There are actually plenty of ways to judge a school before you accept a job offer. Check its culture, its support levels and the signals staff give you at the interview. Indeed, the way staff carry themselves once the school day ends reveals far more about a workplace than any modern facility or competitive pay package ever could.
Unfortunately, most teaching jobs look the same on paper. The real gaps show up in workload, behaviour policy and how fast a school replaces the staff who leave. At OTJR Online, we meet teachers every term who accepted a post in April and were counting the days by October.
This guide covers the culture checks, support questions and career details worth confirming before you accept one of the school jobs on your shortlist. Let’s start in the staffroom.
School Leadership and Culture Speak Louder Than the Job Ad
Teachers tend to judge a school by how it supports developing your teaching career. The stronger signals sit in how staff treat each other in the corridor. School leadership sets that tone, and you can read it inside an hour if you know where to look.
Two checks do most of the work before you reply to the offer email.
What Current Teachers Say About Working There
Current teachers answer honestly when your questions get specific. Ask how many staff left last summer, not what the place is like. A school that lost six teachers from a team of thirty carries a problem no prospectus can hide.
Put the same question to two or three staff separately, then compare what comes back. Remember that rehearsed lines about a supportive team sound nothing like a teacher who names the colleague who covers her class when a child needs calming.
However, the national picture backs up the worry. Department for Education data shows that [only 67.4% of teachers who qualified five years ago are still teaching](Two thirds (67.4%) of teachers who qualified five years ago are still teaching), so about one in three has already gone. Across 20 years of placing teachers in London schools, we have found retention answers predict your first term better than any lesson observation.
Honestly, the truth sits in the short pause before somebody replies (that hesitation is the answer). Find out who sits on the Senior Leadership Team, and how long each of them has been there.
Reading Between the Lines of a Staffroom Visit
Although the official tour covers classrooms and corridors, a visit to the staffroom reveals what it deliberately leaves out. Ask to spend ten minutes there without a senior leader present, as this changes the dynamic entirely. Apart from any conversation you might overhear, an empty room at lunchtime is itself telling, since it usually means teachers are eating at their desks while marking consumes the break.
Look for small things as well: shared resources on the wall, a duty rota, and support staff who know every child by name. Schools that keep those habits going tend to share planning too, which saves you hours on a Sunday.
The real question is who covers a lesson when a teacher goes home ill. A leadership team with a clear answer has built systems, while the ones who shrug will hand you the cover slip (usually during your only free period).
What Should You Ask About Classroom Support at Your Teacher Interview?
Before you talk about pay, ask about classroom support. If you have ever taken a Year 4 class alone through a wet Wednesday, you already know that good leadership, reliable teaching assistants, and colleagues who cover for one another are what keep people in teaching jobs long term. A teacher interview runs both ways, so put these three questions to your head of department while you still hold the upper hand.
- Teaching Assistant hours: Ask how many Teaching Assistant hours your class gets each week. Two mornings is a world away from full-time learning support.
- Classroom management backup: A clear escalation route names the person who responds, the room a child goes to and the follow-up call home.
- Paid cover expectations: Paid cover runs near £30 per hour in some schools. Others expect free cover as goodwill twice a week.
Raise all three in the same conversation. A head who welcomes the questions has usually built the support to back the answers up. Nothing in your teacher training prepares you for a school that has not.
Education Careers Checks: What the Contract Doesn’t Tell You
Checking the career and money side before you sign helps you avoid regret later, especially when the offer arrives with a deadline attached. Contracts cover pay and hours. They say nothing about who stands beside you in the room on a hard day.
One more consideration on pay is the FTE salary. An advert may quote an FTE figure, which means the full-time salary for the role before any part-time split is applied. Also, check where your teacher salary lands on the main pay scale, ask where the salary scale tops out, and confirm the pension scheme.
Then ask what professional development the school funds, rather than what it merely offers. Three further checks decide the rest, and each takes a single email or phone call.
How a Teaching Assistant Eases Your Workload
A Teaching Assistant takes the reading groups, the phonics checks and the resource prep that eat your planning time.
In a primary school, Teaching Assistants run interventions while you teach the rest of the class, which keeps thirty children moving at once. That support is not always guaranteed, so find out early whether your TA is permanently assigned to your room or shared across the school. It’s an overlooked thing because early career teachers tend to feel the disruption most when another class needs cover.
Special Educational Needs Provision Worth Knowing About
In practice, special educational needs provision has far more influence on your working day than any policy document ever will. When exploring teaching jobs, ask how many pupils hold an EHCP, which is the legal plan that sets out their individual support needs.
Schools that fund a SEN teaching assistant across each key stage tend to manage those plans effectively. The reality is, one experienced SEN teaching assistant can change an entire afternoon for a group of learners.
Look, SEND teaching roles do pay a little more, but the learning support assistant working beside you counts for more than any job title. Ask who they report to before you accept a post. It is also worth finding out how pupils move through the primary-to-secondary transition, because thorough paperwork that follows the child makes a considerable difference.
Using Job Search Sites to Compare School Jobs
Searching across two or three sites shows you what teaching jobs pay per day in your subject and your postcode. One worth bookmarking is the government’s Teaching Vacancies service, which lists state school roles for free. Specialist agencies carry the primary and secondary roles, plus the teaching assistant jobs, that never reach it.
A day in primary education looks nothing like a day in a secondary school department, so compare like with like. Once you have three offers side by side, you can see whether the school in front of you is competing or coasting.
Comparing Teaching Jobs in London Before You Decide
Now you know what to ask; weigh London roles against other regions before you commit. Daily pay, travel time and cover expectations shift more between boroughs than usual expectations. The table below sets the usual supply rates beside the thing worth checking in each area.
| Area | Typical supply teaching rate | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|
| Central London | £180 to £220 per day | Commute cost against inner weighting |
| West London | £170 to £200 per day | Class sizes in oversubscribed primaries |
| East London | £160 to £195 per day | New schools and early years places |
| South East London | £155 to £190 per day | Teaching Assistant cover across year groups |
| North London | £165 to £195 per day | Behaviour support in large secondary schools |
| Rest of the United Kingdom | £110 to £150 per day | Housing costs against lower pay |
Judge the rate against your commute, not against the borough name, because two hours of travel undoes a better daily rate. Every September we watch the same role pay £40 more per day two boroughs away.
Teacher Career Advice for Choosing the Right School
Any school shows you who it is long before you sign, through its retention, its support and the way staff answer you. The bottom line is: the awkward questions only work while that offer still sits unanswered in your inbox.
The best teacher career advice we give is plain. Take the extra week, visit at lunchtime and line up two or three offers before you answer any of them. A school worth joining gives you that time without making you feel difficult. Education careers are long, and the learning environment you pick now determines the next five years.
Ready to find your dream teaching job in London? Get in touch with OTJR Online and browse London Teaching Jobs that match the support and career you want.