Secondary school teacher Jonathan Pain has always believed passionately in education, developing his career to help support and empower children and young people with special needs. For him, one of the best things about becoming a special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCo) has been the ability to follow closely the paths of individual learners. “It is investing in individuals and small groups within the school to really make a difference to their lives and their experience,” he says.
What he finds especially interesting is the range of children he deals with – from those with mild learning difficulties, who need support coping in a mainstream school, to those completely disengaged with learning or with difficult home backgrounds, and those with mental or other health problems. Satisfaction comes from being able to communicate effectively. “You have to dig deep to see what they need and get them to where they need to be,” says Pain.
Pain, who is also a year 7 leader at the Clere school, a small state secondary in Hampshire, says his job involves being good at time management, liaising with other services and parents, and diagnosing problems. He also needs to explain how his school can deal with those problems, as well as help other staff get the best out of individual children. “It feels like I’m doing something for my colleagues as well as for the children,” he says.
To qualify as a SENCo, teachers need to complete an SEN qualification within three years of taking up a relevant position in a mainstream school. Financial support is often available for this, and classroom teachers who work in a special school or in a post that requires an SEN qualification, or teach pupils in designated SEN classes, are entitled to an additional allowance of up to £4,158. Some schools will pay more.
Other ways to enhance your career
Julie Smith, director of teaching and learning at Wyedean school and sixth-form centre in Gloucestershire and a doctoral student at the University of the West of England, helps her colleagues in a different way – by sharing research and helping them reflect on their teaching practice. She leads a project that gets teachers working together to plan and observe lessons – gathering evidence of what works and tweaking their practice accordingly. Her thesis is based on lesson study, and she says she loves the way the two strands dovetail. “When I’m not at school I’m at home writing it up and thinking about it,” she says.
Shaun Donnelly, head of science at the Blue Coat school in Oldham, has followed more of a management route within his subject, working his way up through leadership roles in biology at two other schools. Having a range of experience in a variety of schools can be helpful, he says: “It is good to expose yourself to a lot of different management styles.”
Teachers keen to advance their careers have no shortage of opportunities to take on extra responsibilities in whatever direction most interests them, says Margaret Evans, careers adviser at Northumbria University and a chair of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services’ teaching and related professions task group.
For those interested in becoming more deeply involved in their subject, one way to go is to become a head of department. The next step would be to become head of curriculum, then a teaching and learning specialist, training other teachers in affiliated schools.
Those who particularly enjoy looking after a tutor group may prefer to become a form tutor and then assistant head of year, before taking on the role of head of year, responsible for the wellbeing, behaviour and attendance of pupils across a year group, liaising with parents and specialist staff.
Alternatively, there’s professional development. “Even at a fairly early stage in your career you could be involved in mentoring and training other teachers,” says Evans.
Donnelly, whose school is a National Teaching School (an outstanding school that works with others to provide training and development to new and experienced school staff) and a SCITT (an accredited provider of school centred initial teacher training), says schools like his offer plenty of opportunities to become involved in teacher training.
Taking on extra responsibilities can mean taking home extra pay. Teaching and learning responsibility (TLR) payments can add more than £13,000 to the pay packet of those who not only take on specific roles that demand professional skills and judgment, but also line-manage a significant number of people. Even without management duties, teachers can earn more than £6,500 extra for taking on responsibilities beyond those of a standard classroom teacher.
So how does it work? There are three TLR categories. A TLR1 payment, which ranges from £7,699 to £13,027, requires teachers both to have line-management responsibility for a significant number of people and a specific responsibility focused on teaching and learning, such as training new teachers or being the leading authority on a particular curriculum area among staff. This could involve, for example, helping other teachers adopt a new approach to teaching modern languages, or showing them how to integrate ICT more effectively into their teaching.
A TLR2 payment ranges from £2,667 to £6,515 and, like TLR1, involves a specific responsibility related to teaching and learning, but doesn’t require any line-management responsibilities.
A TLR3 payment, of between £529 and £2,630, is for teachers taking on a time-limited school improvement project or one-off responsibility – such as improving literacy in underachieving pupils.
But, for most teachers, taking on extra responsibility is not really about the money. Jamie Thom, an English teacher with teaching and learning responsibility at Cramlington Learning Village, a secondary school in Northumberland, says: “It’s about being passionate about teaching and learning in general, and sharing that passion with other people.”
Visit the Get Into Teaching website for more information
