As school secretary, your impact reaches far beyond the hundreds of children that depend on your efficient administration and willingness to deal with a myriad of unexpected issues. Your teaching colleagues need to know they can rely on you, parents call you with urgent inquiries throughout the day and a whole host of secondary staff and service providers see you as a facilitator.
It takes a certain person to do the job well, so a school secretary cover letter is a way to describe how you do your job as well as what you have achieved..
A school secretary cover letter needs to go far beyond simply describing the responsibilities of the role. What is your attitude to problem solving when someone walks into the office? How do you prioritize when your desk is overflowing with work? Will you dedicate the time to listening to a colleague when your mind should really be elsewhere?
Being a school secretary is about far more than paperwork, so the school secretary cover letter needs to tell the more human side of your professional story.
In this school secretary cover letter example and guide, we consider:
- How the format of the school secretary cover letter can shape your story.
- What you might include in the intro, middle part and ending of the letter.
- How to include your behaviors as well as adding context to your accomplishments.
- How to impress a school leader and the mistakes that you should avoid.
You can find dozens more writing tips and formatting guidelines in our 125+ cover letter examples designed for job seekers at every level of their careers.
If the school secretary cover letter guide was useful, please do some of education cover letter examples:
- Teacher cover letter sample
- Teaching assistant cover letter example
- Library assistant cover letter sample
- Substitute teacher cover letter example.
These roles may not be exactly the same – but you never know when inspiration may come.
According to Zippia, there are currently 75,656 openings for a school secretary in the U.S.
Best format for a school secretary cover letter
As a school secretary, you need to be efficient in all forms of communication, so your cover letter should be no different. Your words carry the greatest impact, but how you format the cover letter (visuals and textual spacing) will also influence the reader. There is an accepted cover letter format that you won’t need to change too much for your needs:
- Cover letter header
- Greeting / salutation
- Cover letter intro
- Middle paragraphs (body of the letter)
- Ending paragraph of your cover letter
This cover letter guide seeks to highlight some specific advice for school secretaries, but there are also more general considerations. Our comprehensive cover letter example guide offers a few different perspectives. The longer you spend thinking about how you want to write your cover letter, the more fit for purpose it will be.
Here is a school secretary cover letter example to offer some food for thought:
Dear Principal Fletcher,
Having served as the school secretary at 600-pupil Warner High, my six years of education admin experience have taught me that if you are ready for anything, say “yes” to most things and try to be efficient in everything that you do, then work will be a pleasure and you will be a fantastic servant to students, staff, and parents.
Many people might think that saying “yes” to everything is a recipe for burnout, but it is my belief that we are capable of far more than we think. Thanks to my (competition-winning) touch-typing skills and finely tuned sense of judgment, I have emptied my inbox every evening for the past three years. Mental fortitude is vital when you are juggling many admin plates and my colleagues always know that I am 100% there for their problems – if I say that I will get it done, they can walk away and forget about it.
I am proficient in every aspect of high school administration:
- Working knowledge of all major educational data management software.
- Coordinating many aspects of staff organization – schedules, meetings and payroll.
- Handling an average of 70 parent calls a day – with a 97% satisfaction rating.
- Typing and editing work for 50+ teaching staff – PowerPoint is my specialty.
I live for the new challenges that every day brings as a school secretary and always make myself available if anyone needs a friendly ear. I was elected head of the staff common room in my previous role and enjoy both the professional and social sides of the school environment.
I hope for an opportunity to visit the school to get a sense of how I might be able to add value to your fantastic educational establishment.
Sincerely,
Simona Brunton
Cover letter header
School secretaries are renowned for their attention to detail and impressive memories, so getting the header right should not be too demanding. Doing the basics well is simply part of their DNA. In a school secretary cover letter header, those basics are name, email and contact cell number.
In more corporate roles it is permissible to include a link to their LinkedIn or other social media if they add value to the application, but that is unlikely in this case. Keep it simple, although you would be surprised at how many applicants trip up, even at this stage.
Do not assume that having your contact details on your resume will be enough. The hiring manager may decide to invite you to an interview on the strength of what is written in your cover letter, so it is convenient that all of your details are at hand. The header from our school secretary cover letter example is a great place to start when designing your own.
Goal of the cover letter header: Sharing your essential contact details is not a waste of space. Seeing them at the top of the cover letter will allow your future boss to concentrate on the messages that you want to get across in the body of the letter itself.
Cover letter greeting
Appropriate formality is essential in your job, so erring on the side of formal is important in a school secretary cover letter greeting. Starting with a standard “ Dear Dr. / Mr. / Ms.” is always a respectful opening for a job search conversation if you are sure of the honorific.
Make sure that you know to whom the cover letter should be addressed. Normally this would be the principal and if their details are not included on the job description, it is not hard to find their public information. If the school is a large one, there may be someone else in charge of hiring, so it is worth a quick call to check (which also gives you a great chance to ask any other questions that you might have).
Goal of letter greeting: Get the greeting right and show that you have an appreciation for the niceties of communication. Ensure you start on a formal footing.
Cover letter introduction
The introduction of the school secretary cover letter is where you demonstrate that you understand and can solve the key challenges of the role. The first paragraph establishes your capability, introduces a sense of personality and gets to the heart of why you would be a great employee.
Do your research in terms of the unique demands of the role and expand on one example around why you will be a brilliant hire for it. Always try to offer some context for what you have achieved. If you show that you have done well in a similar setting previously, your past performance will shine a light on your future potential. Put your influencing hat on – you have to give them reasons to hire you.
The school secretary cover letter intro cannot possibly give them everything they need to know to hire you, but it can make them read that little bit longer and with a little more interest. Get it right and the rest of your application will have a little more chance of success. Check out the intro from our school secretary cover letter sample.
Goal of the cover letter intro: Make an impact at the start of your cover letter to allow the reader to engage with your story. Show them a different side to your application.
Dear Principal Fletcher,
Having served as the school secretary at 600-pupil Warner High, my six years of education admin experience have taught me that if you are ready for anything, say “yes” to most things and try to be efficient in everything that you do, then work will be a pleasure and you will be a fantastic servant to students, staff, and parents.
Cover letter middle part (body)
Whether you are eagle-eyed at keeping track of attendance, adept of coaxing unwilling students to change their attitude to learning or hot on the compliance with school procedures, your top skills and attributes should be included in the middle part, or body, of your school secretary cover letter.
Focus on the blend of what you are good at and what is required for the role – there will be many common responsibilities in most school secretary roles, but it is worth checking that you are talking about the kinds of things that you will be expected to do.
Try to include as much detail about your attitude to work, how you make things happen with those around you and what sort of a person you are to work with. A resume tends to be about more factual achievements, so your cover letter is where you let your personality shine a little more. The reader should feel that you will fit in seamlessly with the wider team. See how this is done in the cover letter sample below.
As you are applying for an educational setting, it is well worth using a sentence to outline your educational credentials. Most school secretaries will have some form of higher education and many will have taken various courses in administration.
Goal of the body of your cover letter: The most important aspects of your application should be covered in the middle of your cover letter. It doesn’t matter that they are repeated from your resume. Pick one or two belters and inject a sense of personality.
Many people might think that saying “yes” to everything is a recipe for burnout, but it is my belief that we are capable of far more than we think. Thanks to my (competition-winning) touch-typing skills and finely tuned sense of judgment, I have emptied my inbox every evening for the past three years. Mental fortitude is vital when you are juggling many admin plates and my colleagues always know that I am 100% there for their problems – if I say that I will get it done, they can walk away and forget about it.
I am proficient in every aspect of high school administration:
- Working knowledge of all major educational data management software.
- Coordinating many aspects of staff organization – schedules, meetings and payroll.
- Handling an average of 70 parent calls a day – with a 97% satisfaction rating.
- Typing and editing work for 50+ teaching staff – PowerPoint is my specialty.
I live for the new challenges that every day brings as a school secretary and always make myself available if anyone needs a friendly ear. I was elected head of the staff common room in my previous role and enjoy both the professional and social sides of the school environment.
How to close a school secretary cover letter (conclusion and sign-off)
As with any conversation, the listener is most likely to remember what comes at the end. Pick one more pain point of your future employer for the close of your school secretary cover letter and show that you have what it takes to help them out.
Their confidence in your application will not come from you telling them that you can do it – it will come from you telling them that you have done it before. The cover letter conclusion should also include a call-to-action. Saying that you look forward to the opportunity of an interview (in a hopeful rather than expectant way) is an entirely reasonable sentiment after you have taken the time to compose two thoughtful and relevant pieces of job search content. You naturally think that you are a fit for a role, so why not express your excitement about meeting your future employer and finding out more?
Goal of the ending: Ending on a positive note means including one last relevant part of your story and also saying that you are looking forward to the interview. Every cover letter will do this last part, so don’t stand out for the wrong reasons by not doing it.
I hope for an opportunity to visit the school to get a sense of how I might be able to add value to your fantastic educational establishment.
Sincerely,
Simona Brunton
Writing psychology: avoiding mistakes for a school secretary
A school secretary cover letter will be read not only for the content, but also for how the content has been presented. School secretaries will often correspond with parents, write memos for staff and students and generally handle much of the written communication for their school.
Avoiding mistakes in the copy is important to create the right impression. The following basic mistakes might seem unlikely, but in the stress of an application it is all too easy to overlook them:
- Grammatical and spelling errors: There really is no excuse for any basic errors to creep into your school secretary cover letter sample. Typing out copy accurately and communicating in a clear way is central to the role. Use an online spell checker such as Grammarly and get a fellow education professional to check that your language register is appropriate. The cover letter should sound like it has been written by a literate and thoughtful secretary.
- Use school language where possible: There is a certain style of language that is used in a school setting. Dial into this where possible and use the sorts of words that you would use in your workplace. If you sound like a professional secretary, it will add to how your messages are received.
- Keep it formal: Some professions call for an informal team-led approach where informality is welcomed in certain situations. A school secretary should adopt a formal approach 99% of the time with students, parents and colleagues, so ensure that the appropriate level of formality is present in the school secretary cover letter.
The visuals of your cover letter will also create an impression on your hiring manager, so give some careful thought to your choice. Think about using a touch of color where appropriate or check out our free cover letter templates to strike the right balance between personality and professionalism.
Key takeaways
- Let the reader feel what it is like to have you at the helm of their school admin.
- Choose the parts of your school secretary story that fit best with the demands of the role. Prove that you have what it takes to succeed.
- Follow the convention of introduction, middle paragraphs and conclusion – keep your language formal and speak like you would with your school community.
- Check for mistakes and think about whether the letter “sounds” like you.
