managing behaviour start by asking ‘What has happened to you?’ rather than ‘What have you done?’. These slides act as part three where staff address building relationships through effective communication skills - with a key focus on listening. There is also an self-assessment tool that can be used during this session and again at a later date.

Trauma-informed practice in education focuses on understanding trauma’s impact, supporting affected students, and creating inclusive, safe environments. Trauma-informed approaches to managing behaviour start by asking ‘What has happened to you?’ rather than ‘What have you done?’. These slides form part two of a training sequence to be delivered across the year. This is a shorter session which could be used as a top up / reminder / refresher. It covers some sensitive topics and focuses on what causes trauma and what is the impact for children and young people. Downloadable in Powerpoint format and pdf. there is also a checklist in Word Doc format that is required to be printed and used for this session. Please make amendments where required - especially for slide 6/7 where you will need to look at your school’s values / vision / mission statement.

A fully formatted whole school curriculum assessment Google sheet complete with setup instructions AND staff training slides on how to use. All staff are required to do is input children’s initials and add the total number of pupils in each column. The spreadsheet will then calculate percentages and you will have: -Year group % of pupils working: well below, below and at. -Subject overviews (how pupils are performing in each subject with specific subject areas (sculpture, drawing etc.) -ALL foundation subjects (including Science) are included Setup instructions are included (this is where you will download your sheet from) as well as slides presentation for staff roll out. Excel format coming soon!

This poster displays key homophones for pupils in KS1 and on entry to KS2. Each word is represented visually. this can be included as an insert in planners, stuck in books or displayed on writing / spelling walls.

These ‘Recommended Reads’ Bookmarks come with a QR code for children to scan. This will then take them to a quality retelling of that story. Suitable for children in Y1 and Y2, there are enough for each school week of the year. These can be edited by uploading the doc to Canva, or please search ‘how can i edit a pdf file for free?’ on google and Adobe will enable you to do this too. These can be sent home / shared weekly with families or used in reading corners / areas. What’s more these could also be uploaded to school websites. Great for Ofsted’s vision of encouraging a love of reading and reading for pleasure. N.B. QR codes were all working at time of upload (March 2023) This is Set 1 - Set 2 is also available - please see my other items.

These ‘Recommended Reads’ Bookmarks come with a QR code for children to scan. This will then take them to a quality retelling of that story. Suitable for children in Y1 and Y2, there are enough for each school week of the year. These can be edited by uploading the doc to Canva, or please search ‘how can i edit a pdf file for free?’ on google and Adobe will enable you to do this too. These can be sent home / shared weekly with families or used in reading corners / areas. What’s more these could also be uploaded to school websites. Great for Ofsted’s vision of encouraging a love of reading and reading for pleasure. N.B. QR codes were all working at time of upload (March 2023) This is Set 2 - Set 1 is also available - please see my other items.

These visual aids support the cognitive domain required in answering questions relating to the KS1 content domains. Each content domain has a colour and a visual which supports a range of learners to associate the skills required in answering a question to a question type. It breaks down the ‘wordy’ content domain into something more simple and use friendly. these should be displayed, feature next to questions on sheets and on slides next to question types. They will need teaching explicitly before full roll out. Dyslexia Sparks (a dyslexia specialist school) stated how fantastic these were in aiding dyslexic learners who already have barriers to overcome when it comes to reading. The colours are also progressive for KS2 - please see my other resource.

This fluency assessment can be used to assess a child’s reading fluency. N.B. Reading Fluency is NOT the speed in which a child reads. It covers: Phrasing, Rate, Punctuation, Intonation, Integration etc… This is the Teacher / Adult version Please see child friendly version in my shop.

This visual can be used for CPD, for teaching teachers how to teach whole class reading. It highlights what to do, at what stage and in what sequence.