To ask ex teachers why they give up teaching?

[malificent7]

Im hoping to leave education in order go retrain.

For me it's the workload... i dont want to work from 8am to 11pm every day.
I also hate being blamed for student's bad behaviour and being told that if my lessons were x, y ansmd z there would be perfect behaviour.
Also lack of power and toold to dicipline students with.
The realisation that working g in a pricate school was far more difficult tgan working in the state sectir ( parents expect blood/ kids over entitled )
contracts are now mostly fixed term.

I could go on!

Please share!

Exactly the same reasons you have but also class sizes were increasing, less money in the budgets, being told to accept students that didn't fit the criteria, getting no recognition for having a record number of high achievers over the years, more contact time with less planning and marking time, being forced to take part in weekly evening interview events and not getting time back... the list could go on...

The workload for me - when I got pg with dc1, I felt I wouldn't be able to give the job my all in the way it demands.

At first, I thought I'd go back when the dc started school, but in practice I found another way to earn a pittance crust through a hobby, so I stuck with that.

I wanted my life back!
My self-esteem, my mental health, time with my family, evenings and weekends.
To not be bullied or made to feel that no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough.
To not have to spend my own money supplementing a woefully inadequate budget.
To be appreciated for my efforts and not have my goodwill taken for granted.

So many other reasons, all of which outweighed the joy of teaching children.

Not being able to shake the sense that other people's children had become more important than my own.

Workload, lack of time for me and for my family, but also working for a really awful huge MAT, which has really thrown up how terrible the whole system is. The MATs don't care about individual students and teachers, they're too big and don't see them. I resented working for a MAT whose CEO was paid over £400,000 and being told there was no money for anything. The school was literally falling to pieces. Broken system.

Driven out by the academy machine.
Bullied relentlessly
Impossible work load and deadlines
Zero support
Within an nth of a complete breakdown, several colleagues did have one, and one committed suicide.

I had a massive breakdown and had a year off work to recover. Couldn't function for months. It's a shame because I was a good teacher and loved my job. I'll never go back

I became a TA after being a teacher and I'm on the same hourly rate, effectively. Less stress, less responsibility. I worked out that 5 days of TAing paid the same as 3 days of teaching, but I had to do 2 days worth of prep/marking/fucking spreadsheets so why bother? When I was a TA I got to spend quality time with the kids and walk out the door at 4pm with no work to take home.

I'm at home with children atm but will go back to being a TA when it's time. Being a teacher is more miserable than enjoyable now.

Just reading through all of your posts on this thread - for you all.

It was so sad to read through what you'd written. I started a teacher training course last year, and ended up resigning (after a lot of consideration), ten weeks into the course.

It must be incredibly frustrating for many of you on this thread (and many, many other education professionals) to think that state education in Britain does need to be changed and improved, but how can we do it? It definitely frustrates me. I just have no idea how we can solve the problems in education that we currently have.

I worked in FE. I was so bloody happy. I then got a new "team leader" who decided my face didn't fit and since my health was getting worse I decided to leave before I was pushed.

He had a group of my students write a letter about how awful I was as a teacher and how I needed to be disciplined. My students told me that he simply told them it was to help me get "work place support" and were in tears when I told them I was leaving, they all blamed themselves.

I do not miss the workload. At all. But my god I miss the students.

Gosh Archie I'm so sorry

The ridiculous amount of pressure to get kids through exams who really should be concentrating on basic life skills. Being told to cheat with coursework. The utterly of care from SLT. The way that experienced and excellent teachers have been replaced by Teach First graduates with no exoerience, and little interest in staying after their two years (but they are cheap and compliant, so hey ho). Being used as a political football, with goal posts being moved, budgets cut, and the Secretary of State for Education at the time actively showing contempt for the profession. The 60 hour weeks, sometimes more, whilst parents go on and on about how teachers have "all those holidays."

I miss teaching, I love working with teenagers, but I cannot work under the expected conditions.

I was bullied out. I had a major breakdown, was sectioned, had ECT and was off work for 15 months. When I went back I was forced out and that included fabricating evidence to drive capability procedures.
I've been luckier than many because I've been able to build another career that I absolutely love.

Should say "utter lack of caring from SLT."

Like others in this thread, my mental health took the brunt of the stress, and I ended up having a breakdown, attempted suicide, and was hospitalised, due to a bullying boss who was strongly implying I had to cheat with coursework in order to get the grades.

Thank you Pom bears. It hurt so much. Still sort of does in way as I was so attached to all my students and they will always mean so much to me.

It seems a lot of us are in the same boat, health/stress/workload wise. I hope it gets better for future teachers as well as those established!

My friend left because she began to suffer from anxiety due to the pressure. She felt scared going into work.

Now she works as a shop assistant in a museum and is poor but much, much happier.

Have a close relative who went from teacher to TA to avoid the stress. Still was worked to the bone though. It's an awful situation that teacher's and support staff are treated so badly. Boils my piss actually.

For me, workload. I was working in a disadvantaged area and had 15 kids with IEPs in a class of 35. I had 8 year 5s in my class that couldn't read. I had to plan 3 separate English and maths lessons because the range of ability was so great that ordinary differentiation wasn't enough. So I taught one group my two TAs taught the others and we rotated each week. But I had to plan it all. I was in work from 7.30am to 5pm each day. I then worked at home from about 7-10. I did all my weekly planning on Saturday which took all day. The behaviour was challenging. The rewards were huge and I loved the children but it wore me out. I weighed 7st when I finished.

My school was extreme I think but I had colleagues and friends in other schools who were really struggling too.

Also the total lack of a break. I didn't take a sick day in 2 years because there was no calling in sick - I then had to pass work on to a supply which meant more detailed planning than I'd do for myself and stress all day about whether it was going ok. My headteacher had no tolerance of sickness and those off sick were openly bitched about to other staff. So it felt there was no escape. The holidays were spent planning except for summer when I had a couple of weeks of the six off.

I lasted two years then took a career break when I moved to Australia. I'm still here but never went back to teaching. I work in a university now and love the freedom! I can book annual leave when I want, if I'm sick I stay home and rest and best of all, I don't feel any guilt for an early night or a weekend spent with friends!

DP is the same...he's not fully left the world of teaching as he's now ventured into TEFL...he does miss the kids though. He often will spot little ones in the mall and go "aww, I miss teaching kids". As with all good teachers, he's a natural and would have stayed put were it not for the shifting goal posts and receiving completely unreasonable demands left, right and center.

TEFL is a bittersweet experience...the salaries were better decades ago but now the market is overly saturated, he receives the same pay but has now more time on his hands. And the thing is, teaching EFL to prepubescent teens and adolescents who have been mollycoddled their entire lives does put a dampener on things.

Should also add that there were 3 separate incidents where parents stormed into my classroom and shouted at me in front of pupils, staff and other parents. One was because I had kept her child in at break time for pinching another child hard during assembly. She called me a fucking bitch. Another was when I confiscated cigarettes from a 9 year old and threw them in the bin and she said they were her property and she wanted me to pay for them! They were the worst examples but there was absolutely no gratitude or recognition for all the work I put into the kids, I really couldn't do right for doing wrong with most parents.

Still teaching, but overseas. Nice international school somewhere hot & sandy & well paid.

I'm like the bit in Black Beauty where he gets turned out into a meadow after working as a London cab horse.

Main reason I won't go back? My ex colleagues' Facebook feeds. Which remind me of the gibbering misery monkey I also was 3 years ago. Plus all posts above!

Actually, the single biggest issue was my own dc. I couldn't inflict any more of it on them - education system in meltdown AND a sad, tired, frightened, grey faced mother. They're now flourishing.

I realised quite selfishly after five years that I actually really prefer to research, write, create or deliver work myself than be the facilitator for other people. I like getting into depth on subjects and producing something tangible, much like we ask our students to teach. I felt like I got bored intellectually (this isn't a criticism of teachers) as the content became a bit repetitive and I was well within my comfort zone, ultimately I wasn't stretching myself and soaking up things that interested me. Of course I could have stretched myself with new techniques, subject matter extension etc but I just really missed actually doing the work, not just talking about it.

The reward that you get from seeing other people develop is amazing and selfless. I think I'm probably a bit too selfish to teach because after a while that wasn't enough for me. Gives me greater respect for people who are driven by that though!