PK Education Newsletter- January 2025

New Year, New Survival Tips!

Happy New Year!

Are you excited about the year ahead and the opportunities that 2025 could bring? Or are you spending every minute counting down to half-term and praying for snow days? (probably a bit of both, right?)

If you’re smashing your New Year’s resolutions, that’s awesome but don’t be too hard on yourself if you gave up or haven’t bothered this year – Dry January was definitely not invented by someone in the teaching profession!

Having said that, if there is ever a time to be super positive and reflective, January is the time to do it.

Fail to plan, plan to fail!

In the PK Education offices, we’ve been setting our goals for the year. We’re not sure who wrote “eat more doughnuts” on the board but we’ll probably know by the end of the year. Thankfully, we did have plenty of considerably more strategic goals suggested too that we’ve implemented into our objectives.

After our very productive planning session, we’re feeling extra motivated to make sure 2025 is the best year yet for PK Education and our candidates.

Even though a lot of planning for teachers revolves around the academic calendar, January is still a great time to kickstart your personal career and self-development goals. Whether you want to progress your career or learn some new skills, the best way to hold yourself accountable to doing it is by setting out your goals and tracking your progress with a realistic timeline.

Planning for a successful year is easy, as long as you ignore the bits where students, parents, technology and weather interfere!

CPD resources – Twinkl has a whole section on CPD for teachers, including examples, templates, videos and guidance on developing an effective CPD to help you to get some added motivation for the year ahead.

Podcast Recommendations for Teachers

When there aren’t enough hours in the day, the art of multitasking becomes a superpower. With workload pressure being a major concern in teaching, finding ways to work smarter not harder will help you to stay afloat (even if it feels like there’s a hole in your boat).

We’re not going to suggest you delve into programming AI to take care of all your work from lesson planning to hanging out your washing and walking your overweight cat, but let’s start with an easy type of multitasking easy like listening to podcasts while doing something important or necessary. You can:

• Catch up on the latest teaching news while doing your ironing.
• Listen to motivational podcasts while you take a walk or go to the gym.
• Get a dose of much needed humour on your commute/drive home from work.

Here are some of our top podcast picks:

Funny – Teachers Off Duty

Useful for ideas – The 10 Minute Teacher

Motivational/wellbeing boost – The Happiness Lab

Quick Takeaway: What is Included in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-25?

If you fully clocked off from work mode over Xmas, you might not have heard the news that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-24 was introduced on 17 December 2024.

There are a lot of proposals included in the bill and if you don’t have a spare 365 days to read it all, here’s an overview:

• Reforms to school attendance orders
• Academy teachers will need to have QTS or working towards it
• Academies will need to follow the curriculum
• Pay rules extended to academies
• New tests and rules for opening private schools

Over the next few months, we can expect there to be a lot of progress on the Bill and for academies in particular, there will be significant changes ahead.

Festive Trivia Answer

You might have forgotten amongst the blur of endless turkey sandwiches, mince pies and festive drinks but we shared a cryptic festive trivia question last month:

Q. I’m seen in December but not in any other month. What am I?

A. The letter ‘D’

This month’s trivia question is one for the wordsmiths:

What is the longest word in the English language that can be typed using only the top row of a QWERTY keyboard?

Clue: It has 10 letters.

Let’s Work Together for a Successful 2025

At PK Education, we’re highly committed to getting the best outcomes for our candidates and supporting them with their career goals.

We’ll be hosting in-office events this year so that you can come and meet our team and get to know us better, and if you’re looking for a new supply or permanent teaching role, we’re here to help you to find your next role.

Maybe one of your goals for the year is to achieve a better work life balance by switching to supply teaching or to find a job closer to home? We have hundreds of job vacancies and if you give us a call or drop us an email explaining what type of role and location you are looking for, we can let you know as soon as your perfect role comes up.

<”See Current Vacancies” button>

Fancy an Extra £100 in Your Bank Account?

If you want to make the easiest £100 of your life, all you need to do is refer a friend to PK Education and when we find them their ideal role, you’ll get £100 to spend on whatever you choose.

Maybe you could take your friend out for a celebratory meal or treat yourself to something, after all you’ll have helped your friend get a job, you deserve a nice reward too! Find out more.

That’s it for this month, we hope your 2025 is going well so far but if not, at least it will be half term in no time at all.