I want to live in a rural village and be a primary school teacher

[MrsCremuel]

Or something of that ilk? I have a DH, baby and toddler and want to overhaul our lives. I’ve never really done anything drastic in life, mainly because family (parents etc) circs but I’ve always hankered after a different sort of life.

I hate the southeast. So busy and over priced. I desperately want to live somewhere rural. DH could take redundancy, sell a flat he owns and we could live mortgage free. I’m planning on retraining anyway so could get a job so could do anywhere. We recently had 6 weeks off together with the new baby and it was bliss. After wfh stops DH will be back to being out of the house from 7.30-7.30 4 days a week with one day wfh. I don’t want to go back to that, it’s been so good for our toddler and me to have him around more!

Anyone done something drastic to overhaul their lives? Am I being a whimsical fool?

If you love working for Samaritans, and want to retrain, how about thinking about training in mental health nursing, or learning disability nursing? That gives you lots of options both in hospitals and in the community.

There are different starting points depending on previous qualifications. I know some people who've gone into it from degree level, and some who've started as nursing assistants and had all their qualifications funded by the trust that they work for.

Or something like Occupational Therapy?

I think these jobs have more of a possibility of part time working that teaching does, though I could be wrong.

My kids small village school (and the village it's in) is amazing, welcoming and happy, kids thrive there. My friends lives in a very similar environment, different county, but the local school and village is cliquey and hostile to anyone whose face doesn't fit. Communities vary a lot whether they're city or country.

I’ve been at a farm (as you might expect) for the afternoon so am behind on replies! Will read and check back in….

I want to be a primary school teacher for a gentler pace of life and more family time....
....said no primary school teacher ever

Personally (and it is personal) I would not move to a small village without any facilities or public transport. We only considered places with at least a shop/primary school/pub and station for work (and transport for secondary school too). Pub was easy! Train/good primary school/shop narrowed it down a lot! We genuinely don't use the car very much - lots within walking distance, trains for work and school. We only got a second car when kids learned to drive, just because ours wasn't suitable. Obviously it isn't deeply rural, but it is definitely a village!

And yes some activities require driving and dropping. But we've always done a lot of lift sharing. If you only have to do one week in four it really isn't that bad!

I can understand why you want to get out of the South East. Have grown up rurally, rural life can be tricky, there's lots to consider in a move. Do you mind driving everywhere? If you like to walk to the shops, somewhere so rural that there's no pavements won't be ideal. I can feel a bit of a "prisoner" whenever I go home, I resent needing to drive everywhere or walk miles, taking my life in my hands. Rural life can be difficult for teenagers, I'd check things like bus routes/frequency quite carefully. But no, don't be a teacher. Just the retaining would be a nightmare if you were moving somewhere without family support and your husband works long hours. Maybe WFH jobs are more available now?

We moved to a city to a very rural location before we had dc, and I absolutely love it. It takes time to be accepted by the local community though.

All the rural primaries I know are crying out for staff - bit I think teaching can be a very demanding job. Lack of employment can be a real problem rurally (unless you are a farmer) so I'd get a job before picking where to live (or do what we do and be willing to commute quite long distances).

I think you need @MrsCremuel to separate out a lot of the wants.

1 You don't like the SE as it is crowded and £££.

Okay, but you could move somewhere else that wasn't the SE but it doesn't have to be to a village. A small or medium town?

2 Your DH is out 7.30-7.30. So he commutes into or out of London?

Why not look at where he can work and take it from there? We live in a village and my DH was out from 7.45 - 7pm most of his working life. That included a 45 min drive from a village to a town.
Those kinds of hours are pretty normal for snr professionals who don't work 9-5.

3 Your idea to be a teacher. How far along the line are you with your qualifications? You will need A levels for entry to a degree course, and your training could be on the job if you do one route, and / or a PGCE 50 weeks a year if you are already a graduate. You would need childcare.

Do not live in the same village where you teach! That makes it very hard if you have issues with a child and they are neighbours. Also you'd have no privacy. In small villages everyone knows what everyone else is up to ( affairs, debt, arguments, wayward kids etc!)

I'd agree don't move to a tiny village, move to a small town where you can walk the kids to school and there's shops/stuff going on if you want a sense of community.
Beauty therapy or hairdressing could be a great option if you like talking to people and making them feel better about themselves.
It's not something I could do as I am too cackhanded, but there's a lot of demand and it's something you could do very flexibly if you have young kids. Would take time to get trained and to build up a client base though.

@kanaloa well, I quit mainly due to the workload. It’s bad in many (most? All?) schools, but worse in smaller schools. Fed up working 60 - 70 hour weeks. Also the micromanagement and behaviour, which has got noticeably worse with the younger ones since lockdowns.

I suppose the pros are that you get to know more of the children and I suppose there’s more of a community feel, but honestly, the workload, in my school anyway, is insane.

Rural Scotland has constant teacher shortages and shortages of NHS staff. Depending on the area house prices are pretty cheap and will seem like an absolute bargain in comparison to the south east of England.

There is rural and rural. We’re ‘connected-rural’ and I wouldn’t want to be any more cut-off. I love where we live but there is also a regular bus route for the children as they get older and we are not far from civilisation. The community feel is wonderful and the majority of children in the village have a very idyllic lifestyle.

You have to be realistic about job opportunities if you’re somewhere more cut-off but also whether you’d actually want to be working where you live. It is quite healthy to have a separation between home and work. Eg my good friend is a gp but there is no way he’d want to work in our local practices as it just is all a bit too close for comfort.

I lived rurally as a teen never bothered me, if anything the teens in my village were a tight night group that had a lot of freedom/space compared to my friends that grew up in towns and cities.

Now back in a different, slightly bigger village with a bus teens can get the bus into town.

We lived in London for years with a high household income, now living in Scotland on half the pay our standard of living is significantly higher with me being a SAHM and my husband earning less.

I work in a rural school and am leaving in a week after 10 years of teaching because I have a 1 year old now and I never see her.

Maybe something like TA work (horrible pay, better hours) to test the waters?

@OneWildNightWithJBJ

That’s madness for workload! Seventy hour weeks I don’t know what I’d do.

I would have thought it would be worse in big city schools rather than tiny rural ones but actually I suppose big schools have more staff etc. I’ve only ever worked in preschool/reception age so no experience in being a school teacher. Of course I know they have to do lots of outside classroom work also.

Hopefully you find something that gives you a better balance. Unfortunately I think this teacher shortage will not be resolved until that crucial balance is reached where people can have a life.

As so many others have said, rural life is not like-town-life-but-in-a-prettier-setting. Whatever jobs you and your DH eventually decide to do, it really helps if you also have a certain extra resilience.

Obviously, it depends where you choose to live. As previous posters have also said, there's been a big move to accessible countryside recently, and also a lot of new developments around older villages. Houses in these places are not necessarily cheap. Nor are they in scenic areas, however remote.

Also, for many very rural areas, you and your family will have to think about:
No mobile signal
Poor/expensive broadband
No radio signal
No public transport or just one (school) bus a day; this can mean an hour's travel each way for children as young as five
No local shops or - more likely - a lovely, helpful local shop where fruit and veg can be almost on the point of going off when they first arrive from the wholesalers and where other, ordinary things are very expensive because small shops can't get bulk discounts.
Supermarkets - maybe a couple of hours away each way. With a much more limited range than in big towns
Expensive petrol
No supermarket deliveries
No fast food deliveries
No cafe culture; yes, there are a few cafes but most close in the winter and otherwise they're set up to cater for tourists
Wonderfully helpful local couriers, but still a delay if ordering things online.
Holidaymakers and badly-driven campervans - no good if you have a schedule to keep up with
Wild campers - some = OK; some = entitled filthy inconsiderate louts
Snow, black ice, fallen trees blocking roads
No mains gas; septic tanks; private water supplies
Electricity power cuts
A and E, dentist, hairdresser, optician, chemist maybe 50 miles away
Your children's best friends might live 20 miles on the opposite side of the school cachment area.
Not a great range of after-school activities available.
Drugs and alcohol a threat - if not always an actual problem - for teenagers. Accidents by teens driving first cars on difficult unlit roads ditto.
Fairly high Council Tax (low population/large area)
In many rural areas, it's proved exceptionally hard to recruit GPs

Community not guaranteed:
-Many local houses empty, either let out by the week or belonging to rich holidaymakers/weekenders.
-Threats of inappropriate development causing controversy

• Overbearing big landowners/tourist companies; divided local opinions. Some of your neighbours wil be employed by a landowner or tourism business and can't complain; others will welcome all kinds of development; others won't like to make a fuss. This can lead to big divisions.
• Division also between people who work on the land and with animals - and whose families have very often been there for generations - and incomers/ commuters etc. 'Old' locals will often be wonderfully kind and friendly and helpful to newcomers, but you won't automatically 'belong'.

If all this is for you and your family an adventure or a challenge, then fine. Go for it. As previous posters have also said, there are many absolutely wonderful compensations. I'm not being off-putting, just realistic. I live in an area where most of the above 'disadvantages' apply, and I love it.

Bloody hell. Where in the UK is 2 hours drive from the nearest supermarket?!

Quite large areas of Scotland. Even longer for people who live on Scottish islands.

OK, the op wasn't looking to move to the Scottish Islands

Most rural parts of England and Wales are not 100 miles from a supermarket

@kanaloa that’s it, more staff at larger schools to spread the workload! Hopefully whatever comes next won’t be as bad...

Kikkoman I never said 100 miles away. Nor was I only talking about islands. On many Highland narrow, single-track, hilly, twisting, blind-summit roads, sometimes icy, sometimes congested with camper-vans, where reversing to find passing places is routine, you'd be lucky to average 30 mph.

I don't live there, but just to take an example, Applecross is (according to Google) 1 hr 57 min from the nearest supermarket at Dingwall.

I'm a primary school teacher, I live in a rural village. The DC attend the local village school and I work in one a few towns out.

However, what do you do currently, teaching is a hard and gruelling job! Not for the faint hearted at all.

Lots of people enjoy living in the countryside so all these posters saying how horrible it is-it obviously doesn’t work for them. There are always compromises to be made and as long as your eyes are open, there are no reasons to suggest you won’t find contentment there. I loved on London for years, still love it and love visiting friends-but my home in a nice, well connected village is definitely more me.

@Kikkomam

OK, the op wasn't looking to move to the Scottish Islands

Most rural parts of England and Wales are not 100 miles from a supermarket

Most parts of Scotland aren't 100 miles from a supermarket.