Career in education

TCPPC

Hi All,
Anyone worked in education before as a non teaching role before? I had a interview last week and HR has ask for reference (no offer made yet) not sure if this is standard practice in education. Role: Finance and Operational manager for a primary school.
No prior education experience, 10 year in private sector. I wanted to see anyone found it hard to move from private into a public sector role?
Whats the culture like, is there limited scope in career progression in the sector, work life balance?
thanks in advance

MovingForwards

Reference - standard nowadays to ask for at least one from a former employer.

Transition - I prefer private sectors. Too many people need to sign things off in public compared to private. Everything is done on the cheap so instead of having one IT package where a few others run off it, there's loads all of the place. Can't get a straight answer as no one wants to commit to anything. People passing the buck.

Culture - varies department / location to department / location and the people.

Progression - in theory it's possible to climb up the ladder a bit.

Work / life - even before working from home I was mentally taking work home, doing longer hours and everything else I didn't want from a role. Not enough staff to cover the workload, not enough budget to get more staff. 

I'm seriously contemplating reverting to my previous professional career because of my current job in the public sector and I've not even been in it 2 years.

TCPPC

Thanks for the feedback, I just thought it was odd shouldn’t they ask for reference after offer a conditional offer first. Nothing to hide but sound quite daft upsetting your current company before you even have an offer.

i sense that from the public sector

MovingForwards

Where I work they do reference requests before interview, which could be awkward for some people.

touch*my*food*feel*myfork

I work in education and references are always requested before interview

work life balance is dependent on your headteacher/senior leadership team - I have noticed it change when heads change

AskAsk

my friend applied for a teaching job a few months ago and i had to give him a personal reference before he got offered the job.  he didn't actually get the job.

TCPPC

That is harsh, and it puts that candidate in a difficult place now. Stupid policy

jackieblack

TCPPC said:

That is harsh, and it puts that candidate in a difficult place now. Stupid policy

Yes, that’s standard in schools.

Scope for progression will depend on the size of the school. If it’s a small Primary you would probably need to move to a large Primary or a Secondary school in order to progress once you reach the top point on your salary scale.

Most people moving into working in a school from the private sector struggle to get their heads around the pro rata pay if the job is a 38/39 week contract (usual in Primary schools), although some larger schools have 52 week admin staff, it’s far less common.
Academies may be different as they’re basically run as businesses and different to maintained schools.

jackieblack

touch*my*food*feel*myfork said:

I work in education and references are always requested before interview

work life balance is dependent on your headteacher/senior leadership team - I have noticed it change when heads change

I agree with all of this.

Marcon

TCPPC said:

That is harsh, and it puts that candidate in a difficult place now. Stupid policy

It's called child protection. If you think that's a stupid policy, are you sure working in a school is for you?

AskAsk

Marcon said:

TCPPC said:

That is harsh, and it puts that candidate in a difficult place now. Stupid policy

It's called child protection. If you think that's a stupid policy, are you sure working in a school is for you?

they don't want to waste time interviewing candidates who can not get a reference, so they ask for the reference first.  most employers will ask for a referee on their application form, but they don't take the reference until you have been offered the job.

to start teaching, i think you also have to get CRB checked, which i assume will be done when you have been offered a job?