To leave the teaching profession?

[OnSilverStars]

I have been a teacher for 10 years. I don't really like it anymore. I like the teaching and many other parts, but I hate working every evening and weekend and being in school until
5 or 6 most evenings as well as meetings until 8 or so once every few weeks. (Senior management member). I also hate the pressure (which many jobs have I know) and the constant observations and threat of ofsted. (Non teachers will be rolling their eyes, I know!)

I have small children. The eldest will be starting school soon

I have found an opportunity for work I feel I would enjoy, however the only thing holding me back is not having the school holidays, especially when having young children

Has anyone left teaching and the holidays? Did you regret it?

Thanks

Also completely disagree about independent schools being more family friendly. Yes the class sizes are smaller so less marking, but you are expected to teach until 6pm in most (and then the marking begins!!), plus late duties, meetings, boarding duties and Saturday school. Responsibility pay is also not great depending on the school - many don’t have have pay scales so they can offer whatever they want, which is often peanuts.

However - I know lots of people that have made the move and despite longer hours say their work/life balance is much better - just find one without boarding/Saturday school!!

I love teaching but I would hate to be SLT for this reason.

As a classroom teacher, I don't find the workload too much at all. I did a non teaching role before that had a whole school focus and the level of communication, frequency of meetings, interruptions etc was high. If I was trying to teach good lessons as well, I would have been overwhelmed.

@ekausbsj

Could you change to part time and give up the additional responsibilities? This is how I'm planning to do it long term. I honestly don't think it's sustainable full time for long, you burn out so quickly.

This. That's exactly what I intend to do after my baby's born. To be a full time teacher with responsibility and try to have a family life is utterly impossible! But having worked in education for nearly 20 years I don't know how to get out and stay on a similar wage. So this is the plan currently.

Been teaching for 21 years and have a 9 and a 6 year old. Used to be second in dept but became mainscale after my second mat leave. I also changed schools 3 years ago. Both decisions helped me to have more of a work life balance. I still have the high marking load (English teacher) but it’s not as great as my previous school. It’s tough being a teacher but the holidays are what keeps me in it!

I'm not sure there are many better balance options with an equivalent salary

Completely agree. There are a lot of trade offs to make.

I've been considering stepping back from slt. I've seen a colleague achieve it successfully and I honestly think it would help me achieve less stress and more enjoyment of my teaching.

I left teaching after about 6 years. Best, best, BEST decision I ever made. I didn't hate it (I actually liked teaching the children, but there are so many other aspects to the job that I didn't like).

I became self employed - I started out doing freelance writing but have learnt other skills and started another business since then. I earn more than I did teaching, but more than anything I LOVE the freedom. I work longish hours - probably longer than I did teaching - but I take time off when I want, spend time with the kids, have days out (when lockdown allows) and generally spend my time how I want to spend it. I never missed out on any of the kid school activities like football matches, concerts etc. because I've been able to choose my own hours.

The summer holidays would never have been enough to keep me in teaching. I do generally work most of the summer except for days out with the kids, a week or two off for a summer holiday etc. but I'm ok with that. It's definitely harder to work around the kids being off in the summer though.

Well done Diamondpony!

I gave up teaching after 13 years. As a PP said, I went back to learning more about my subject, rather than trying to enthuse disillusioned students. I'm now in the middle of a 4 year degree and loving it. Can't wait to graduate again!

After having kids I dropped my management role and went part time. I focus on teaching now and can do all my work in a morning or two on my days off. Absolutely love it again.

Yanbu. It's all consuming.
I think people who don't teach (I am a career changer so I know the difference)
Don't realise it's like having 6 meetings per day and you have to be prepared for an audience of 30 every time for a specific time and it has to last an hour and everyone has to learn something. It's exhausting as you are acting the whole time too.
Other jobs which take work home don't have as many specific time constraints. If you don't fancy writing a certain report tonight you don't have to unless you have a meeting for it the next day. We do. 6 of them pre arranged and can't be rearranged.

That's it exactly Monkey. No flexibility to move a few tasks to a different day or focus on one for a few hours. 6 meetings a day. Every day. And no time in the day to prepare for them and everyone has to progress...

A friend in a different profession is developing a training course. All time paid to develop it .... compeltely different pace.

I left last year OP...I have no regrets whatsoever. I also couldn't care less about the holidays. They were an double edged sword. I could never book time off when I wanted/needed. Now...I can. I love my new job/career. I find it WAY more challenging...teaching really wasn't for me and I realise that now.

I left primary after 10 years and have never looked back. I work in local government now (not education!) and my FT salary is only £3k less than it was teaching FT but I get paid for any overtime and also for being on call so I actually end up with more overall. I had also dropped to 3 days teaching after my second child so I was on a lot less. I now have 3 under 6 and work full-time. I compress my hours into 4 days and finish in time for the school run on all of them by starting at 5am (husband has the children until drop off time when I take a break to drop them at school/nursery and then work right through to pick-up). So no wrap around costs which is brilliant. The lack of flexibility in teaching was driving me crazy. I don’t miss the holidays but if I did I could annualise my hours (for less pay) and have them off. To cover them we use annual leave, flexible working and lieu days. I easily build up at least 2 lieu days per week of school hols so that’s half of them covered without using our annual leave.

To get the job, I sold my transferable skills and proved that I had researched the area really well. I had to give a presentation at the interview and they said I was miles above the other candidates for that. Probably because I’d given about 20 presentations a day for 10 years!

Life is far too short to be in a job that makes you miserable.

Dobido and idontknow what are you both doing now?

I know my confidence took a huge hit after teaching.

I think what’s hard about teaching is the utter lack of flexibility. You can’t take any time off-peak for holidays so everything is mega expensive. Yes, I have two weeks off now but I also have reports to start and three units of work to plan. Teaching isn’t the only job where you work in the holidays, obviously, but for at least a week of this break I’ll be working every day if not more. I definitely try not to work over Christmas, though.

There’s no flexibility in the work day, either. My DP has an office job where he works alone in his own room, and he’s able to go in and start slowly if he wants to, have a cup of tea, read the news... I don’t ever have the option of a “slow day” (sometimes the timetable blesses me with art all afternoon though!). This, again, is not unique to teaching but it’s part of what is so tiring. A PP said “you’re acting all day” and that is totally true. Part of the reason why teaching EYFS and KS1 is so knackering. The workload is more in UKS2 but at least you can get them to write in silence for an hour and the acting isn’t SO full on!

The holidays are nice even if you have to work, though, as is the pension and the job security. I can’t imagine doing anything else because I’ve never wanted to do anything else, but ask me in ten years...

@SavingsQuestions

I support disabled students at university. If I worked full time, I would be on about £8k less than my last UPS3 job - but money isn't everything. The pension (old local government scheme) is at least as good as the TP and I still have what I accrued in there. I needed a specific PG qualification to do my job, which I already had as a specialist teacher in mainstream schools. I gained that qualification during my time as a SENCO.

I remember thinking 'how am I going to get out? what else can I do?' but it's a trap - there are loads of other things you can do. Teaching can institutionalise people but there is a life out there. If you still want to work in education, I recommend looking at admin and support roles in HE. The job site for that sector is jobs.ac.uk. I also looked at jobs in the NHS and local government when I took the leap.

I nearly left teaching a few years ago after having a baby, my work life balance was horrendous. I stayed but went part time and dropped my responsibilities - it’s far more manageable. Worth a try if you can?

Maybe it's the right job but the wrong school - not all schools operate in the same way.

The holidays are nice even if you have to work, though, as is the pension and the job security. I can’t imagine doing anything else because I’ve never wanted to do anything else, but ask me in ten years... completely agree!

I’ve been teaching since 2003 and for 12 years before I had children, it was tiring yes, but I could sleep when I wanted, lie in at the weekend/holidays etc.had more money to go abroad in the school hols at least and that made a difference. Post kids (and the time and cost they bring) and it’s a whole different ball game!

I have also noticed a huge change in what is now expected of teachers and management, over and above the ‘teaching part’. It was definitely easier pre-2010 to have some autonomy over how and when you did something and definitely a bit more trust to do it. Post 2010 (and since Wilshaw was heading up Ofsted and Gove was Ed Sec) it has been getting worse and worse and what the pandemic has done to education staff, particularly SLT like the OP, has been a scandal in my opinion.

lots of teachers are really bad at managing their time

Lots of people are bad at managing their time. Some of them are teachers. My experience is that many teachers are very good at managing their time, especially as much “free” time is inevitably compromised by unexpected demands or chance occurrences.
Top tip: get in as early as you can and sort emails before anything else.

@ChloeDecker, I agree completely. The change has been massive and we have less time and much more responsibility.
I also have to manage a big subject with next to no money.

I am a 'bog standard' teacher. I really recommend it as a way to keep teaching (if you want to) and still having a life outside of it. I asked to give up all coordinator roles after returning from mat leave. Honestly, it is the way forward! Yes I still work normal working hours, so from 8am until 5.30 or so, but I have much more after school time to do pretty much everything I need to do 😃 two afternoons are taken up with staff meetings and planning meetings but the other three are my own. I race around during those three afternoons doing planning and other paperwork and I spend my lunch times marking. Granted, I must be a very boring colleague 🤣 but it is unusual that I have to bring work home. I also have two young children and am so grateful that I am around during all school holidays.

I got out of full-time, state school secondary teaching a few years ago, after I woke up to the fact that I was very seriously considering killing myself several times a week in the mornings (I wanted to deliberately drive off of/into something on the way to work).

It is very all-consuming. For years, my life was only about teaching. I’d be up between 4 or 5 on weekday mornings to catch up on marking, then a five lesson day (acting all day, like a pp said), then the school I worked in cleverly introduced meetings that started an hour and a half AFTER school ended, so you had this trapped time most days (and they watched the gates to make sure nobody left beforehand if there wasn’t a meeting that day). Then marking all evening and trying to be ready for the next day.

I got to a point where I realised that I’d given everything else up (hobbies, exercise, time outdoors, seeing friends) in order to try to do the job.

Anyway, DH encouraged me to take six months out to recover and find things I enjoyed in life again. Then, I did some casual supply work for a lovely, small independent school, and I teach there part time now. It’s wonderful.

I love teaching again, and I plan brilliant lessons for my classes. And I’m allowed to have autonomy to teach how I bloody well want to without being “observed” all the time. The class sets are so much smaller that marking takes about a third of the time per class set than it would in state. The parents fucking love me, because I’m a much better teacher as a part time teacher.

Plus, since I’m part time, I have time to enjoy life again. I can use an afternoon to go for a walk, or go paddle boarding, or read a book, or DH and I can have a spontaneous day off together. It’s a fucking revelation having a work-life balance.

I’m a much better teacher now that I’m not cripplingly depressed and exhausted and in pain.

If you can, take a look to see whether you can go part time, or switch to the independent sector.

I was a teacher for ten years. I quit because the workload was too heavy. It was bearable before I had DC, I did the unpaid extra hours then flopped in front of the tv. But after I had kids I couldn’t flop - I had to feed and wash and help with homework and handle bedtime, and then I still had all the work to do after putting DC to bed. I literally didn’t stop from opening my eyes in the morning until closing them at night. It was unbearable.

I switched to supply teaching, which removed a lot of the extra meetings and paperwork, and also minimised planning because I was delivering pre-prepared lessons. Of course it was unreliable and my salary dropped and I didn’t get paid holidays, but I made some of that up by doing tutoring.

I don’t do that any more. I started a small business where I work from home and let me tell you, being self employed is hard work but nowhere near as time (and soul) consuming as teaching. I flex my hours around childcare and during the holidays I wfh while DC play in the bedroom.