To ask what is really so bad about a teaching career compared to other jobs? Does anyone actually enjoy it?

I get where you’re coming from…and I would say that even vocations can run their course if the culture, funding and support isn’t there.

I worked in admin for years before moving into a more student facing support role. When I left my last setting I thought I’d never work in a school again as I had been so unhappy there.

I’m now in a very different school, considerably bigger and on paper a more challenging demographic but I absolutely love it!

So I absolutely wouldn’t use ‘vocation’ in that way, just trying to say that I think choosing a career in teaching, like some other professions, not as simple as just thinking ‘I like it, I’ll have a go’ iykwim?

I don't hate teaching but if I was at a different point in my life (ie no high mortgage and young kids) I'd be getting out.
I always say that teaching is like any other job except there are 30+ people at any given time preventing you from doing it!
My main issues are-:

• Workload, there are so many pointless, menial tasks it is unteal
• Behaviour- there is an absolutely awful lack of respect for the profession from both students and parents.
• Micromanagement, to the point where often it feels like I am a student, not a professional!
• High levels of scrutiny, which I know is common in other professions
• Lack of flexible working- very difficult to navigate with young children, you really do miss so much
• Lack of money in education
• Pay- I know some people will disagree but comparatively to other similarly qualified professionals in industry, the pay is honestly pitiful.

What is a, "Week PGCE"?

Teaching is hard and mostly thankless. You absolutely will do a lot more hours than you do now. There is no switching off. Holidays? What are they? If you mean the time "off" teachers get, it is mostly spent planning, making resources, sorting the classroom, wider school jobs, marking, inset days etc.

You'll spend a lot of your own money on resources. You can't teach without certain things. Glue, pencils etc. There is no funding for this. Anything more, expect to have to buy. There will also be children who break your heart because they don't have food, or shoes without holes, or a coat. You end up buying that too.

Then there are the parents. Ohhh the absolute worst part of teaching is the parents. They are entitled, selfish, aggressive, arrogant and will make your life a misery. You have to watch everything you say and do.

‘You’re only as good as your last lesson observation’ as well. It only takes one manager who doesn’t like you/thinks your face doesn’t fit or you’re too old or past it (or expensive), to ‘suddenly’ find fault in your teaching.

With that, comes intense monitoring, extra drop ins, unannounced observations, ‘support’ plans and regular meetings to discuss your next steps. You may have been an amazing teacher for 30 years, but it can be very easy if you are under immense pressure for long enough, for those providing your ‘support’ to find more things they don’t like if they push hard enough.

The lesson planning is pretty easy after the first year or two. Marking is very boring and time consuming.

The main issue is behaviour. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are and how thoroughly you have planned. If you can’t get them to listen, your lessons won’t be very good. Children smell your fear and therefore your first lessons very tough. Younger beginner teachers seem to be able to cope with this better than older people who are coming from a profession where they have been respected and treated well.

If you are not a perfectionist, good at controlling a class and know your stuff, it is a good job (in the right school) but much, much more tiring than any other job that I have done. The holidays are phenomenal and I rarely work in the evenings or weekends. The pay is bad.

Teachers are scrutinised more than any other profession I know and I'm married to a doctor. There is a constant cycle of lesson observations, slt looking through your books, 'learning walks', display scrutinies. This is all on top of a heavy term time workload and formal inapection cycles. There can also be a lot of pressure from parents.

Do you want to teach primary or secondary? If secondary, which subject? The pros and cons can vary.

Agree with all of that!

Then you come on MN/social media to find posts saying…

Why don’t schools go on trips anymore?
Why are schools charging money for trips in a cost of living crisis?
Why can’t more teachers run fun clubs after school?
Why don’t schools sort out headlice?
Why can’t schools teach Makaton/First aid/musical tuition?
Why do I have to pay fines when my child is absent but teachers don’t get fined for Insets/strike days?
Why can’t teachers training days be in the holidays, don’t they have enough time off?
Why did my child’s teacher raise their voice at them, it hurt my DC’s feelings?
Why is my child’s teacher spending so much time on the ‘naughty’ kid instead of my child?
Why don’t schools refuse to take children in nappies?

etc etc

I just think more and more the money is just crap.

okay - I have a small TLR, and am 0.8 - and I earn 40k. A job which was fully remote as an admin assistant was advertised on here for 35-40k.

although my job is 0.8 - I always work in evenings (can’t work on my day off as I have my small demanding child). Yes okay I get the holidays - but probably would find it easier and cheaper to be remote and be able to Not use childcare.

and blimey the behaviour management is tough. And being accused of being racist and having investigations completed. I might consider primary - though I’m sure this is more full on in that you get less PPA time.

i do occasionally like my job but most of the time I actually find teaching quite dull nowadays unfortunately. I might need to get out. I do like it when a child shows a huge interest in my subject, but most of the time it’s just boring and I often question whether my subject is actually important or whether I’m just wasting everybody’s time!

1. Not enough money in SEN to physically do the job. I cannot support the 1/3 of my class with SEN without an additional adult. Their needs are too great.

1. Not enough money in general education to physically do the job. I cannot teach without money for glue/tissues/pens/printing/chairs (I have 4 children sitting on very precarious chairs atm but no budget to replace)

1. Parents. I currently have 2 formal complaints about me (luckily the head rolls his eyes at them but still have to go through the process of investigating). First, I am bullying a small child because the parents refuse to accept their little darling could possibly put a foot wrong, despite the fact he is one of the rudest children I have ever taught. Second, because I have not declared publically (on their report) that their child is the brightest child in the world, ever and have used meaningless assessment data and ongoing classroom assessment to deem them exceeding in the majority, bit not all, subjects.

1. Behaviour. If we could fix point 1 and 3, behaviour would be OK. But while I cannot support all children in my class, behaviour naturally escalates. Similarly, when parents are arguing with you in front of the child about why their child shouldn't face consequences (and God knows what they say at home) the child knows they can do whatever the fuck they want.

1. Too much in the curriculum. Children need time to practice what they have learnt to embed it. There is no time for this which makes a significant chunk of teaching redundant for anyone that struggles with processing or long term memory.

1. No respite. No time in the day to do any of the fun things we used to in primary. It's all go, go, go. Imagine back to back presentations for 6-7 hours a day straight, with no time in between to even print what you need. So all the prep, down to printing and setting up your incredibly slow computer, is done in your own time.

1. Parental expectations - parents are responsible for their children. My job is to teach the national curriculum. Not provide your child with 1:1 tutoring for 11+, not to teach them to eat with cutlery, tie shoe laces or how to be a decent human being.

1. Pay. Not enough for the amount of stress.

1. The expectation of goodwill. I love school trips, plays, extra curricular but the expectation we will just do it from the goodness of our hearts and not be paid for it in time or money, is insulting.

10. The vitriol from the press, forums like MN and society in general. Without teachers, society would be fucked.

That's my top ten anyway.
I love the kids. I love seeing them grow and develop. But even that joy is getting less and less now.

I became a teacher in my mid 30s after 10+ years as a marketing manager, which I really enjoyed.

I couldn't love teaching more! I am physically knackered every day and my bladder misses not being governed by the school bell, but it's the best job ever.

it makes me yawn when teachers moan 'our work is never done'. That's true for all professional jobs! Unless you're clocking off your shift on a supermarket till, most to do lists are never ending. In marketing it wasn't like I finished each day or week feeling like my list was empty. As one campaign ended another (or ten) would already be running.

as PP have said, a commercial background is helpful for boundary setting, professional communication, IT literacy, reporting etc.

also consider not all teaching jobs are classroom teachers. You can make good money (and less out of hours work) as a substitute / relieving teacher.

or be a specialist teacher and teach PE or a language.

i will add im not in the UK, so no Ofsted stress. Not sure id enjoy it so much in England.

I’m retired now after nearly 30 years and I loved it. I was in inner city comprehensives in three different cities. I would never have chosen a different career.

Day to day it is hard but looking back overall it is rewarding. Also I am the kind of person who needs challenge and to be accountable as otherwise I am unmotivated and I get bored so in that sense the job suited me.

I will say that my former colleagues say it is worse now than ever in terms of pupil behaviour and it was bad enough before.

I’m a teacher and I love my job. I am very lucky that I have found a school that is perfect for me so that has a huge impact. We are very overdue OFSTED so everyone is on high alert all the time. The paperwork is exhausting and a lot of it isn’t even for the benefit of the children. I saw a statistic once (although not verified so not sure how true it actually is) that a 4 year old asks 200-300 questions a day. In a class of 30 that’s nearly 10000 questions a day (and based on my class - probably entirely accurate!) can you imagine having to answer 10000 questions a day…
You say you do work outside your hours, that will continue, your list will NEVER be finished. But you will be paid less for it.
However if you find the right age group, and the right school it can absolutely be worth it!

I taught primary and worked extensively with secondary (I don’t want to say exactly what I was doing, it was a very identifying niche). So I understand both well, I think. Secondary have it worse than primary in many respects but I feel that the changes in secondary are slowly bleeding into primary. Similar to changes in the USA, Canada etc and they are also seeing teachers desert the system.

Secondary was not as bad as I thought…1st and 2nd years were great, 5th and 6th were great. The ones in the middle years were sent from some circle of hell to try me 😄

Sorry , I’m primary so don’t feel I can discuss second level .
I also think second level is much harder . Nobody I know ( primary ) would prefer to teach second level .

‘Vocation’ is a bit of a bugbear word for me. Ime it’s often used to guilt people* into burning themselves out on a job that would replace them in an instant. Teaching is grand and all like but sometimes I think people treat it as a facet of their personality and not just a job.

Not disagreeing with you really btw - or saying you think like that - really just musing aloud. I think a work to rule would do wonders for education system reform.

*women, mainly!

Pay less PRSI ( social insurance ) and get pretty good occupational pension .

So the pay scales are unequal then, I’m glad we agree on that. And let’s not ignore the additional allowances (teaching through Irish etc) that younger entrants are blocked from receiving.

My age group do not expect to receive State pensions, certainly not as they are in their present form. The numbers just don’t work in our favour. It is what it is, you just have to be smart and invest accordingly.

Recent initiatives: maths and language curriculum changes, JC reform, proposed changes to the LC, changes like running LC orals in holidays, SET allocation model off the top of my head. Not all primary obviously but they show an overall trend. If I were still teaching, I would be highly suspicious of the incoming overall curriculum reform and the slow creep of oversight for the sake of oversight. Even Droichead (which I support, I was a Droichead mentor myself) is continuing to pile workload on schools.

If teaching in Ireland was wonderful, we’d still be seeing high levels of job applicants - and we’re seeing the opposite. I have a friend who’s job hunting at the moment to get out of teaching and doing some subbing to tide her over. She has the hand bitten off her by lovely schools looking for anyone to come cover for them, it’s quite shocking.

I’m in a sector that’s booming now (in Dublin), if the biggest issue in teaching is the rental crisis then my new field should struggle massively in recruitment as well. But it’s not true because we are still desirable. The rental crisis is bad but it’s not leaving offices across the city empty, can’t say that for classrooms - so you can’t deny that additional things are at play in teaching.

DS is a teacher. He was always brilliant at maths and we thought he would end up in finance or similar but he surprised everyone by choosing to teach. I think it helps that he loves his subject and lives and breathes teaching maths.
However, he hates the behaviour issues and is lucky enough to be in a high achieving school where he teaches mostly A level age group. Has no intention of seeking promotion to any leadership roles.
He mentioned recently that his HOD and other colleagues barely go a day without crying. No job should do that to anyone.

I've said this weekend I'm giving it two more years then I'm done. 11 years in and head of a core subject but I've stopped working weekends and evenings. My child comes first.

I'm a primary HT I have loved it for years but the balance has tipped . I'm leaving this Summer , I have a nice school with generally nice parents , I have been told that I'm a fair and supportive HT.
However ,the constant cutbacks are stripping the heart of education away . It's not what I came into .I'm stretched way beyond my capacity, and now my children are reared and my mortgage paid off , I'm done walking away ,along with my 25 years of experience

I work in a student support role rather than teaching - have been in the education sector from early years to secondary since 2009.

It’s incredibly rewarding but bloody hard work, and I don’t have to take marking and planning home although am usually doing one course or another by choice to keep up to date and learn new things for my role.

I think teaching has to be a vocation, not a career choice, if you’re going to doing it well and be happy doing it.

I've left now but I think the difference from other jobs was that it felt so 'unwinnable'. Lots of jobs are hard and take a lot of time but teaching feels like you never have the time or resources to achieve everything you are being asked to do. It's also very critical, I've been amazed at the positive and strengths based way things are done outside of teaching.

It's all consuming and a bit thankless. I think some jobs are more time-intensive but the financial reward is greater, other jobs are worse paid but the responsibility is less etc. teaching just feels like the worst of all worlds!

How are you not entitled to state pension?

@Padfootnprongs - totally agree with your list. You need to get a kick out of the absurdity of things and yes- confidence and resilience are key. You can never be perfect and if you try you’ll drive yourself nuts. That’s not an excuse to be lazy but overwork helps no one.