Where do teachers teach? : Choice strategies developed by Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in Greater Manchester

The tools of Pierre Bourdieu are garnered in the present study to examine the mechanisms behind choice strategies employed by secondary NQTs when choosing where to teach. 10 Semi-structured interviews, supported by 50 survey responses, form a qualitative foundation, delivering detailed personal narratives which offer a unique insight in to the career trajectories envisioned by the most recent cohort of trainee teachers. Administrative data on secondary schools, with a geographical focus on the area of Greater Manchester, forms a backdrop of the job market, and highlights a concurrent and historical North/South divide which continues to segregate communities, schools and teachers. Narratives of a teacher shortage prevail and increasingly, where holding a relevant degree is used as a marker of teacher quality, evidence illuminates a significant socio-economic gradient, intensifying the pertinence of the question; who chooses to teach where, and why? The interviews testify to the importance of social background, motivating teachers to pursue a best fit approach which allows them to recreate their own experiences of education and ‘return home’, a divide characterised by a preference for the academic versus the pastoral. Equally, NQTs’ individual levels of capital manipulate the ‘choice’, manoeuvring actors into positions, sometimes outside their comfort zone