How do I write a primary school teacher CV?

You have sent applications to schools within a sensible commute, you meet the person specification, and either nothing comes back or you get a form rejection after the closing date. You are not a beginner. You know what a good lesson looks like. Something else is going wrong between you and the shortlisting meeting.

A lot of it is structural — a single Year 3 vacancy in a popular school can attract a large field, and shortlisting is done in an afternoon by a head and a deputy with a person specification grid in front of them. But some of it is the document. Primary teaching has its own conventions for what counts as evidence, and CVs written to a generic template miss most of them.

The CV is often not the document that decides it

Start here, because it changes everything else. Most maintained primary schools in England and Wales do not shortlist from a CV. They shortlist from their own application form — usually the standard form on whichever portal they use, or the local authority's form — plus a supporting statement or letter of application. Many explicitly state that CVs will not be accepted, or that a CV may be attached but will not be considered in place of the form.

There are two reasons. One is safer recruitment: statutory guidance in Keeping Children Safe in Education requires schools to obtain a full employment history and to explore any gaps, and a standard form forces that in a way a CV does not. The other is fairness: shortlisting against a person specification is much easier when every applicant has answered the same questions in the same order.

So the honest version of this article is: your CV matters most in the places that actually read one, and your supporting statement matters most everywhere else. Where the CV does the work is independent and prep schools, international schools, supply and long-term agency registration, MAT central or specialist roles, and speculative approaches to schools before a vacancy is advertised. Those are real routes and worth doing properly.

Everything below applies to both documents, because the same reader is scanning for the same things.

What a head scans in the first thirty seconds

In order, roughly:

QTS and your Teacher Reference Number. Put the TRN on the page. The head can check your record with the Teaching Regulation Agency, and a TRN on the document says you know that. State the route — PGCE with QTS, BEd, School Direct, SCITT, Teach First, assessment only — and the year it was awarded.

Induction status. Whether you have completed statutory induction, are partway through it, or have not started. For anyone who began induction after September 2021 it is a two-year period, so "ECT year 2, induction due to complete July 2026" is a more useful line than "NQT". If you qualified some time ago and never completed induction, say so plainly rather than leaving the reader to work it out — some schools can and will take it on.

Key stages and year groups, by name. Not "primary experience". Reception, Year 1, Year 2, Year 4, mixed Year 5/6 — with how long in each. A head recruiting for Year 6 is looking for someone who has taught Year 6, or at least upper key stage 2 with end-of-key-stage assessment experience. A head recruiting for Reception is looking for EYFS: statutory framework, continuous provision, EYFS Profile, and whether you have worked with the Reception Baseline Assessment. These are not interchangeable and pretending otherwise is the fastest way to be cut.

Current setting, in one line. Size and type do a lot of work: two-form entry community primary, one-form entry church school, three-form entry academy within a trust, infant school, junior school, first school, all-through, special. Add the things that shape a class: proportion of pupils with EAL, SEND register size in your class, whether you have a full-time TA or share one.

When you can start. Teachers' resignation dates under the Burgundy Book conditions of service mean the answer is usually one of three dates, and a head with a January vacancy and a candidate who cannot start until September has a problem. Write the date.

Evidencing experience the way primary schools recognise

The unit of evidence in primary is not a project. It is a cohort, a subject, or a system.

Phonics. Name the validated systematic synthetic phonics programme you have been trained in and taught: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, Read Write Inc., Sounds-Write, Essential Letters and Sounds, Bug Club Phonics. Say whether you have led keep-up or catch-up sessions, and whether you have prepared a cohort for the Year 1 phonics screening check or the Year 2 re-check. Schools using a particular programme strongly prefer someone already trained in it, because retraining costs them days.

Maths. Name the scheme — White Rose, Power Maths, Maths — No Problem! — and any mastery work: an NCETM Teaching for Mastery Work Group, Maths Hub involvement, Mastering Number.

Assessment. Multiplication Tables Check in Year 4, key stage 2 SATs, the teacher assessment frameworks for writing, internal and local authority moderation, EYFS Profile moderation. If you have been an LA moderator, that is a strong line and it belongs near the top.

Subject leadership. Which subject, how long, what you actually did: wrote or rewrote the progression document, chose or replaced a scheme, ran an INSET session, monitored books, led pupil voice conversations, managed the budget. Inspection arrangements have changed recently, so avoid anchoring the wording to the vocabulary of any one framework — describe the work, and be ready to talk about sequencing and impact in your subject at interview.

Mentoring and ITT. Mentoring a trainee from a SCITT, School Direct or university partnership, or mentoring an ECT, is one of the clearest markers that a previous head trusted you. Say which, and how many.

On data: be careful. Claims about the percentage of your class that made expected progress are unverifiable by the reader, came from a tracking system they may not rate, and are the sort of thing an experienced head discounts. Describing what you did and what changed — a guided reading structure you introduced, an intervention you ran and who it was for — reads as more credible than a number nobody can check.

The things primary teachers leave off and shouldn't

This is the section that usually matters most, because the omissions are consistent.

• Safeguarding beyond the basics. Deputy DSL, or DSL training completed. Prevent training. Experience of writing and following up concerns on CPOMS or MyConcern. Attending or contributing to Early Help meetings, TAF meetings, child protection conferences.
• SEND detail. Contributing to EHCP applications and annual reviews. Working with the SALT service, an educational psychologist, the sensory service, the autism outreach team. Named approaches you have used: ELSA, Thrive, Zones of Regulation, Makaton, Team Teach or another positive handling accreditation, nurture provision.
• Systems. Your MIS — SIMS, Arbor, Bromcom, ScholarPack. EYFS journals like Tapestry or Seesaw. Tracking tools. This sounds trivial until you are the head who does not have to train someone.
• The things that make a school work. Running a club and what it was. The Year 6 residential. Swimming lessons and whether you hold a relevant award. Paediatric or emergency first aid. Forest school qualification. School council, eco council, sports leaders. Leading a class assembly or the nativity. Educational visits coordination.
• Church school specifics. If you are applying to a voluntary aided or academy school with a religious character, experience of collective worship, RE leadership, SIAMS or the diocesan equivalent, and — where the post asks for it — a supporting reference from a member of clergy.
• Non-teaching work with the same children. TA, HLTA, cover supervisor, learning mentor, breakfast club, holiday provision, tutoring. Career changers routinely delete this and it is often the most relevant thing on the page.

Chronology, gaps and safer recruitment

Under safer recruitment practice a school needs a full history and an explanation of any gap. Two practical consequences:

Use months, not years. "2021–2023" and "2023–2025" looks continuous to you and looks like a possible fourteen-month gap to someone reading forty applications.

Account for everything, briefly and without drama. Supply work — name the agencies and the period. Maternity or shared parental leave. Caring responsibilities. Illness. Time out of teaching in another sector. A term you would rather not discuss. An unexplained gap does not usually get you a phone call asking about it; it gets your application put in the second pile.

If you have taught overseas, flag that you can obtain a certificate of good conduct or police check from that country and, where relevant, a letter of professional standing — you will need them, and knowing that marks you as someone who has done this before. If your DBS is on the Update Service, say so.

Advice that gets repeated and doesn't hold

"Keep it to one page." Imported from graduate recruitment. Two pages is normal for a teacher with a few years in, and a head who wants to see year groups, subject leadership and full chronology will not thank you for compressing it.

"Beat the ATS with keywords." Schools use recruitment portals, and those portals differ. What is consistent is that shortlisting for a class teacher post is done by humans working through a person specification grid, marking each criterion met or not met. Write to the person specification, in its order, using its wording where the wording is genuinely accurate for you. That is not keyword stuffing; it is making the grid easy to fill in. Be sceptical of anyone who tells you confidently how a named school's software ranks you — they do not know.

"Never state your pay point." Genuinely contested. Stating M4 or UPS2 tells a school on a tight budget what you cost, which can lose you a shortlist place; leaving it off can mean a difficult conversation later. Most maintained school adverts state the range anyway. Decide deliberately rather than by default.

Photos, graphics, columns, skill-rating bars. No. Not in this sector.

Independent, international and supply need different documents

Independent and prep. QTS may not be required but is rarely a disadvantage. Co-curricular offer matters much more — what you can coach, direct, accompany or run on a Saturday. For prep schools, whether you have prepared children for 11+ or Common Entrance, and whether you have worked in pre-prep. Pastoral and boarding experience where relevant.

International. Curriculum matters first: English National Curriculum delivered overseas, IB PYP, IPC, Cambridge Primary. Many jurisdictions require two years' post-qualification experience for a visa, and most require attested or apostilled degree and QTS certificates. Say which curriculum, which age range, and what your qualification documents look like.

Supply agencies. Breadth beats depth. Every year group you can confidently walk into, your availability pattern, DBS on the Update Service, behaviour management approaches, and whether you will take PPA cover or SEN settings.

What to do next

Take one advert you have not yet applied to and do this in order.

1. Print the person specification. Number every criterion, essential and desirable.
2. Against each one, write the specific thing from your own practice that evidences it — the year group, the programme, the cohort, the child. If you cannot, mark it blank rather than writing something vague.
3. Check the first third of page one contains: QTS route and year, TRN, induction status, year groups taught with dates, current setting in one line, start date.
4. Convert every year range to month-and-year, and write one clause for every gap.
5. Add the five things from the omissions list above that are true of you and currently missing.
6. Read the school's most recent inspection report and website before you write the supporting statement, and name something specific and real about that school in it. Heads can tell within a paragraph whether you have looked.

If the volume of adverts is the problem rather than the documents, jobmarket.pro reads each advert in full against one profile and sets out where you fit and where you do not, which is the same exercise as step two done at scale.

The underlying point is simple. A primary headteacher is trying to work out, quickly, whether you can hold a specific class in a specific school from a specific date. Make that easy to establish and the rest of the document gets read.