Teach First - London

Andrea M.

TL;DR: never paid for my travel expenses. They still owe me an airfare. Also, botched final evaluation?

Also, they kept insisting that since I am a Philosophy Graduate I could only teach Reigion Studies in British schools. I politely explained that my bachelor qualified me in my country to teach history and social sciences as well... As demonstrated by my already consolidated resume of secondary school teachers at charter schools and even International Baccalaureate establishments. This was ignored because bureaucracy and ticking boxes is seemingly more important than experience. I have edited this section of my review because others have written the same in their reviews.

March 2019. I got shortlisted by Teach First and invited over for an on site session... I was the only foreigner I knew of (from Italy). I eventually got discarded. Since I was entitled to know the results, a guy over the phone (not the ones who managed the procedure) informed me that I had scored well in all tests and interview, but was discarded because they deemed me unlikely to stay in the job for more than 2 years. I politely replied that the contract being offered was for 2 years and if they wanted to offer me a contract for 5 years I would have stayed longer if that was their intent. But the guy replied he was just reading me the result and had no negotiating power.

After that, the company stopped responding and I never got my reimbursement, which had been promised to all participants (and not just the hired ones).

6 years from now, I still come to think of this as a company that kind of scammed me into paying for myself a weekend in London. Maybe their covert activity is to boost the local tourism industry. Go figure.

Anyway, now that I work as a Professor I could retrospectively agree I could have changed jobs quite soon, owing to my CV. After all, in the end I didn't stay in he job for longer and moved from secondary school to a tertiary education establishment (but let's be aware of anachronistic and retrospective judgements).

Anyway, this begs the question of whether Teach First was truly aiming to find good secondary school candidates or merely people with no other opportunities who would got "stuck" in the teacing position for want of other options. Since I work at a Faculty of Education, to me it is quite clear that the goal of the "no profit" was to counter the scarcity of secondary school teachers. But the mindset is still too traditionalist: they sort of select people who are likely to remain teachers until they retire. Such dedication to the profession is commendable, but most research outcomes nowadays insist that the teaching profession is becoming too "closed" to professionals and, therefore, there is an ongoing loss of competence in the teaching workforce (e.g., too many public employees who have no idea of what it means to have your own business or interacting in a competitive job market... CEDEFOP has published research paper on that).

The final impression is that TeachFirst was discarding professionals who were eager to try their internship and/or pre-service/in-service programmes, in lieu of younger graduates who were likely to be sucked in the public school system (never to see the light again).

I have posted the above as food for thought so that the current applicant might assess whether things have changed or not over the past six years. But my beef is mostly about the fact they didn't reimburse my travel expenses as promised.

Sophie P.

Teach First’s website is misleading with misinformation. They have wasted my time when I have tried to sort out whether I would be eligible for a specific subject. Their unwillingness to accept experience and the misinformation on their website is inappropriate and I do not recommend engaging with this program as they are time wasters.

Mustafa R.

Went to an Edval Education conference here. Facilities were excellent and a really stylish , modern, co-working space.

Richard C.

Great organisation, impressive building, very friendly staff and very accommodating of disabilities

Tim C.

Visited Teach First, everyone was very helpful, keep up the good work.

Thomas P.

Very nice place , very professional environment

Jason M.

Expensive looking place... for a charity?

Duncan P.

Great charity