What achievements should I add to my Education CV?

Suppose you have a classroom of thirty pupils. Each one of them is very studious, well behaved and consistently obtain good grades in their exams. Now suppose you have been charged with the task of nominating one of the 30 to be head of class for the entire academic year, responsible for coordinating various aspects of student activity, from running study session to acting as liaison between students and teaching personnel, for example. How would you make your choice, what criteria would you use to determine the most suitable pupil for the position? It isn’t easy, is it...or is it?

When employers advertise a new vacancy they can receive dozens of applications from teachers like you who have a few years of experience under their belts. But when faced with a wealth of talent like the pupils above, how do they decide whose CV makes the interview list and whose is fed into the paper shredder? It is a simple question of achievement - what have you done in your career that makes you stand out from the crowd?

Employers want to recruit people who are prepared to go beyond their job description and have done things that have earned them the recognition of their peers. As you will know by now teaching is an increasingly results-orientated profession, with league table positions and teaching standards continually under scrutiny. So to really make your mark you need to have done something that has made a positive difference to the way things are done and can demonstrate these achievements to a potential employer.

For example, perhaps you have raised the average grade attained by your Year 11 pupils from a C- to a B+ from one year to the next, this is precisely the type of achievement that employers will be looking for. Or maybe you work for an inner-city school and successfully introduced an anti-bullying initiative that curbed the level of reported cases by 30%.

Your achievements may be more personal such as winning the Teacher of the Year award or you took on the role of acting departmental head to cover maternity leave.

All of these things will make you stand out from other candidates applying for the same job, add value to your CV and give employers an insight as to your potential worth to them if they take you on.

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