Rachel Minton

Although maths/science trained teachers have a higher chance of getting job prospects that does not mean that chances are good. I am a maths/science trained teacher working in Melbourne. It has been challenging to secure an ongoing position. There are a lot of unemployed teachers in shortage subjects here in Victoria. So schools are not keen to hire foreign teachers. Often jobs, even maths/physics roles, receive over 100 applications so competition is fierce. Many primary teachers have been forced to retrain and now teach yrs 7-9 in Secondary schools. There are jobs out there. But as in the UK it can often be who you know and not your skill set which secures them. My advice is to come over, register with a good agency and build a reputation with local schools whilst developing your knowledge of the Australian curriculum.

As an aside note be careful when basing pay on UK experience. I lost a year and as a result a band as my experience statements stated weekly hours as lower than the Australian equivalent due to the taking onto account of lunch breaks. In the Victorian state school system there is no pay negotiation it is calculated using a formula on your past experience.

The job market out here is extremely difficult. As a country Australia is producing a large volume of graduate teachers every year, my small sub-urban school of 800 pupils has had 60+ student teachers come in for placements just this year. There simply aren't enough jobs. My suggestion to those coming over is to sign up to an agency and start doing CRT work. English teachers are highly regarded here, but unfortunately many applications for jobs are not even looked at. So try to get your foot in the door with the school and hope a job becomes available.

The other advantage is waiting is that experience will increase your chances of getting a job. There are a lot of unemployed Australian teachers her, in Victoria at least. So it's a tough market. Don't leave it too long though as they are regularly changing the rules and removing occupations from the list. I ended up being talking into staying. It took me 5yrs to get over here in the end.

I feel your pain. I am upgrading my registration with VIT this year to full. Having just gone through threshold before leaving the UK I feel a but silly finding evidence of basic competance in the teaching standards.

It does have to be a solicitor. The going rate tree is £5 for the first doc and then £2 for each subsequent one. So unless you have a lot of documents I think £200 is way too much. Maybe try another firm.

Unfortunately the sponsorship process puts massive pressure on schools. This means many are very reluctant to enter into it and generally will only do so if you are already working there. There isn't a shortage of teachers out here so they are unwilling to put the time and funds in to sponsor teachers when there are enough here to fill the jobs.

Hello, I am applying for positions in Victoria and having some trouble with state school central applications website. It is really old fashioned to operate and a bit of a pain. My query is about the part of an application which says 'online questionnaire', when I click on this it doesn't load anything...is it supposed to?

Have you looked into the Open University courses? If I remember correctly they offer a sort of mini masters course, you accrue some masters credit which may be enough to top up you BEd. If in doubt if they will accept it contact the AISTL directly, they are quite good at responding to queries.

I front loaded it with the rest of my documents. So I don't know if they would have asked for it. It is a bit of a pain, but it will delay your application if you get asked for it and have to do it at a later stage. Good luck.

Thanks wolveaussie. How did your girlfriend get on?

Can anyone recommend any good websites for looking for jobs in the Melbourne area? I am registered with SEEK job alerts and TES Australia. Looking for term 1 starts for Secondary Biology/Physics.

I had my SCITT course approved by AISTL but it took some doing. I provided an academic transcript from the SCITT provider. This broke down my teaching placements and assignments into credits and stated the number of taught days and placement days. I also provided a letter from the university which confirmed the transcript was accurate, reiterated my enrolment on the course and stated why they were unable to provide the transcript. Oddly this letter had to be the original copy and not a certified transcript. Keep trying as it seems their attitude to more school focussed training is on the turn as there are rumours of them introducing a GTP like programme in Oz soon. As an extra note though, as my university had stopped running the SCITT programme by the time I asked it did take me 6 months to get the letter off them!

I didn't send off bank statements.I had payslips (for part of the period claimed), tax statements (p60) and statements of employment. Mine was approved.