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CV advice for teachers

How to write a teacher CV

Teaching CVs are read in a specific and unusual context: often by a head of department during a free period, against a closing date that is days away, alongside a personal statement that does most of the persuading. The CV’s job is to make the facts findable in under a minute.
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That reader has four questions. What can you teach, and to whom? Are you qualified and cleared to be in front of a class? Is there evidence that pupils learned more because you taught them? And will you carry anything beyond your own timetable — a form group, an intervention, a club, a department responsibility?

Most teaching CVs answer the first two and stop. The third is where applications are actually decided, and it is where teachers are strangely reluctant to be specific — partly because attainment data is shared and contested, partly because the profession is uncomfortable with self-promotion. The way through is to name the benchmark alongside the figure, which turns a claim into a comparison a head of department can evaluate.

The first minute

What a hiring manager reads first — and in what order

Four things, in this sequence. Everything else on your CV is read in the light of them, so anything that answers one of these belongs above the fold rather than on page two.
  1. 1

    Subject and the age groups you have taught

    Subject specialisms, key stages or year groups, and exam boards where relevant. A head of department is filling a specific timetable gap, and this is the line that decides whether you can fill it. AQA and Edexcel are not interchangeable to someone rewriting a scheme of work in August.

  2. 2

    Qualification and clearance status

    QTS or the equivalent for your jurisdiction, your training route, ECT status and how many terms are completed, and an enhanced DBS check where you hold one. These are compliance gates, and a CV that leaves them ambiguous creates work for the reader.

  3. 3

    Evidence that pupils made progress

    Attainment or progress figures against a stated comparator: the previous cohort, the department average, the national picture for a similar intake. A number without a comparator is not evidence, and every experienced reader in education knows it.

  4. 4

    What you carry beyond your own classes

    Form tutor, second in department, intervention lead, exam officer, trips, clubs, a curriculum rewrite, mentoring a trainee. Schools hire for the whole contribution, and this is often what decides between two similar candidates.

Numbers that carry weight

The metrics that actually matter for teachers

Not every profession is measured the same way, and using the wrong kind of number is close to using none at all. These are the figures a reader in this field recognises immediately.

Attainment or progress against a comparator

Grade 4+ or 5+ percentages, average point score, progress measures, phonics screening pass rates, reading age gains — always with the previous cohort, the department average or the prior-attainment baseline next to it.

Teaching load and range

Number of classes, total pupils, year groups, ability range and set. Teaching six classes across all key stages including a top set and a nurture group is a different job from teaching four middle sets, and only one of them shows range.

Intervention outcomes

Pupils targeted, how the group was selected, what the intervention was, and the movement in the group compared with pupils who did not receive it. This is the most persuasive kind of bullet a classroom teacher can write.

Responsibility scale

Size of the department or team you support, number of trainees or ECTs mentored, budget for a subject or trip, pupils in your form or year group.

Structure

Section order for this role — and what to drop

Section order is the cheapest edit available to you and one of the most effective. This is the sequence that suits the way this profession is read.

Recommended order

  1. 1Contact and status lineName, city, phone, email, plus QTS and DBS status in one short line. Availability from a stated date matters more in teaching than in most fields because of the recruitment calendar.
  2. 2Profile — three or four linesSubject, key stages, years of experience, and one thing you are known for. Keep it short: the personal statement is where the argument goes, and repeating it here wastes the page.
  3. 3QualificationsHigh on the page: QTS route and year, degree with subject and classification, PGCE or equivalent. In teaching these are checked early, unlike most professions where education drops to the bottom.
  4. 4Teaching experienceReverse chronological, each school with its type and context — comprehensive, academy, independent, sixth-form college, intake size, Ofsted or inspection category if it helps you — then your classes and results.
  5. 5Responsibilities and whole-school contributionForm tutoring, subject leadership, interventions, clubs, trips, CPD delivered, working parties. Group it rather than scattering it through the job entries.
  6. 6Professional developmentSafeguarding and Prevent training with dates, subject CPD, NPQ or middle-leadership programmes, exam board training and examiner work.

Leave these off

  • A restated personal statementMost teaching applications require a separate supporting statement. Duplicating it on the CV costs you the space where your data should be.
  • Every school placement in detailOnce you have two years of post-qualification experience, training placements compress to one line each.
  • Generic classroom-management adjectives“Passionate about teaching”, “creates a positive learning environment”, “builds excellent relationships with pupils”. Universal claims, no evidence, and the reader has seen forty of them this week.
  • A photographNot conventional on UK teaching applications and adds nothing. Many local-authority and trust portals strip it anyway.

Before and after

Three bullets rewritten

The same work, described twice. What changes is not the vocabulary but what the sentence is willing to commit to.

Rewrite 1

Weak bullet

Taught mathematics to students of all abilities and prepared them for exams.

Rewritten

Taught GCSE and A-level mathematics across five classes (150 pupils, sets 1–4, AQA); redesigned the Year 11 intervention scheme and lifted grade 5+ attainment from 58% to 71% across two cohorts, against a departmental average of 62%.

What changed: A percentage only becomes evidence when there is a benchmark beside it; the rewrite adds the exam board, the load, the ability range and a comparator, and shows the improvement was designed rather than inherited from a strong year group.

Rewrite 2

Weak bullet

Planned and delivered engaging lessons in line with the national curriculum.

Rewritten

Rewrote the Key Stage 3 science scheme of work around a knowledge-retrieval model, producing 36 lessons and a common assessment now used by all four teachers in the department; end-of-year assessment scores rose by an average of nine percentage points on the previous cohort.

What changed: Planning lessons is the job, so the rewrite moves to what was produced, how widely it was adopted, and the measured effect — “engaging” has been replaced by something a head of department can verify by asking one question.

Rewrite 3

Weak bullet

Supported pupils with special educational needs and worked with teaching assistants.

Rewritten

Directed two teaching assistants across a class with nine pupils on the SEND register, co-writing scaffolded materials for four EHCP pupils; all four met or exceeded their end-of-year targets and the department adopted the scaffolding format for Key Stage 4.

What changed: The original describes proximity to the work; the rewrite quantifies the need in the room, names your role in directing other adults, and reports both the pupil outcome and the fact that colleagues took up what you made.

Parsers and keywords

What a parser is likely matching for in teachers

Screening behaviour differs from employer to employer, so treat this as a checklist of terms you have genuinely earned — not a list to paste in.

Teaching recruitment is different from most professions in one important way: a large share of applications go through a school or trust application form rather than a CV upload, and many of those forms strip formatting entirely. Where a CV is accepted, it is often read alongside the form rather than instead of it.

That has two consequences. Keep the file plain enough to survive being pasted into a text box, and make sure the terms a school searches on appear in your own wording: subject, key stages, exam boards, QTS route, safeguarding. Where a trust does use automated screening, these are the strings it will be looking for.

How applicant tracking systems read a CV covers the mechanics in more detail, and the ATS-friendly templates are the layouts least likely to lose any of this.

Terms in this job family
Status and qualification
QTSECTPGCESchool DirectTeach Firstenhanced DBSNPQ
Curriculum and stages
Key Stage 2Key Stage 3Key Stage 4GCSEA-levelBTECEYFSnational curriculum
Exam boards
AQAEdexcelOCRWJECCambridge InternationalIB
Practice terms
safeguardingSENDEHCPdifferentiationformative assessmentbehaviour managementpupil premiumphonics

No wording guarantees a shortlisting, and in teaching the supporting statement usually carries more weight than keyword matching. Treat this as a list of things a reader will look for and be unhappy not to find, rather than as a filter to satisfy.

Avoid these

Mistakes specific to teachers

Not the generic list. These are the failures that recur in this field in particular, and that a reader in it will notice immediately.

No data anywhere

The most common gap in teaching CVs. Attainment data is contested and imperfect, but a reader who sees none at all has nothing to distinguish you from every other applicant with the same subject and key stages.

Figures with no comparator

“78% achieved a grade 4 or above” could be excellent or poor depending on the intake. Always attach the departmental average, the previous cohort or the prior-attainment baseline.

Omitting safeguarding and mandatory training

Safeguarding training, Prevent, and the status of your DBS check are compliance facts a school has to establish. Leaving them off means somebody has to ask, and creating work for a busy recruiter is never neutral.

Not naming exam boards or specifications

A department taking on a Year 11 class mid-specification cares a great deal whether you have taught their board. It costs four characters to say.

Hiding a career change or a return to teaching

Career changers and returners are actively recruited in shortage subjects, but the CV has to explain the shape of the timeline rather than leaving a reader to reconstruct it. One clear line about what you were doing and why you came back is enough.

Build order

How to write it, in 5 steps

Written in the order that wastes least time: gather the facts first, then shape them, then cut.
  1. 1

    Collect your data before you write

    Attainment and progress figures for your classes, the comparators you are allowed to quote, intervention group results, and the number of pupils in each class. Ask a head of department for the departmental averages if you do not hold them.

  2. 2

    Put the compliance facts in the header

    QTS with the year and route, ECT terms completed, DBS status, and the date you are available from. One line, at the top, where nobody has to hunt for it.

  3. 3

    Give every school a context line

    Type of school, intake size, catchment, and the ability range you taught. The same results mean different things in different settings, and the reader will make an assumption if you do not tell them.

  4. 4

    Write one intervention bullet per role

    A group you targeted, why they were selected, what you did, and how they moved compared with pupils who did not get it. This is the bullet heads of department remember.

  5. 5

    Group the whole-school contribution

    Pull form tutoring, clubs, trips, CPD, mentoring and working parties into one block rather than scattering them, so the reader can see the whole contribution at once.

Templates

3 templates that suit this role

Chosen for how this profession is actually read, not for how they look in a gallery. You can switch between any of them later without retyping a word.

Traditional CV

classic · one column

Free

Classic Professional

classic · one column

Free

ATS Simple

ATS-friendly · one column

Free
  • Traditional CV (one column, parsing score 5/5) — Headings sit out in the left margin so every line of content shares one clean edge — ideal for a CV with a lot of short factual entries: classes, results, responsibilities and training.
  • Classic Professional (one column, parsing score 5/5) — Centred capitals and ruled headings: the conventional shape most schools and local authorities expect, and a document that photocopies and prints without surprises.
  • ATS Simple (one column, parsing score 5/5) — Stripped back to text alone. The right choice when a trust’s application portal is going to convert your file, because there is nothing in it that can be lost in the conversion.

US market

If you are applying for a US résumé instead

US school hiring uses different credentials, different structural vocabulary and a résumé rather than a CV, so a UK teaching CV needs genuine translation rather than reformatting.
  • Licensure is state by state: name the state, the licence type and the endorsement areas, plus Praxis results where you have them. QTS on its own is not a recognised credential in most US districts.
  • Grade levels, not key stages: say “grades 9–12” rather than “Key Stage 4”, and translate GCSE and A-level into the nearest equivalents when describing what you taught.
  • One to two pages as a résumé, with certifications high on the page and a short skills-and-endorsements block; the long supporting statement common in UK applications is usually replaced by a cover letter.
  • Standardised assessment vocabulary differs by state — reference the specific assessments your district uses rather than assuming any UK measure will be understood.

One document, two versions

The advice above is the same profession, not a different one — which is why there is no separate résumé guide for this role. Keep one document, switch the paper size to US Letter, trim to a page and remove anything personal.

US résumé conventionsOne-page résumé templates

Teacher CVs: common questions

The questions that come up repeatedly in this field, answered without hedging.

Two pages, and two full pages is normal in this profession rather than a warning sign. Teachers accumulate genuinely relevant material — subjects, key stages, exam boards, responsibilities, training, safeguarding — and a school would rather read it than have to ask. What should not spill onto a third page is a restatement of your personal statement or a full account of your training placements once you are two years past them.

Related guides

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