fkelly.co.uk

So, I’ve decided to give this blogging thing a go.

It seems to be that everyone is blogging these days, but I have to admit I’m not entirely convinced that there’s always a purpose. I worry that by having a blog I am just making more work for myself and that it’s all a bit egocentric. Despite this I’ve decided to go ahead anyway. This is mainly due to the fact that I’ve thought of a possible reason for me writing a blog. I’ve trained and taught in England and I’ve made the move North of the border.

I’ve seen and heard quite a few discussions about making this move. Most of them have been along the lines of ‘is it possible?’ and ‘how hard is it?’. It’s also interesting to compare the two systems, and I have experience of one and I’m gaining experience of another.

Why have I ended up in this position? Well, I left Northern Ireland after school and did my biology degree in Scotland. I then decided that teaching would be a potentially good career for me. So I went to England to do my PGCE where they were offering lots of money and my plan was to try to come back up after the PGCE. Unfortunately this was the year that Scotland introduced the guaranteed job for one year for NQT’s. Because of this there were no jobs being advertised and I stayed down South.

With three years in a girls’ grammar school in the South of England behind me, I worked as an advisory teacher in Africa for one year. Returning to the UK was then the perfect opportunity to finally make the move back to Scotland.

So here I am, a few months into Scottish Education and my head is still swimming with terms like ’standard grade’, ‘NAB’, ‘higher’, ‘arrangement documents’, ‘intermediate 1′, ‘LO3′……..

If you like, you can follow me while I try to unravel this confusion.