For those of you who successfully left teaching...

[Rosemary61]

What are you doing now? Did you retrain or stay in the education sector?

I've been teaching for 14 years and I don't think I can last another year.
I absolutely still love the teaching side of the job but I cannot continue with the toxic SLT, pointless admin tasks and relentless work that I bring home every week.
I want to start looking for other jobs but I don't know where to begin. Would love advice from those of you that managed to successfully leave.

I stayed teaching until DCs didn’t need me to have school holidays off work. May I ask whether you have DC & if so how old? Or whether you have people around you who can care for them during school holidays? I ask because I went into residential childcare. I love it and realise teachers have transferable skills that are needed in the job. There are 3 former teachers in the home I work in.

I was a teacher for 14 years and left in 2018. I work in higher education now, which for all its current issues is a far better working environment.

When I first left, I took a significant reduction in pay. I've moved on and up since and earn decently though not quite what I was on at UP3.

Friend of mine left teaching after about 4 years and got a job in the Civil Service. Good pay much better conditions.

@cheapskatemum yes, I have 2 primary school aged children so the holidays are really beneficial and one of the reasons I've stuck with it for this long I guess. I've considered doing supply but it's obviously a riskier choice with little pension etc. Just feel at a loss at the moment.
Residential childcare is not anything I've ever considered but will look into it, thank you.

Civil service

I didn't transition far. I'm now a full-time online tutor. I make a full-time teachers wage and am a bit concerned at the moment about ending up a higher rate tax payer. (I'd step back on the amount of work that I do but I'm committed to the students I have ATM.)

It depends very much on your level and your subject, how much tutoring work is available. I think I've just been lucky.

@clawsandeffect thanks for sharing. Can I ask how you set up your tutoring business? Did you begin by advertising on social media?

Teacher for 20 years. Now a gardener. Hubby already had a gardening business and I did RHS qualifications whilst still teaching. Then worked with him during holidays before leaving teaching and becoming a gardener full time. Haven’t regretted leaving teaching at.

I moved into working in an educational charity. Like others, I took a big pay cut but worked back up really quickly (and then went on mat leave haha)

I actually started out by working for an agency. And when that work started to dry up, I changed my LinkedIn profile to look like an advert & opened it up. I joined various FB tutoring groups and jumped on any parent enquiries. Also Googled tutoring agencies and did a mailshot of about 20 of them, which resulted in work from 2 of them.

After about 6 months, I started getting word of mouth enquiries and now I do about 50% private clients and 50% agency.

I've gradually raised my rates. When I'm getting too many enquiries, I put them up by £5 or £10 which weeds a few out. But I'm always shocked at how many are prepared to pay higher fees.

I think the best thing for bringing in new students is being an examiner. It seems to be the thing parents value the most. This year I had someone try to get in touch through LinkedIn and then when that didn't work (ironically, because I was busy examining), they tracked me down to one of the agencies I work for, and got me that way, offering more than my usual fee.

I became a farmer. I have found it quite interesting to see how many ex-teachers have gone into farming/smallholding! Many mention that it's nice to not be around so many people every day, as other people are hard work!

I love the fact that I can't take work home with me, I work less hours (because I don't take work home with me), I spend more time on my own, I can choose my holidays, I don't get screamed at by parents, and I rarely have human company. I always feel like I've made more of a difference farming than I ever did teaching. As I work for a company, I also get paid more.

I was already tutoring for the OU while I was teaching and I moved into staff development in the university sector.

Hi, I left after teaching 3 years before I was tied down to a mortgage or family. I was 27.

I resigned without a job to go to as I thought worst case scenario I would do supply until something came up. I didn’t realise until I left teaching that there are so many jobs in education which aren’t teaching!

First I worked for the local authority as a SEND advisor. This was less than my teaching salary but it was far less demanding and gave me some new skills e.g line managing volunteers.

I then spent the five years in the third sector working for a children’s charity. I managed a team and developed skills like project management and stakeholder relations.

I left that role to work in higher education at a small specialist institution. I am the head of a student services department (not teaching) and manage a team of 10 people!

There’s so much out there for ex teachers. I was afraid to leave and thought I’d never find another job or career! But teachers are very employable.

I enjoy going for a wee at any time of the working day, working hybrid and never taking any work home with me :) leaving was the best decision and have no regrets. I miss the children sometimes though.

I'm tutoring now, after 25 years teaching early years and key stage one. I love supporting children with additional needs and being able to go at their pace and see the small steps of progress they make. I work for myself and enjoy the new challenge of running my own small business.

I managed to get ill health retirement. Broke me in body and mind

I came out of teaching in April. I tutor at the moment (primary and secondary English and maths) but only a few hours a week. I'm looking at doing some supply too in the near future.

For me, I was in a very toxic environment and just had to get out. Thankfully I was only part time and had already built up some tutoring hours alongside and saved up some money during my notice period. My husband also earns well and is paying the majority of the bills while I find my feet.

I have a big passion/hobby outside of teaching which hopefully will become my next career, so I'm studying alongside the tutoring to build up towards that.

When you're the main breadwinner or bringing in a big chunk of the household income as an experienced teacher on for example, UPS3, teaching can be very hard to get out of and you can feel very trapped, whilst also feeling ridiculously stressed and burnt out. It takes a lot of courage to leave. You do, however, have to listen to your body and mind, and trust me, you're far better off being tight on money for a few months while you figure out your next steps than getting home on a night in absolute pieces, wondering when you'll ever even get time to sit down and enjoy a programme on the various streaming services you pay for.

There's a good video called 'Pit Pony' on YouTube which is worth a watch. It changed my perspective completely.