Accountant or Maths Teacher career change - mid-40's?

[Valkyrie99]

Posting in AIBU for traffic as not getting response elsewhere.

I have worked in IT for the last 20 years. I'm now in mid-40's. I had to give up FT work to look after young DC and have lost my techy skills rendering me unemployable in IT. I am still doing a part-time job in IT resourcing but feeling the need to think about something that will give me better employability prospects in the future.

So i'm looking to re-train as either :-

1. Accountancy/finance officer/bookeeping/treasurer role. Worked for a relative over 25 years ago, doing purchase ledger work and accounts admin in school holidays. Thought it was ok. I'm happy to pay and study for CIMA or ACCA to become part-qualified before looking for work. However, not sure how easy it would be to get a job in my 40's without any experience ? Especially part-time work ?

2. Maths Teacher - i love Maths and always enjoyed helping others However, I have a lot of stress at home as have a child with SN, so fear that this will just add to my stress load. I would have to do a PGCE/SCITT part-time. And i would only be able to work part-time as a Maths teacher. Not really sure whether a school would employ me as a part-time Maths teacher ?

Any advice from Mumsnetters welcome.

Camilla your school sounds like the academy from hell. My HT is obsessed with reducing our workload and I have gone from 70 odd hours to 50ish and she's still trying to get our hours down.
I work from 7am because it suits me not because I am forced to. We've just had Ofsted and they praised our work/life balance endeavours.
Doing bugger all over Easter.

I was part time for some of the early part of the course (4 days) and am now 3 days as I have completed the exams and am due to finish in a couple of months. It would be hard to do less than 4 days whilst doing the exams as they require at least a day a week in tutorial and a day a week of study, but you can do the study at home so that is a good flexible option.

Believeitornot you can choose your location preference, my understanding is that candidates are ranked on their assessment centre score and location preference goes to higher ranking candidates first. The popularity of locations tends to change year to year (except that London and Newcastle are generally oversubscribed) so your chances of getting your preferred location depend on how well you do and how popular that location is that year.

If you are an accountant you could apply direct to do compliance work (advising on accountancy issues) altho I don't think they are recruiting at the moment.

I am a part time accountant and find it quite stressful, particularly at year end when I end up working full time plus.

I took my CIMA exams before meeting DH and having DC - I have to say I wouldn’t fancy fitting them round family life as they were hard!

I have found that not many part time accountant jobs come up - think there are far more part time teaching roles. However, there are lots of part time bookkeeping jobs about but obviously the pay is much lower.

Overall I do enjoy my job and feel lucky to be able to work part time and earn a reasonable salary.

OP, re the accountancy, are you thinking of accountancy practice work, or working in the accounts department for a business, as the two jobs are very different indeed.

I haven't read every single post so not sure if anyone suggested looking at the type of role these two professions are? I think it's very different to work in an office environment surrounded by adults to working with a bunch of children/teens. So it's important to consider your personality to decide what might suit you better.

I think you'll need to put in more hours as a teacher but then you'll get 13 weeks' holiday at the same time as your children. As an accountant you'll probably get not much above the statutory minimum. So part time teaching could actually be pretty good for family life.

whichwayisitnow - working in an accounts department for business/council/finance officer for school/bookeeper/treasurer.
Accounts assistant is fine for now, but i thought it may be easier to get a better job later on if i've part-qualified as CIMA/ACCA now.

I don't think I want to work in a practice.

emsyj37 - DM said they be now located in Stratford ? Are they ? Stratford is not a bad location for me. Central London is not a viable option at the moment.

We are moving from lots of little local offices to 'Regional Centres' and yes there will be one in Stratford. The central London presence will be limited to 100 Parliament St. I am oooop north tho!

If you are interested in working in a school there is a specific School Business Manager qualification you could look at. I know a couple of people who have done this.

emsyj37 - that's great thank you.

CIMA Certificate is probably more interesting for the mature entrant than papers F1-3 with ACCA. ACCA crosses as a qualification between practice and industry work, whereas CIMA is predominantly industry based. Someone asked about Sat earlier - chose your options wisely to get as many exemptions as possible. You would obviously skip these papers and go straight in at a higher level.