I was awarded my NTF in 2019 at my first attempt. Many brilliant colleagues I know took a couple of attempts to be awarded theirs, and I’m not entirely convinced I should have been awarded it at first attempt. I was relatively early in my career when I wrote this.

The important thing for NTF is to have a clear ‘golden thread’ or narrative that goes through your application – the three sections need to talk to each other. The panel needs to have a clear vision of who you are as an educator, and what your distinctive ‘thing’ is. I built my application around building an education focussed identity as a positive choice at the early career stage. This isn’t necessarily what I would choose to focus on now, but worked for me at the time.