As a teacher when you look for a new job you need to list your last position/school and list a referee. This persons had to be the head teacher at the time or so I have been told (I tried using someone else and they said they needed the head teacher). This was several years ago since I became a stay at home mom shortly after. My difficulty is this: I did not leave the school on good terms. In fact I had to report the headteacher. She frequently threw her teachers under the bus when talking to parents, was hardly ever present at the school (managed to schools) either physically or mentally, did not keep up with the strucutral safety of the school (an incident where a whole wall of resouces collapsed and would have seriously injured children and staff if it happened a few hours later, and provided no support to staff or students (especially those with disabilities), just to name a few. Some might say I shouldnt have reported her and looked out for myself but I know she would have provided a negative reference regardless because of the type of boss she was.
When I was looking for a job after my post ended I had to use her as a reference because ai had to and lets say it did not go well. What do I do now? It was my only position in the country (I had just immigrated) and I havent taught since. I have two teaching degrees from Australia but my work history is very sporadic due to immigration to several different countries over the past 10 years.
5 comments
Your best bet is probably to be upfront about the fact you had to report the headteacher in future interviews, and that she was not happy about you reporting her. It’s not ideal either, but it’s better than only letting her have her say.
https://www.gov.uk/work-reference#:~:text=If%20you%20think%20you've,it's%20misleading%20or%20inaccurate
You might also be able to claim damages in court if you can prove that she lied about you in the reference.
Most references these days are ‘xyz worked here from May 2021 to April 2022’ and no more.
So you *should* be fine, you apply to a reference and they confirm you worked there.
I’m pretty sure they can’t say anything bad about you, so they all just use the barebones reference.
I’m a teacher and I’m currently waiting to start my new role in the civil service on Monday. Posts like this just make me realise how toxic the industry is.
For what it’s worth I think the union can help you get an agreed reference from a head. However, if your LA is anything like mine all the heads are in a huge WhatsApp group anyway so what gets said in there is between them.
Howard Webb got away with it for years.
You could get the reference from the one before last, but ultimately I think you just need to be honest about what happened and why.