Hi Rachel
I worked in PR for many years then enrolled onto CIPD, then secured my first role in recruitment. Just widen your search terms to encompass 'recruitment' 'learning & development' etc then really maximise on your relevant experience. I am just finishing my CIPD with MOL who offer distance learning and I would recommend them.
Good luck!

As an HR Director in a school, I'd advise you to maximise the use of your existing experience, and look at jobs in the same sector. As you'll be aware, employment, conditions and in particular recruitment in schools are all really different from other industries. While you won't have the HR experience yet, you have school-based knowledge and experience that you can bring to the table - which may get you a foot in the door.

If you're still working in a school, take on as much recruitment and interviewing as you can - it's such an intensive process, that you can't help but gain solid skills in this area by immersion. Review policies and procedures and look at how things work. Work-life-balance in schools is a really strong aspiration, and there are some really interesting DfE publications about possible changes that schools can make if someone takes this on.

If not, perhaps look at taking on a school governor role? I'm a governor in a different school, and sit on their pay committee and the staffing committee, as well as conducting the head's appraisal with the Chair. It gives you a very different perspective on HR, at a strategic level that can be helpful to draw upon.

If you do work in HR in schools, you'll probably work all year round and be on a very different kind of contract to a teacher however. No TPS, and no long holidays - and I imagine that might be quite difficult if you've crossed the floor!

Hope this helps, but happy to chat offline if there's anything else I can do.