tc2081

Hi there,

I am a secondary science teacher in the uk and am going to finish my NQT year in aug, and will work through till December.

I would like to know where the best place to find supply/relief work in austraila is. I would like to work in perth for 4 months, but can't find any jobs?

There are lots for melbourne but I've heard perth is friendlier to poms!!

Does anyone know A) if I can't get supply work with my experience and B) where i should look?

My girlfiend is coming with me and she is a primary school teacher with 4 years experience and is also looking for supply work?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Lara_jane

hi, I am hoping to move to Oz and teach. I'm a primary school teacher with 4 yrs exp. This is what I have learned so far, sorry if it's what you already know. You need to apply to register in each state. It takes time for this to come through and costs & what they want vary slightly with each state.
I am planning on heading to Oz in January, as the school years there are different to ours. The start of the new school year will hopefully provide me with some long term work.
Obviously, you are more likely to be able to get supply work if you are in a city area. However, supply agencies have told me that it is harder to get work for overseas teachers in cities. Sydney is almost impossible, although there are areas (like anywhere) where less people want to work. I have found Smart teachers in Brisbane to be helpful. Are you planning on just working out there for a few months while you travel?
Hope this has been helpful, will be interested to find out how you get on, as Perth is one of the areas I am considering moving to.

quoll

Casual relief can be rather tricky - schools do tend to go with the people they know as much as they can so it can be hard to get into the "known and trusted" pool. Cities are always going to have a glut of teachers out there prepared to do relief because they are wanting to get a longer term or permanent position and that can be incredibly difficult. The bulk of vacancies are in places that no one wants to go to no matter which state you head off to. As for being Pom friendly - no one really gives two hoots about where you come from as long as you are prepared to knuckle down and fit in.

quoll

Most of the staffing is done towards the end of the year prior to the new school year starting so if you can get your applications in the round in about August/September they are more likely to have something on offer for the beginning of the new year.

Hope you can find something - longer term offers are more likely in the places that nobody really wants to go to - most people want the cities and few want the bush so if you can move out to a more remote area your chances are higher of finding a long term/permanent job.

Lara_jane

thanks. I'm hoping to return April - June (last bit of WHV), and am trying to arrange interviews with agencies then. Hoping this will help when I come to apply for permanent/relief work.
I'm really worried that I won't get teaching work. If this is the case I will have to stick it out for 2 yrs doing other work, to get my citizenship. Then see what happens. I really hated having to do other work and missed teaching so much while I was away last time. Not getting teaching work will feel like I'm failing.

AndyR1976

A couple of points:

Generally, there is work in areas where people don't want to live -ie.out west, in remote towns and places where they have trouble finding teachers....but woiuld you want to move to that part of the world.

In nice areas it can be YEARS before a full time job is available - for example, NSW central coast and Newcastle, great place to live, wonderful beaches, terrific lifestyle - but there is an 8-10 year wait for full time jobs in primary. High school teachers (especially maths and the sciences) are much easier to come by.

Most of the casual work comes directly from the schools themselves, rather than from agencies (the exception woule be in cities where agenceis tend to at least provide some work.

Each state has their own requirements and approvals process for teachers

Good luck!

AndyR1976

I know this might seem like a silly thing for me to say, but sometimes I wonder why teachers like being teachers - this comes from my experiences of teachers I know.

My girlfriend is a primary teacher,
her mum is a high school IT teacher
my mate is a geographyt teacher (high school)
another mate teaches maths/science
our neighbour is a primary school teacher (can't find work)
My nephew is finishing his teacher training this year
etc.

Teachers always seem to spend most of their time looking for a good job.....most of my friends/family can't find full time work and do at least some casual, sometimes for years....they are always worried about what happens if the casual work ends....they can't find work in good schools or nice areas so they compromise, live in places they don't want to live or commute to horrible schools...

They get spoken to like crap to kids (even 7-8 year olds).....and even if they are lucky and get a good class one year, the next year they could have a horrible class....

People say they get lots of holidays but spend 50% of those doing preparation for horrible kids and horrible schools and horrible parents.

I KNOW that there are some great schools out there, I know that if you get a great school, a good class in a good areas it could be very rewarding, but you only have to look at the teachers posts on UK forum websites and posts on sites such as this to see that the majority of teachers never get that nice school....or at the least, wait 20 years to land that perfect job.........and THEN if you want to move (even to a new part of the city, or to a different area, or you want to move out of the city to raise children (or whatever) then the whole process starts again.

I know quite a few teachers, and (compared to other professions) they seem to spend the majority of their lives looking for jobs that they know they won't be happy with, in schools they don't want to work at, commuting long distances to put up with horrible kids, horrible parents and spend all holidays doing paperwork.......

For ten years I've seen my friends/family get upset.angry/disappointed etc etc with teaching as a profession.....still, ten years on, none of them have the job they want and spend a disproportionate amount of time crying, in depression, looking for other work, stessed about how much casual they will get etc!!

I may be a complete idiot and might be missing something....but I just don't get it......

My experiences of this are pretty much the same in the UK as in Australia - I don't want to dishearten anyone or prevent them from cahsing their dream of moving to 'my' country, but I just don't get it!? The amount of hours I have spend with family and friends debating their latest teaching/career dilemma......

A

Lara_jane

I work in Bracknell, which is not the nicest area of the uk. But I still love teaching and the people I work with. The children can be horrible, but they can also be little darlings. Working in an office just doesn't compare. I hate working in an office, it's so boring & the hours are longer as you are stuck there. You don't get any of the satisfaction of working with children.
You don't have to spend all your free time working, that's teachers who are perfectionists or maybe they are avoiding other things. There are ways of reducing your workload, marking, planning, etc. websites like www.primaryresources.co.uk are brilliant.
I think that there are people who became a teacher as it seemed the right thing to do, or an easy option of carrying on at university by doing a PGCE. Then they did it for a yr or so and became stuck. Also, bad teachers are not encouraged enough to leave their jobs. This is a sore point for me, as it really frustrates me that there are bad teachers, who either need help or need to leave the profession.
I worked in childcare while i was in Brisbane, and think that the behaviour of Australian children seems to be worse than English children. I was bitten and spat on my a 5yr old at 1 place (he didn't want to sit on the carpet!), I complained, but they did nothing, didn't even till his parents! There are some truely awful childcares centres out there.
I don't think any other job compares with teaching, i love my work and don't want to do anything else. If i can't get half decent work in Oz i will come home & have a rethink. The one thing I don't want to do is have to do something else for the rest of my life.
Of course this is just my opinion, you are welcome to disagree.

AndyR1976

There is no way I'll disagree with you...its good to hear someone that actually loves it.

My girlfirned loves it too ... as do many of my friends .... its just that they seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with issues, worried about what happens if the cuply work dries up, or whether they can get that transfer to another school etc(especially when jobs in good areas are few and far between).

I know some peope love it.... just that I don't understand it when there seems to be so many issues......

And I get what you mean about offices - I work prob 80-90% of my time time in my office.... but the people are great and its fun (plus I'm the boss so I have someone to make me a latte when I want one....)

sasbear

2 years for citizenship - thought it had changed to a four year wait?? you may want to check that out.

esperanza

I used to work in a fairly crappy school in the UK, I still liked aspects of it very much. I worked with some fabulous people, who I am still friends with now, and I worked with some fabulous kids too (yes, kids are people I know) - even some of the ones who could be little buggers sometimes. I went on a few overseas trips that I enjoyed, and I taught lots of lessons that I enjoyed.

I'm avoiding teaching in Australia because of the bizarre recruitment & waiting lists - I can see it's to staff 'unpopular' areas, but it is really uncompetitive and must be demoralising for teachers. And I was chatting to a girl yesterday who said the teacher training might be going up to 2 years course instead of 1! So 5 years of uni to be told that if you want a job you have to move to the outback, oh or live on unreliable supply work until you're 35...

I got a lot of satisfaction from teaching, but I refuse to put up with all the associated cr*p. So still looking for the perfect answer!

AndyR1976

Yes, teaching here in the public system is crap - the system of recruitment is so backwards its not funny....

Interestingly, the government is proposing to change the system this year - allowing principles to advertise and get their own staff, rather than using that dumb waiting list system.....

And, although the current system is aimed at getting people to teach in unpopular areas, its not working....its a very short sighted approach becasue anyone that goes out west to teach is only doing it for the SHORT TERM whilst they wait for a job in an area they want to work in!!

There are so many reasons why the current system does not work.....

But (and how is this for stupid) the TEACHERS FEDERATION is against the government plans to change the system.....I thought it would be to the benfit of the vast majority of current teachers .....idiots!!

saoghalbeag

A website that has become my 'friend' in searching for work in Australia is:

ww.teachers.ash.org.au/aussieed/teacher_employment.htm

This is a webpage with links to all the relevant websites for each state and territory in Australia, as well as links to the general career sites, such as search4jobs.com, seek.com and careerone (mycareer.com I think). They don't just have the jobs pages - they also have links to the Teacher Registration bodies in each state/territory, as well as links to public, religious and independent education departments, jobs and study options. You do have to search a little bit sometimes to find what you are looking for, and some of the links can be a bit confusing, but they have got everything covered.

I also spend a bit of time on:

www.teachers.on.net/index.php

which advertises jobs all over the country (although never many/any in Tasmania) as well as UK/Scotland jobs (from ETeach - UK based website) in the independent and Catholic sector. I've been checking this site out from time to time over the past 3 years or so and it seems that it's becoming more popular - I'm sure I've even seen advertisements for jobs in the NSW public sector recently.

The job situation does seem a bit dire, but I hear the same in Australia, England and Scotland. Last year I moved from Brisbane to Alice Springs to work (only to find that instead of teaching my subject of history I was actually teaching Geography, Economics, Careers and Business Studies , none of which were allowed to count towards the standard for full registration in Scotland, which is what I am working towards as I plan to head back there - you want to experience true pain finding teaching work? Try getting into teaching in Scotland as an Australian needing a work permit...:curse: I have been trying since 2002...). This year there simply have not been any jobs within 3 hours of where I live, so I am taking the year out to study postgrad and probably work supply in primary schools (the local high school already have 'their' supply teachers )

Anyway, it's hard everywhere - the main piece of advice that seems to come up whether you're in here, on TES or in a school, is that you need to flexible regarding location, or you need to plan for a long stint of supply teaching.

AndyR1976

I guess this is why I made my comments earlier in this thread - I know so many teachers who are so frustrated with the system/s or both the UK and Australia........

esperanza

It would depend on whether they already had a permanent residency visa that was validated before July (?) 2007. In which case it would be 2 years. If the visa was obtained and/or validated in the second half of last year then I think the person would fall in to the 4 year category...

My issue with the 2 years of other work plan, is that after becoming a citizen you'd still face all the same problems with getting a job, but with the additional factor of having been out of the field for so long. (Unless, as Andy says, the system may have altered by then.)

I don't know about teaching in Scotland, is there a shortage there? I know in England it can be very hard for English teachers to find jobs that they want. I was lucky to fall in to a job in Devon, other people wait years for some old Devonion to pop their clogs so a position comes up!! (Ok, so it's not that bad, but it's a competitive area to apply for). I think most people off my PGCE in 2002/3 did get jobs though, if they wanted them. (That was in History, not a 'demand' subject like it seems virtually every other subject was!! No freebie loan repayments for me!)