A teacher CV in the UK is read twice, by two very different readers. First, the school office or the trust's HR team checks the non-negotiables: Qualified Teacher Status, the right key stage, a clean two-reference history with no unexplained gaps, and the safeguarding basics in order. Then the headteacher reads for classroom evidence: what your pupils' outcomes actually did while you taught them, how you manage behaviour, and whether you lift the school beyond your own classroom. The example below is built to satisfy both readers on one pass, and every section of this guide exists to help you do the same with your own record.
Most maintained schools and academy trusts recruit through an application form with a personal statement, and safer recruitment guidance means many will not shortlist from a CV alone. The CV still matters more than that suggests: supply agencies place from CVs daily, independent schools and international schools ask for them outright, and the discipline of writing one (progress data retrieved, dates cleaned up, safeguarding record stated) makes every application form faster and sharper. Whichever document carries your case, the top of it must answer the same three questions instantly: QTS status, key stage and subjects, and one pupil-outcome number you can defend at interview.
Pupil progress data is the differentiator most teacher CVs leave out. Schools live on this data internally: it drives pupil progress meetings, the school development plan, and the conversation with Ofsted. A candidate who reports their own reads as someone who owns outcomes rather than delivers lessons. "Taught Year 3" is a timetable entry; "82% of my class made expected or better progress in reading against school tracking" is a hiring argument. If you have taught a full year, that data exists in your school's assessment system, and retrieving it before you write a single bullet is the highest-value ten minutes of the whole application.
Structure the CV for the checks that come first. A header with your professional title ("Primary School Teacher, QTS"), a personal statement of three sentences, teaching experience with three or four bullets per school, then a dedicated Qualifications and Training section carrying QTS with its award date, your degree, your DBS status, and named training (phonics programmes, safeguarding, first aid). That dedicated section is not a formatting preference: schools must evidence safer recruitment, so a shortlisting reader checks those items line by line, and a QTS mention buried in prose slows down exactly the person you need to move fast. Early career teachers flip the middle so training placements sit above other work, because a final placement in Year 2 with solo weeks says more than a year of unrelated employment.
Write each post as class, context, then outcomes. Open every entry with the year group and the school context: class size, the proportion of pupils with SEND or pupil premium funding if it framed the work, whether you taught across a phase. Then spend the remaining bullets on things that moved because you taught there: progress percentages with the tracking source named, attendance improvements, behaviour data, interventions you ran and what they achieved, schemes you piloted that colleagues then adopted. Include the mechanism when it is interesting (daily retrieval practice, precision teaching groups, positive-first phone calls home), because headteachers hire practices, not luck.
Show the whole professional, not just the classroom. Phase leadership, subject leadership, ECT mentoring, clubs, residentials and parental engagement all earn their own bullets, because headteachers staff schools, not just classrooms, and the person specification usually has a "wider contribution" criterion your CV should meet in writing. Safeguarding deserves explicit words somewhere on the page: named training with dates, and any role like Designated Safeguarding Lead deputy. On skills, name the schemes and systems your school ran (White Rose Maths, Little Wandle, CPOMS, SIMS or Arbor), because a candidate who already works in the school's systems is cheaper to induct and panels notice.
The errors that cost interviews are consistent across key stages. Vague qualification wording ("qualified teacher" instead of "QTS awarded July 2018") makes the compliance reader dig. Duty bullets ("planned and delivered engaging lessons") describe every teacher in the country. Missing progress data reads as a teacher who never looked at their own results. Anything traceable to an individual pupil is a safeguarding and privacy failure that ends the application. And the US-style additions (a photo, date of birth, marital status) mark the CV as modelled on the wrong country's conventions; leave them off, along with "references available on request", because schools will take two referees through the form regardless and one of them must be your current headteacher.
Finally, tailor the top third to each school, because different schools weigh different evidence. A school in challenging circumstances reads behaviour and attendance results first. A school with a stated phonics push wants your programme training named. A small village school wants mixed-age planning; a large trust wants moderation and cross-school working. Ten minutes of reordering true bullets against the person specification is often the difference between shortlisted and not. Start from the example below, open it in the builder with one click, and swap in your own classes, data and training record; then check the result to see exactly what a shortlisting system extracts from it.
Frequently asked questions
- Do UK schools even accept CVs, or is it all application forms?
- Both, in a pattern worth understanding before you apply anywhere. Maintained schools and most academy trusts recruit through an application form with a personal statement, because safer recruitment guidance asks employers to collect a full, signed career history in a standard format; many will state explicitly that CVs alone are not accepted. Supply agencies, by contrast, place teachers from CVs every day, and independent schools, international schools and some trusts ask for a CV alongside or instead of the form. So the practical answer is: you need both documents, and the CV is the better one to write first. Retrieving your progress data, cleaning up your dates, listing your training with award dates and writing outcome bullets is exactly the preparation the application form needs anyway, and a strong CV becomes a copy-and-paste source that makes every form faster. Two cautions carry over from the form world into the CV: schools require a complete history with any gaps explained, because that is a safer recruitment check rather than a style preference, so account for every period since leaving education in at least a one-line entry; and your referees will include your current headteacher, so never claim on paper what your head would not confirm on the phone.
- How long should a teacher CV be in the UK?
- Two pages of A4 is the ceiling, and early career teachers should aim for one. The cut order when space is tight: trim bullets from your oldest post first, then collapse posts older than ten years to a single heading line, then compress pre-teaching jobs to one line each (but do not delete them entirely, because schools want a complete history with no unexplained gaps). Never cut the compliance items to save space: QTS with its date, DBS status, safeguarding training and the pupil-outcome numbers do more shortlisting work than any paragraph of prose. Do not pad either: a half-empty second page reads worse than a dense single one, and headteachers shortlisting thirty applications in an evening reward density. Whatever the length, the top third of page one must stand alone: professional title with QTS, key stage and subjects, one outcome number, and your safeguarding record visible. Plenty of shortlisting decisions are made there. Remember too that where a school also requires a personal statement or letter, the CV gets you past the checks and the statement addresses the person specification point by point; the two documents must agree on every date and number, because panels do compare them.
- Do I need a personal statement at the top of a teaching CV?
- Yes: three sentences that surface key stage, years and one defensible outcome in the seconds a shortlisting reader gives the page. Build it in a fixed order: qualification and phase first ("Primary school teacher with QTS and 7 years in Key Stage 2"), context second (school types, pupil premium or SEND experience if it frames your work), one concrete outcome third (progress percentages, attendance improvement, ECTs mentored). Write it last, after your bullets exist, and promote your single best number into it. Keep it distinct from the longer supporting statement an application form asks for: the CV statement is a headline, the form statement is the evidence essay against the person specification, and copying one into the other wastes both. Mistakes to avoid: adjectives without evidence ("passionate and dedicated practitioner" describes every applicant in the pile), naming a teaching philosophy without a result attached, and using the space to explain what you want before establishing what you have done. One UK-specific note: if you are an early career teacher, say so plainly and name your induction status, because schools plan ECT support and funding around it and the clarity reads as professionalism rather than inexperience.
- How do I show results without breaching pupil privacy?
- Class-level and cohort-level data only, with the measurement named: "82% made expected or better progress in reading on school tracking" describes a class, not a child, and is safe. Anything traceable to an individual pupil is not: no names, no initials, no photographs, and no case stories, however anonymised they feel to you, because in a class of 28 a described child is an identifiable child to anyone who knows the school. Be especially careful with small groups: "both of my pupils with EHCPs made accelerated progress" identifies children, while "pupils on the SEND register in my class made progress in line with their peers" does not. If your class was small enough that a percentage effectively names someone, use counts across several years or describe the practice instead of the outcome. The same discipline applies at interview and in any portfolio: bring aggregated tracking, not pupil work with names visible. Headteachers read privacy discipline as safeguarding judgement, because they carry the legal responsibility for it, and a privacy slip on a CV is disqualifying in education. When in doubt, apply one test: could a parent from that class recognise their child in the sentence? If yes, rewrite it at a higher level of aggregation.
- What should an early career teacher put on a CV with no posts yet?
- Your placements, treated with the same seriousness as employment. List each one as an entry with the school, year group, length and what you were trusted to do: "Final placement, Year 2, two-form-entry primary, Leeds (11 weeks, 8 solo)" is a real, checkable entry, and the bullets underneath should carry whatever outcomes you can honestly claim: benchmark results from your class during your solo weeks, an intervention you ran, phonics groups you taught, parents' evenings you led. Put Qualifications and Training directly under your personal statement, because QTS (or its expected award date), your degree, phonics programme training and safeguarding training are the items a school checks first for an ECT. Keep genuinely relevant other work below in short form: teaching assistant hours, tutoring, sports coaching, camp work and even high-responsibility service jobs all evidence behaviour management and reliability, and schools read them. Name your induction status explicitly and say what you are looking for: "seeking a first post with a structured two-year ECT induction" reads as a teacher who understands the system. Finally, resist the urge to inflate: a placement result stated precisely and modestly ("19 of 23 pupils met the spring benchmark") outperforms any adjective, and your mentor is one of your referees.
- How should supply teaching appear on a CV?
- Grouped under the agency as the employer, with schools or assignment types as one-line sub-entries, so twenty short bookings read as one coherent period of work rather than a shattered history: "Supply Teacher, Hays Education (2023 to 2025)" as the heading, then lines like "Long-term cover, Year 4, one term, Wakefield primary" beneath, with full bullets reserved for the two or three assignments where you owned a class long enough to have outcomes. State the through-line in the first bullet: key stages covered, schemes taught, and the strongest quality signal supply work produces, which is schools that asked for you back or extended you. Long-term covers deserve their own treatment because they are effectively posts: name the year group, the length, and anything you can claim honestly about the class's progress or the responsibilities you carried (reports written, parents' evenings led, planning owned). If you are moving from supply back to a permanent post, answer the stability question before it is asked: one line such as "seeking a permanent class of my own after two years of deliberate breadth across Key Stages 1 and 2" reframes the history as range. And keep the compliance layer immaculate, because agencies and schools both check it: DBS on the Update Service, safeguarding training dated within the year, and no unexplained gaps between assignments.