Early Years Teachers

[Jsmull87]

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience of Early Years teaching in Adelaide?

Could you start the registration process whilst still in the UK with just the mandatory notification training to complete on arrival. I know teaching in Adelaide is a competitive market but any tips would be appreciated. Quite prepared to do daycare ECT but school/ reception would be the goal. The main thing is gaining experience, meeting new friends and having some kind of income to get set up.

[snifter]

Hello and welcome

Not sure you can do anything while in the UK. It may be you have to wait till actually here before you can begin the registration process. 

Re school, reception is a very popular age group job wise and you probably need to be prepared to hand out your CV to lots of schools and go into the pile (our school has a big stack of CV’s for relief work and many teachers often have preferred teachers know to them for relief teaching that they use and don’t need to resort to the pile much). Also if you are coming over  mid year it could be harder going to find work. Being here for the start of the school year could be more useful in that respect to be available from the off as often as the year goes on teachers start to build up regular relief teachers or use ones well known to the school. Or you could find you land some relief work the first week and are away. Impossible to know, but plan for it to be taking longer so as to ensure savings etc to see you through. I’d suggest savings to see you through 3-6 months would be at least the minimum.

As far as permanent or year contract posts go, IIRC they are usually listed mid year, June/July/August for the following year. You may well stand in better stead for those if you are already known to the schools listing them. I know people who go year to year at the same school, starting with relief work, then term or year long contracts and waiting to move up in line as it were for the next permanent post that may come up that they are suitable for. It can be a long uncertain wait as they don’t know if they’ll get another year even.

Being able to teach a language or some such could be useful (if it’s a language taught here). 

Or else look to country schools, at least a couple of hours or so out of Adelaide for the year long or permanent posts. Those are harder to fill and it seems to be viewed as a good thing to get some of it under your belt to return to Adelaide with. It’s not for everyone and it can be hard going as I understand it and often a long way from anywhere in terms of city or large town. I know of one teacher had to move a 14 hour drive away to take a year contract as could get nothing here, only relief work and it wasn’t enough. Now back in Adelaide with a year contract at a primary. I know another who teaches at a country primary in a long term post. The school is ranked low on the educational disadvantage index (from 2015) and is hard going, they love it there. It’s closer to Adelaide though so they can get to a more densely populated area within a few hours.