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

Have worked in a range of private schools. Be careful. Some great. Some expect you to almost
not leave the premises in term time. (Boarding schools particularly)

I think the problem is the managerial responsibilities you have, not the teaching or the school. Do you want to maintain an SLT role? It’s hard now but will you be grateful for the career progress once your children are a bit older? Things to consider.

I was considering going into secondary school teaching - currently teaching in HE but the hours look impossible. I don't know how anyone does it without collapsing. Is it ever possible to go part-time or go straight into a private school as an NQT?

I left SLT and became a teacher in an independent school. So much better

Left teaching last year after 14 years...I couldn't take the pressure anymore. I'd gone part time and still dreaded going in. For a long time I worried about how I'd cope without the holidays.
Well let me tell you I don't miss them at all! My new job in the civil service is so less stressful and the environment is so supportive that I'm not exhausted anymore and really recharge at the weekends. I love going to work now.
I'd highly recommend leaving teaching, to be honest I don't know why I put up with the extra work and pressure for so long. Leaving is the best thing I ever did.

@threelittlebears87

I was considering going into secondary school teaching - currently teaching in HE but the hours look impossible. I don't know how anyone does it without collapsing. Is it ever possible to go part-time or go straight into a private school as an NQT?

I did my NQT in an independent school, covering a maternity. I had a great mentor and was well looked after by the school.

I left school teaching two years ago. I still work in education but have about 8 weeks holiday a year rather than 13 and can take these when I want. This works much better for me as I don't do any work or stress about work when I'm off. (I used to do a lot of both during my holidays when I was a school teacher).
I don't work evenings, weekends or Friday afternoons. It's also great to be able to book a day off mid week if I need to so can attend assemblies etc whenever they might start again.
There are far better work benefits than six weeks off in the summer imo.

I did NQT in private school. No problem.

I am qualified as a teacher but took on a TA role- although the money is terrible, I can supplement it with some private tutoring, as people pay well because I’m qualified. I can skip out of the door at 3.30 when my hours end and have none of the worry and stress of teaching/marking/planning etc. Means I get all the holidays off with my kids too.

In a non teaching job people work until 6 🤷‍♀️

I know SMT who stay late, 'bog standard' teachers who never work in the evenings, weekends or in their many holidays.

Having been senior management in the nhs I think it's the unfortunate norm when you become more senior.

OP I feel like this thread will descent into a teacher-slating thread
My siblings became a teacher
Left after a few months as it nearly caused depression
The workload and lack of respect from pupils and parents. Not to mention some very poorly parented kids
Now works in civil service, better hours, better pay, more respect, much happier

I left primary teaching in 2018 for a job in the civil service. I am sooooo much happier. Love my work and my colleagues. Minimal stress (I've deliberately stayed at a lowish grade to avoid this)

So I’m not and have never been a teacher. But if you’re looking for a better work-life balance and still want to have plenty of annual leave to spend with family overseas, have a look at civil service roles. In my role, I get 32.5 days leave a year, plus I can accrue flexi time (from working beyond my contracted 37 hours) and use this accrued flexi time to take up to 2 days flexi leave in every four weeks. I almost always do this. I can add flexi days to annual leave so for example for a week off I only need to take 3 days annual leave and use two days flexi, or just use the flexi for long weekends. Adding the flexi to the annual leave and 8 bank holidays gives me 66.5 days off a year (over 13 weeks - about the same as teachers but teachers seem to end up working during a lot of their time off?) I regularly take 4 weeks holiday in one block as I like to travel. Oh and before covid I worked from home a couple of days a week.

Not everywhere will have the same Ts and Cs but I honestly have a better work life balance than anyone else I know - including friends that are teachers, work in other public sector roles and those that work in the private sector.

I imagine there might be some obvious Civil Service type organisations that might be worth looking at eg Ofsted, DfE etc that could work for you, but it’s probably worth casting a broad net as I’m sure you’d have lots of transferable skills. Other public sector organisations too will have good benefits around work life balance.

But I think most teachers are blinded to the real world and don’t realise that working until 5-6pm is completely normal and most people do it all year round.

Every single teacher I have ever known who came from another industry (including the oil industry, Marnie biology, engineering and so on) has said that their work life balance when teaching is much worse than in their previous job. Every single one. Without exception. Some of them no longer teach, some of them do.

Come and join us in the private sector, OP!

It depends what job you go into. The CS offers the chance to apply for term time working, but it's not guaranteed. A lot of places have rules ie a max of 2 weeks off at a time unless you have management approval, but in the summer holidays that would be very unlikely, especially if you can only have a certain amount of people out of office at any one time.

That said, you would probably have more time in the evening and at weekends, and would have more chance to attend events like nativity plays etc.

I left after 17 years, part-time for the last few. Life is so much better now, I manage my own hours but am lucky I had a family business to join and a role to develop of my own. I no longer come home with a headache!

I taught a compulsory subject in a very mixed comprehensive though, so quite a few tough classes plus all the extra box ticking demands of management meant I had enough. Part time didn't help that much. I still had 10 different classes over 3 days a week and had to move classroom lots as I wasn't a full timer, which is a massive pain. Lots of planning and marking on 'days off.' Glad to be out of it and regret not choosing a different career originally tbh.

@Mugginyouleftrightandcentre spot on.

To constantly hear the rhetoric that teachers don't know about the world of work outside education is ridiculous and insults intelligence. Teachers wouldn't mind working till 5/6 pm anyway. It's about when you're marking till 11 at night, having taught till half 3 or 4 with a short break to drive home and eat your tea!

I think most teachers are blinded to the real world and don’t realise that working until 5-6pm is completely normal
But I was working till 5-6pm then doing an additional 2-3 hours at home every evening, plus 6-8hrs on Sunday.

That’s before you even consider the mental load of being the only adult in the room, the stress of constantly having to deal with bad behaviour, not being able to go to the toilet or have a drink whenever you want, the constant threat of physical violence, lack of breaks because you get put on yard duty or summoned to a lunchtime meeting, and the isolation of having nobody to talk to because you’re the only adult!

I worked in the private & public sector in a range of roles and at varying levels of seniority before become a teacher and I have never worked so hard. Late nights and weekends are normal. So, critical non-teachers, wind your necks in! Some schools are dreadful for the amount of work they expect. Proportionally, some of us will be working for less than the minimum wage, at a level of pressure which is unsustainable long term.

OP, I'd try a different school or setting before leaving the profession altogether - if you really do still love teaching. I work in a state school in a senior role, but it prides itself on trying to maintain a work-life balance and am pretty content with my current workload.

We're due a new Headteacher soon so, if my school's ethos changes, I'll be moving on...

@Hankunamatata

In a non teaching job people work until 6 🤷‍♀️

Of course they do. No one is saying they don't.

I personally don't mind working until 6. I find the constant work that needs to be fitted into evenings and weekends hard. I know other jobs have that too. That doesn't mean it's not hard.

There’s a great group on Facebook called Life after teaching- exit the classroom. Lots of people on there who have already left or in process of leaving and so lots of experiences to draw on re how they find no school hols etc.

@MimiPigeon

I think most teachers are blinded to the real world and don’t realise that working until 5-6pm is completely normal But I was working till 5-6pm then doing an additional 2-3 hours at home every evening, plus 6-8hrs on Sunday.

That’s before you even consider the mental load of being the only adult in the room, the stress of constantly having to deal with bad behaviour, not being able to go to the toilet or have a drink whenever you want, the constant threat of physical violence, lack of breaks because you get put on yard duty or summoned to a lunchtime meeting, and the isolation of having nobody to talk to because you’re the only adult!

I sometimes work long days.... but my friends who are teachers work long days, plus several hours in the evenings or at weekends, plus over the holidays. I have never been asked to or expected to work during my annual leave or at the weekend. School holidays give teachers a good amount of time off but they’re often expected to work for some of the time too. The only people I know that work longer hours than teachers are in private sector roles in management consultancy and finance. And they obviously get a pay premium for working long hours.

I chose to compact my work into the shortest possible time, to free up as much as I could of the evenings and weekends. I was lucky that I taught in a specialist school, so didn't have essays to mark etc. Also my own kids were grown up by this point.

So I'd arrive in my classroom at 7:15 am and do future lesson planning and paperwork, and get the lessons ready for the day, before the kids arrived. I worked through my coffee break and my lunch hour, and then stayed on until about 4:30. So pretty much equivalent to someone else's 9-6 job (assuming that they also worked through their dinner hour - an 8-6 job otherwise).

Had I had a more representative amount of marking to do, or hadn't dumped my SLT role, I would doubtless still had to do some work in the evening, but mostly I was able to confine the work I did at home, to Sunday afternoon.

I do know teachers who don't realise what some professional private sector people have to do, but they're becoming a minority, as more and more people don't have 'jobs for life' and many entering teaching have done other things before. But as a pp said, I don't know any mature entry teachers who don't think that their role is much harder than whatever they did before. And sadly several that joined our school from other professional jobs, gave up teaching within 2-3 years.