Teachers TV Document
Title
Sample Questions
Associated Teachers TV programmes
Get That Job…as an NQT
Note to teachers
This document was not created by Teachers TV but the author has allowed us to publish it here to be used for educational purposes
Sample prospective questions from two or three different panels, depending on governors’ choices (to underpin the background interview, if necessary):
Leadership and management
· What’s the relationship between leadership and management? Examples of times when understanding the difference has enabled you to make a choice or decision
· Coping with conflict
· What do you understand by governance
Curriculum, teaching and learning
· When you know someone is an outstanding teacher, how do you capture that for the school as a whole?
· What are your views on mixed ability teaching, setting and streaming?
· What’s the key to good discipline?
Finance and community resources/relationships
· How would you evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a department?
· How would you manage an impending deficit of £100,000?
· What’s the most difficult relationship issue you have encountered as a senior leader and how did you handle it?
Some of these questions might be repeated at a full final panel interview because the responses were felt to be so significant that everyone should hear them.
Otherwise, a separate set of questions would be asked for the final interviews, which should be chaired by the Chair of Governors.
Sample Final interview questions
· What has been the most powerful influence on your development as a school leader, and why?
· What effects do you think the new qualifications framework for specialised diplomas will have on schools?
· What will this school look like after one year of your leadership?
· How will this school gain from appointing you as the new headteacher?
· What do you anticipate will be the long-term consequences for schools of implementing Every Child Matters?
· Schools are increasingly being asked to collaborate, at the same time as competing for resources and students with other schools and, potentially, many other agencies. What advice will you give us as governors on how to manage this potential conflict of interests?
· Are there questions you wish to ask of us which you have not already been able to ask?
· Is there anything in your application to which you would like to draw our attention, which you think we have not already noted or discussed?
· If you are offered this post, will you accept it?
This sample is drawn from ASCL MAPS ‘Guidance to Governors’ supporting them with the appointment of a new headteacher. They are drawn from a large bank, from which governors can select what seems most appropriate for their school.
Further information on this service for schools and on ‘Preparing for Promotion’ is available from