The International Schools Review Forum

Sadly, I failed to do my due-diligence have found myself at a school with incredibly low academic standards. They'll place students into an IB subject when they FAILED said subject at GCSE. We have students taking IB when they only passed 3 GCSE subjects.

At interview, the school was sold to me as highly academic, others here fell into the same trap. I recently discovered that my predecessor had to take a pay cut and a significant increase in workload in order to get out. I'm worried that the same thing will happen to me.

The two classes I inherited are all heading towards failure. The ones I've started with seem to be doing better, as I managed to dissuade those who really weren't suited to the subject, but the culture at the school is very poor. 'High expectations' seem to be completely alien.

Previously, the lowest grade I've had at GCSE was a B, but here, that will be a push for my 'top' students.

I'm planning to sit out the two year contract, but when I go searching for jobs this time next year, the only results I will have will be these terrible ones.

How much of an impact will this have on me managing to secure a good position for Sept 2020? Any tips on things I can do to mitigate the effect that these results will have on my job prospects?

N.B. Obviously I'm doing everything I can to get the students the best grades that they are capable of given their circumstances. However, based on the results from mid-term assessments, previous results (which obviously weren't published, or given at interview. The head is new and I naively believed her when she said that she didn't have that information), and what the IB students achieved, these results aren't going to be anywhere near what I, and many others, would consider acceptable.

Do better than the teacher that came before you

On the plus side, the name of the school will probably be known to recruiters, and you can be quite clear on what the problems were. Be prepared to show how you have added value - how you have provided support, how you got that student from a predicted D to a C or a B, and that is the sort of thing which should be looked at.

First, why would you stick it out? You were obviously mislead, and the IS misrepresented, you owe them nothing.

THE GOOD:

There are a lot of ITs that would love this scenario, because they can essentially apply the Pareto principal, you put in 20% of the work and get 80% of the performance. You know you arent going to stay passed two years, so really all you have to do is spin it in an interview and on your resume as achieving a very high percentage of "expected performance". You achieved a 9x% success rate based on your students expectation of only getting Bs, quote it that way and you can explain it in an interview about what happened and what you had to work with.

THE BAD:

You could ghost the scores or the whole experience depending how bad it is. State you taught lower secondary, leave out that you taught IGCSEs (thus no marks) and go from there. This works best if you have your leaderships support and they are willing to leave the scores out of the ref letter.


THE UGLY:

I know you stated you would stick it out, and if you want to try, but you really owe them nothing, if not now, at least look into next year and consider a mutual negotiation of the contract to one year (this year). You likely have a lot more bargaining power than you think, you agree to stay the rest of the year, you rewrite the contract, and get a positive reference. Your leadership knows they scammed you, they are just hoping your values, ethics and integrity and higher than theirs. You can always go the nuclear option, pull a runner and ghost the last few months.