Story 13

Age: 26

Teaching Experience: 5-8 years

Contract Type: Fixed Term

After completing a successful probation year and a successful fixed term contract year, the following year I applied to the recruitment pool for the same council and didn’t even get an interview!

This lead to a lot of job uncertainty and a lot of anxiety over the summer as I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to secure work in August. It also had a huge negative impact on my confidence as after working exceptionally hard over two years,

I hadn’t even secured an interview for the same council. I am now into my 5th year of teaching and am still working between fixed term contracts and supply work. I strongly believe that the lack of permanent jobs is having a negative impact of teachers mental health however it is also severely disruptive to the children as there is often a high turn over of staff. I have spent countless evenings and weekends applying to jobs and I am now beginning to feel that I cannot keep this up forever.

My life feels like it is on hold until I can secure a permanent job.

Unfortunately, I fear that Scotland are going to loose many fantastic teachers if they don’t start to hand out permanent jobs and be more upfront about the job situation.