Should I train to be a teacher or move for a £60K paid job?

[Arthurlager]

I have a dilemma and would welcome opinions.

I am 39, have 3 DC, 11, 9, 6. I have a place on a teacher training course in September. It will mean no income for a year then a starting salary of £21K. And fab holidays of course. Things are already very tight financially. Just to keep my options open I have applied for, and got through to the last stage for, a job paying a starting salary of £60K, final salary pension, bonus scheme etc.

If I am offered the job, it would mean moving house to a part of the country I have always liked, moving schools etc, something I have never done before. But of course it is F/T so I would need a childminder or nanny as we have no family there.

So...what would you choose?

Aris, what is your position and how long have you been teaching? 7 to 6 is a hellish long day though. But I guess the holidays make up for it?
I am going to canvas more opinions about teaching even if I do not get offered the job. This thread has been a real eye opener. I am doing work experience in my local secondary so I shall have to ask more searching questions of the teachers there.

Jumping in at this late stage....sorry.

The holidays don't make up for it, IMO.

Go for the £60,000 job.

I love teaching. Absolutely bloody love it.

I wouldn't ditch it for a £60k job.

BUT if you don't already know that you'll love it, it's a risk.

OK, only read first and last pages, but if I've not missed any crucial details on pages 2 - 8, then there's no question - TAKE THE JOB.
7 - 6 isn't a "hellish long day" - it's a pretty standard teaching day. Well, people work different hours of the day, but the average of 11 - 12 hours per day worked is pretty normal for teachers (some do shorter in week and do more at weekends, some have a break around tea time and do work inthe evenings, etc.).

7-6 is a short day.

I love teaching, but if that constitutes hellish to you, don't bloody do it! and tell me how to earn 60k in a shorter day

I am a senior teacher, have been teaching about 8 years.

I don't think 7 until 6 is a hellish day, I am lucky there is no commute so it iS easy. I also do another 2-3 hours a night at home.

Aris, I really hope that you are still saying that after thirty years, especially if you stay in the classroom.

Personally I didn't find the hours exhausting as a teacher so much as the endless scrutiny, battling with disruptive behaviour, unsupportive parents, and absurd targets. That's what burned me out after five years

Sorry, finished too early. My new job earns me £20,000 in a good year, and I often put in 14 hour days. But I love it so do it willingly.

DH gave up a new job to go into teaching. The job involved a move to America to his company's head office doing a different job to his job then and we had actively sought it. He found out about getting on the PGCE course around the same time as the job in America and made his decision based on how he felt when he got the news about both.

He'd been wanting to go into teaching for years, but due to the cost and the reduction in income etc, we'd had to wait until DS had started school. So he was thrilled to get on the PGCE course. He's a gifted teacher and absolutely made the right decision as he's an asset to the profession and he has directly contributed to some kids' love of the subject. Many have gone on to study sciences at A level down to DH (so they tell him).

Unfortunately 3 years in, the politics of education have ground him down and extinguished his enthusiasm, so much that he's thinking of leaving. But if he'd taken the job in America, he'd never have known. That makes up for the £7k student loan we'd be left with, as regret for paths not taken is a big thing to live with.

But you do need to make sure that your expectations are realistic. It's not a family friendly job, you won't have any flexibility to be a part of your DC's school life, attend sports days etc. But they do get to be at home during school holidays, even if they are not having fabulous days out because you're catching up with work. Only you know how you cope with the pressure and how this will affect your family life and how you will feel getting paid so little for it and receiving such little recognition.

Removing automatic career progression is a biggie in teaching for people thinking of coming into the profession, and a scary change on the horizon. When schools' budgets are being slashed and in an environment of poor leadership or where your face fitting does matter, there's no guarantee that even excellent teachers will be rewarded. Which is why the unions are resisting this change so much.

I am too old to be teaching in 30 years, I also do not think I would want to do any job for that long, tbh, however much I enjoyed it.

These threads just show how individual teaching is,because of my job I deal with lots of parents, some of whom are not supportive but it does not bother me. Yes there are targets, if they are meaningful I strive to meet or beat them but do not feel under immense pressure. If I think they are absurd, as they seem times are, I ignore them. I am responsible for behaviour so deal with a lot of it but in this present post it is not overwhelming.

Whereas I've been teaching 30 years, with more to go.
Ah well, plenty more fresh cannon fodder heading into the fray, even if they only last 5 years.

I do think that teaching can be a family friendly job, it is also not always the case that you cannot go to school events. If your school is close to the one in which your children attend, it may be possible if it coincides with your frees or a colleague can cover.

No job is completely family friendly , I think for me teaching offers a good balance.

I have been teaching more than five years and can see myself doing at least 20. The major reason I won't be doing 30 is that I don't want to be doing much in my 60s. If I had started teaching n my 20s that may be different. I do not think that makes me cannon fodder.

I've been teaching for 20years and I can honestly say this is the most difficult period I've known to be a teacher. Ofsted, targets and league tables have made very reasonable and previously inspirational leaders into paranoid, pressured people who are passing down their fears onto the classroom teachers.

I love my job, I really do. The kids I teach are fabulous and my colleagues are funny, supportive, hard-working - and exhausted and demotivated at the moment.

I must be mad, but I'm applying for a senior role at the moment; one that will increase my hours but which will allow dh to drop a day to spend more time with our dcs when my hours increase. I might be naive but I feel school leaders have a moral responsibility to try to make teachers' lives more reasonable and I feel, that is possible, although incredibly hard. I've seen enough in schools now to think that individuals can make a difference and it makes me very sad and angry to see SLTs making unreasonable and unworkable demands, like they've forgotten what teaching FT is like.

I've seen enough in schools now to think that individuals can make a difference and it makes me very sad and angry to see SLTs making unreasonable and unworkable demands, like they've forgotten what teaching FT is like.

I totally agree, I don't work mad hours myself and would never expect anyone else to do more than me. Don't work in holidays and would expect my colleagues to also enjoy their holidays. I always have one day a week totally work free during term time and hope everyone else can do the same. If it is possible to see my children in a school play without causing huge disruption I would want to do so and would extend that right to anyone else in my school.

My school absolutely wouldn't allow time off to watch plays, or do the first drop off at school or such. In my department the mums cover for each other where possible to allow for this, but there's always the worry of being 'caught' - which is ridiculous. If someone is prepared to give up their free for you, then that should be fine.
They are also picky about time off for funerals if not immediate family.
In other ways it's a good school, but this insistence on no one ever having time off (I haven't been on a training course in years) really does grate.

I had been thinking about hanging schools but it seems that I have it good from what lots of you say. My school are brilliant at time off if needed for all sorts of things - for the most part we organise this amongst ourselves by covering for others in a PPA etc but we have to let our head know. It has always been authorised and if we happen to have a cover supervisor in who is not required that period or school will cover for us. Our SLT and head in particular are very reasonable about all sorts of things - I think we might be quite lucky in that respect.

I get to school about 8 (can't get there any earlier with dropping DD off first at cm) and I have to leave to collect her at 530 latest. I work probably two/three evenings a week and half a day at the weekend.

I wouldn't leave for 60K. I love being in te classroom and preparing lessons, it sounds like Our school don't make us do as much unnecessary paperwork/admin as others. I love my holidays - I do some work for a few days here and there, but I love the time to catch up with my friends and family and spend time with DD. For me, my job woks perfectly with family life, of course it is stressful and pressurised at times, but I don't know anyone who doesn't have that in any job at some time.

Having said all that, if I ended up in some of the schools being described here I might well change my mind!!!!

I wasn't thinking of you as cannon fodder Arisbottle, more those that fancy teaching and trot in all shiny and uninformed and idealistic. Then leave after 5 years at the most.

I am quite shiny and idealistic to be fair. My husband also didn't think would lash five years.

I think you can be shiny and idealistic but you need the hide of a rhino. I suspect lots of shiny and ideal people are quite gentle by nature.

Didn't think I would last five years.

Even I can't go out on the lash for five years.

Every single conversation about anything in my school starts with 'if Ofsted came and saw that' or 'when ofsted come we have to..'
I work half seven am till ten pm. I don't see my two little DDs very much, holidays are good but as hundreds of posts have said, you spend much of the time, marking, planning, writing policies and schemes of work, assessing and general guff that just goes in a folder and is rarely used again.

I also know the fear twll you are spot on there. I used to encourage people to take up teaching but I don't anymore.

I do like the children and I do enjoy the teaching a lot, but it is a very intense and stressful job. All my friends think I go to work and read a story and come home.

I would take the higher paid job. Every time.

Ha ha on the lash for five years!

I remember being ordered to alter two years worth of planning, because if OFSTED came in and saw that they would "crucify us". Even though the said planning was for SATs booster classes and the children had done very well in their SATs.

I refused. OFSTED came in and guess what. They didn't crucify us. The world went on turning.

What is so sad about this thread is we are teaching the future. But the conditions we have to work in make it a miserable job. It doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be like this. Is this the best atmosphere to educate our young? I think not.

But it is like this, and it is so so wrong. How can the job of teaching have moved so far away from enjoying being with kids and educations them to living in a reign of terror and paranoia? And no one seems to have any power, knowledge or even desire to change it