Teacher CV template

What school leaders scan for first

Panels shortlisting teachers verify three things before reading anything else: qualified status (QTS, state certification, or equivalent), subject and age range, and current safeguarding training. Put these in a clearly labeled qualifications block near the top, with dates. Making a panel hunt for your certification is the most common self-inflicted wound in teaching applications.

After eligibility, they look for trajectory: responsibilities beyond the classroom (form tutor, subject coordination, a club, a working group), because those signal the future middle leader every school is quietly recruiting for.

Evidence over adjectives: writing classroom impact

"Passionate educator committed to every child's potential" appears in nearly every teaching CV and therefore says nothing. Evidence does: value-added results, progress data for your classes, attendance improvements in your form group, intervention groups that closed gaps, moderated coursework outcomes. "Year 11 class exceeded target grades by an average of half a grade against similar prior attainment" is the sentence panels remember.

Where data is limited (early career, or subjects without exam classes), use observed practice and adopted work: a scheme of work now used by the department, resources shared across the trust, an observed lesson rated highly, a behavior strategy that measurably reduced removals.

Beyond the classroom: the section that wins interviews

Schools hire whole colleagues, not just lesson deliverers. Give co-curricular and pastoral contributions their own bullets: clubs run, trips led, parents' evenings and transition events, mentoring of trainees, duty rotas, community links. Two or three concrete lines here often separate shortlisted candidates from equally qualified ones.

Professional development belongs here too, selectively: training that changed your practice (phonics, SEND, exam-board marking) rather than a full course inventory. Exam-board marking experience in particular is undervalued by candidates and highly rated by heads of department.

Early-career teachers and career changers

Early-career teachers should structure placements like roles: school, age range, classes taught, one outcome or contribution per placement. Career changers into teaching should compress the prior career into a few lines that name the transferable evidence (presenting, managing groups, subject expertise) and let training placements lead. In both cases, one page is enough; a two-page CV of thin material reads worse than a dense single page.