New career for teacher? Real experience please

[MyOtherProfile]

Interested in hearing what people who taught for years found to do as a new career.

Particularly interested in ideas that used your teaching skills and didn't mean a drop in pay / pension.

Was a SENCO and now an inclusion specialist for an international government.

I left teaching secondary English after 12 years, aged 52, and went into temporary contract jobs to improve my commercial skills, then took a managerial job in financial marketing. I had done that pre-kids, which helped.
To do this, I worked really hard on my CV: I emphasised my acquired skills - multi-tasking in the classroom ie listening to one student reading aloud from an essay, while managing the other riotous 29 on other tasks, running an organised co-operative classroom, thinking on my feet, having no problems presenting ideas and managing discussions, preparing lessons and PowerPoint presentations, marking and revising coursework. Believe me, everything single thing I did in the classroom was a perfect preparation for office life - even toilet duty in Year 10 loos.
When I worked out where I was going, I went to evening classes and learnt Adobe Creative Suite, which would be much harder to find these days...but I was the oldest person in the branch, and the only one who could transpose the director's head onto Santa Claus.

Nice spam there

I left secondary teaching and now work for an exam board.

I went for an nhs admission job and did use teacher examples. The feedback I got was they didn't think I'd be able to do the fast pace of work/competing demands because I'd been a teacher. In a wfh admin role 😂.

Probably not what you’re looking for due to the 2 years training but I left after 4 years teaching and did a graduate diploma in law then a legal practice course (requirements have changed now) - still a solicitor now. Still get comments about selling out from friends who are still teachers in challenging London schools, but incredibly grateful I made the move!

I quit teaching to become a full time examiner.
I have been writing, reviewing and marking maths exam papers full time since September 2019.
Started out as freelance but now I have a full time employees contract.
So much better than teaching and I work completely from home.

I'm a careers adviser. I still work in schools but more flexible and 95% of it is one to one work which is much nicer! I could also move into adult work instead if I'd had enough of schools. Quite a few ex teachers.

I'm in Wales and I think the careers advice jobs are different and vary more nationally in England so I can only speak for Wales, but I'd say initial pay drop while training (which you can do on the job). Top of the qualified scale is £34k so comparable to teaching I think, but much less opportunities for promotion beyond that without management jobs, which there are less of than in schools (although I believe university careers adviser are on more). Local government pension scheme. Less holidays but still much more free time!

Civil service. Took a big pay cut to start with but after 18m I'm back to my Ft top of scale pay. I'm up for another promotion which will see me reach 65k in 3 years. I'm hopeful but realistic in that I think I need another year at current position to get the experience needed to talk about at interview.
Honestly, best move ever made.

Wow losing that's a huge leap!

What job did you go in for?

The only job I see near me I could apply for is work coach which seems in person and quite intense. But maybe worth it if I could move on once in??

I taught for 13 years so it's possible!

I went for HEO at Ministry of Justice. Presenting for tribunals. Lots of analysis of medical records, fighting with solicitors and obviously presenting MOJ position at tribunal. A lot of reading, interpreting and writing. From there I got a sideways move to policy, then an upwards move to improvement across government, which is a lot of designing and implementing training, plus looking at how directorates are designed with a view to making them more efficient.
90% of my day is data analysis and report writing. It's fab!
The next move will be back to policy, I hope. I want to run a division but while I've got a lot of experience leaving a dept in a school, I need to work on building that experience over levels of government.

I was a primary teacher and I now do programme facilitation for the probation service. Lots of overlap with teaching. Pay cut but great pension as it’s civil service.

Those who retrained - did this mean 3 years back at uni paying full fees while not working? I couldn't do anything like that.

Leecy me neither!

Not me but a friend moved to a company that assess apprentices. They like it as they still use some of their teaching skills but don’t have to put up with shitty behaviour and management. Pay is a bit more than they had as a teacher but not significantly better.

I taught primary, took a slight pay cut but I'm now working in Learning and Development for a private company

The fear is the thing that stopped me for years.
If you are focused and have a clear plan (not necessarily what you want to do but how much you want to be paid) and a realistic timescale, you take the leap. That's the hardest part as you're conditioned to the world of teaching. It's only when you're fully away from. It that you see how insane it is. If it doesn't work out, the worst thing that can happen is you go back to teaching on supply.
You have transferrable skills. Spend time reworking your CV so it reflects your experience, not your environment (so pupils become stakeholders; PowerPoints become slidedecks etc).

20 years in primary teaching hoping to enrol on a MSc Child & Young People Counselling in September. My first degree is in Human Psychology. It will be 2 years part-time as I will still need to be teaching part-time to cover bills, rent etc..

I’ve moved from UPS teaching year 3, part time (0.6) to the civil service . Slight dip in what I would be earning if I was teaching full time, but only because I’ve had to start at the bottom of their pay scale. I WFH 4 days in a week and go into the office the other - fully flexible, as long as you get your 7 hours done each day.

Compared to teaching it’s an actual breeze. I’m working full time at CS and there hasn’t been a week that I’ve done more hours there than I did part time teaching 😳. So many of the skills we use when teaching (managing time, analysing data, liaising with different professionals, presenting information etc ) are all such transferable skills, there are a lot of ex teachers/police officers/doctors in my department.

I dithered for about a year as to whether my job was ‘bad’ enough in teaching as I really liked the school. I should have trusted my instincts and left sooner. The flexibility and happiness that switching has given me has been brilliant.

I feel sad that amazing teachers are having to make the switch because of how tough the job is, but on a personal level leaving education was so good for me. Best of luck 🤞🏻

Windmill what job did you leap to in the Cs?

I do think it's somewhere I have more of a chance getting work as they value skills and experience but as someone said its The Fear.

I would so love not to spend evenings anxious I'm behind.

Possibly not that helpful, but I taught computing (and had worked as an IT project manager before 10 years teaching). Went back into a slightly lower paying than teaching PMO role 4 years ago and now earning more than twice my old teaching salary working in cyber security. I'd say don't be too worried about a slight pay cut in the short term.

Interested in this. Want to follow the thread 👌🏼

I retrained to work in data analysis and it’s amazing. I work from home about 30 hours per week for the same pay I made as a primary school teacher in London.

I have a very good friend and colleague who gone into software sales after teaching for 20
years.
He’s one of the best reps I ever worked with