Civil service - what do you do?

[Underoverpepsicola]

Stupid question. However, it keeps coming up as a possibility for an alternative to teaching.

It’s probably too good to be true but is it a feasible route for people who are/were teachers? What sort of things do you do, if this is your role?

Sorry, I don’t have the answer to this but would love to know the answer as well! Thank you for asking!

There are lots of roles in the civil service. More than you can imagine. I suggested disillusioned teachers as a possible market for recruiting to my team recently.

I joined the CS last year on a fixed term contract working on Covid response. Now that is coming to an end I am looking at other roles, probably in operational delivery in departments such as DHSC, UKHSA and the Scottish Government. Have a look on the CS job’s website for an idea of what is available. Bear in mind every department has its own admin, health and safety, IT, HR, training people etc so each one is like a separate company. I find it easier to mentally break it down like that rather than as one big organisation!

Fraud investigation for DWP.

Love it, lots of progression routes, and there will always be work there!

My suggestion would be to have a good browse of the civil service jobs site. You can filter by department so starting with the DfE is a good idea.

But you can also play around with job role and find a huge variety of roles in all sorts of departments. There are education and training roles, policy roles, all sorts of things. Start wide and explore. It’s really hard to know what is available in the civil service generally because there is such a diverse range of options.

Previous maths teacher, current Data Analyst in CS.

Previous work-work balance and always stressed, current work-LIFE balance and love it, earning more money than teaching is a nice bonus, but I would have taken a paycut for this if I had to.

I was talking to a teacher at my DC's school. She said all the teachers she knew who went to work at the Dept for Education left within 1 year. I lasted 6 months. I basically pushed bits of papers around for people who were doing things that appeared largely irrelevant. People within the department often seemed to have a very poor understanding of key issues in education and even quite basic things like how to interpret progress data. And that includes people pretty high up. I came to the conclusion that schools worked in spite of the input of the DFE, not because of it.

It might be different if you worked in a different department though.

I used to be a primary teacher. Now I work in business support for a large CS dept - I work on EDI, Wellbeing, L&D, Business planning etc for our directorate. Love it. Teaching was spild destroying.

All departments are very different, I'd have a look what's in your local area (as a part of levelling up many new offices are cropping up across the country, especially up north and in Wales). I am sure your transferable skills will lend themselves to many roles.

@Neolara

I was talking to a teacher at my DC's school. She said all the teachers she knew who went to work at the Dept for Education left within 1 year. I lasted 6 months. I basically pushed bits of papers around for people who were doing things that appeared largely irrelevant. People within the department often seemed to have a very poor understanding of key issues in education and even quite basic things like how to interpret progress data. And that includes people pretty high up. I came to the conclusion that schools worked in spite of the input of the DFE, not because of it.

It might be different if you worked in a different department though.

Probably similar to why a lot of ex military don't like working for mod- you see the cogs turning whilst you know the implications of poor decisions you have no input into. There are a lot of opportunities across the board though away from education related roles.

Fraud/ASB investigation, although I’m currently on TCA to another team dealing with parliamentary questions and ministerial correspondance. That’s one thing I like about the CS; there are often opportunities to work for different teams on secondment and it keeps work interesting. It’s a way to gain skills and experience without having to make a leap to a long term role you may not like.

I know at least 3 former teachers who are now CS and they don’t regret it at all

I'm in admin in the CS supporting policy teams and international negotiators. Once in, the opportunities for advancement are wide and varied, and a lot of jobs are internal applicants only first so that's another benefit if you want to move. I'm too old now to build a career but I wish I'd moved to the CS 20 years ago. So far it's the most supportive workplace I've ever been in.

I am now retired but have worked in three different CS depts, in between doing other jobs while my DC's were small. I enjoyed being a Civil Servant (probably not a popular view) I enjoyed the structure of the work and of the workplace, but I guess that is very dependant on the department you work in.
Having worked in a Tax Office, Land Registry, and the Court Service I would say that once in "the service" if you are competent and perform well you can move to different departments and there are plenty of opportunities to train etc.
My last role was as a Clerk to a High Court Judge, completely different to anything I had ever done before and not a very conventional Civil Service role, but I loved it .
Most roles are office based, and you can be tied to a desk so think very carefully about what you want.