teacher DH needs to leave his job.

[greenteaandchai]

DH is a Maths teacher (A Level). A very good one. He is head of something and many other things I can't remember, he's also SLT.

DH HATES his job. Every day is the anger, the stress, the cries of how much he 'can't do it anymore'.

DH also privately tutors, in fact, he has built such a reputation that he runs a successful company doing it. He earns more privately tutoring than his teacher salary. It helps that I am an accountant so I can do his finances easily.

I've produced cash flows, projections, financial models. I've proved he can quit. I have proved his business could be a massive success. I also have said, if you quit then you can always apply for another job if this fails, there's enough of them. I also earn more than double DH so we can easily survive on my salary.

Up until recently he'd say 'I want to quit' and I'd say 'are you sure? really?' and i'd console, I was the therapist, the ear, the teacher, but all just got angry responses of 'you don't get it'. So now I am saying QUIT. Stop moaning or quit.

AIBU to say that he can easily survive without this job right now and he needs to sort his mental health out? At the moment he is juggling everything well enough but with a lot of stress and occasional mood swings. However, we are TTC and I am clear that he can't juggle when/if we are successful because he is never home at the moment.

Would like to get opinions.

YABU - teaching is security, do it, keep it up
YANBU - do the other business idea, sort your mental health out.

Would be very interested to hear from teachers who have left the profession too.

Is there a half way house. Go part time and tutor more to up his income. He might find he is less stressed and he can also build up his business.

Teaching’s shit. Takes over your life.

So glad l got out on ill health retirement. The job caused the ill health. It’s not worth the stress.

YANBU
Teaching is a mess at the moment - the workload, the behaviour, the lack of support.
I’d definitely get him to leave if you can afford to!
I said to my DH that I’d like to not be a teacher anymore last night. We need to win the lottery though!
I love teaching but we’re only 3 weeks into the term and already I’m so stressed with paperwork, extra interventions which have been suggested to be in my break and SEN pupils with no support and management will not support when they’re disrupting the class.

It’s so incredibly sad but it doesn’t matter how good a teacher is the system is broken (I actually think it’s worse if you’re a good teacher as then you lose your TA to someone who isn’t coping meaning you end up struggling too!) 😢

I think a half way house suggestion is a good idea. I would worry that there wouldn't be enough tutoring hours during school hours (maybe home schooled children, if he can get into that market), and that any out of school hours tutoring would be done in the evenings and at weekends when I would want him to be home.
But I would be very unimpressed at continual moaning but not actually doing anything about it, when it sounds as though he is in the fortunate position that he could do so if he wanted to.

Part-time teaching might be well worth considering as a halfway house. Schools are so desperate for maths teachers. Or would he be happier dropping the SLT/HoD bits of the job, and just doing the teaching?

The one thing you need to watch with private tutoring is that most of it has to happen in out-of-school time, which can cap the income. Also, for the future, think about how it would work with childcare and family life. Would he start work when you get home?

How much would his pension be affected?

He earns more privately tutoring than his teacher salary.
Sorry @greenteaandchai this isn’t possible. The lowest SLT pay is £47k. At £30 an hour for A level tutoring that’s 30 students per week, every week, all year. Even if he does the tutoring in groups it’s not possible.

I know too many people who have stayed and ended up broken-I say he should go.

He must be doing so well if he’s bringing in more tutoring than HoD/SLT though-what’s he on-£55k+ teaching? To beat that amount tutoring (on top of teaching full time) is impressive! How much does he charge and how many people does he tutor?

There's something not right here. How on earth would someone with a ft senior teaching job have time to tutor at all (in term time), never mind tutor enough to make more money than his SLT salary?! It's not possible!

He needs to quit. I was a teacher in the UK for 5 years, 10 years ago and it was bad then. From what I hear from ex colleagues and on here it's gotten worse and it is totally unacceptable and unsustainable. The problem is when you are in it you are sort of institutionalised and can't see a way out. (Part of this is caring so much about the children and wanting them to do well. All the extra workload is "for the children".)

I am now a teacher in Ireland and couldn't be happier in my role. My ex colleagues still in England that I am in touch with have all either left the profession or gone part time or one has set up her own tutoring business, focusing on children with additional needs who aren't coping well in school. This is due to totally unreasonable demands and treatment.

It's a very hard decision to make, take care.

Does he really hate it? Or does he just enjoy moaning about it? Because if he really hated it would he not be looking at other options? Part time? A different school? He has a maths degree and management experience so he’d be snapped up by lots of places. He could teach is a college or become an associate lecturer at a university. He really does have a lot of options.

On another note - is A level maths tutoring really worth only £30 an hour? That sounds very low.

@cardibach i was recently surprised to discover teachers round my way with little but valuable experience can charge £60 + per hour for a level tutoring.

From the sounds of it he is basically working two full-time jobs - no wonder he is stressed and miserable.

So based on your OP you have a household income of over £200,000 a year, so yeah I think you can cope without his teacher salary if it means you're going down to £150,000 a year.

I’ve never heard of anyone charging that much. £40 maybe, it that doesn’t affect the numbers that much. And the OP is so vague about what exactly the husband does.

YANBU Teaching is the worst job in the world (I say so as an ex teacher). It made me so unbelievably ill. I quit and now do my self employed thing. Even just having the freedom to be able to go to the toilet when you want is something teachers have never experienced, it’s amazing! The job conditions you into believing you need permission for every single tiny thing that happens though so I think that’s what stops so many people from stepping out of that box. They hate it but can’t leave. I went on maternity leave and it wasn’t until I went back and stepped back in from the ‘outside world’ that I realised how ridiculous it was. People were just crying in the staff room as we ate lunch like that was normal. I would cry every day driving home. I was up to my eyes in anxiety medication after a few months of being back. If I’d stayed I highly doubt if I’d ever of reached retirement age, I would have been due a heart attack.

chants QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT!!!

could there be a compromise, he may be scared of completely giving up teaching altogether if that is all he’s known

maybe a part time role where he can focus on building his business too or even just stepping down from being in the SLT etc.

Wondering if tutoring is a business so maybe OP DH employs other tutors?

That being said, maybe part time just actual teaching purely for the pension?

Should also add my brother recently went part time in teaching and he is focussing on another career in his spare time and so far it’s working out well for him.

How does he have the time to tutor if he's working FT.
I left teaching. I do tuition. I have neither kids nor mortgage so i don't need to earn loads. After school i start at around 345 until about 815ish about 4 nights a week. I teach some adults in the day because i teach languages but the bulk of my work is after school. Surely he can't leave work at 330? Surely he has work to do at home.
In terms of income, you have to factor in the drop in income during the holidays. Some students continue but very few do every week in the summer or at Christmas. My December is often as quiet as my July. If i go on holiday i have to factor in that i don't get paid. If you're only just TTC I'm guessing he's not built up that many years of pension.
If the job is making him unhappy he needs to go. I earn plenty for what i need but my outgoings will be much less than yours assuming you've got mortgage or rent etc. And then literally overnight my income stopped lockdown was announced. I had the self employed grants but that was all.

Yes this is very true! The only thing l was capable of after a full day was crawling up to bed.

People suggesting he goes parttime I guess have never been a part time teacher. The same amount of work just less pay!

You have to go in on you"off days" because of meetings, parents evening, open evenings, inset days etc. Same amount of planning but maybe not teaching a duplicate class so no benefit really dropping that class.

Still tied into all the "other stuff" that teachers do.

Teaching is a hard job - it is awful job if you are not enjoying it.

Life is too short - leave, breath and see that there is life outside of the school

Ex teacher left teaching and have flourished mentally and physically since leaving teaching.

If he's fed up, time to move on. Try college or perhaps grammar school, or move out of the profession entirely. As a maths graduate with teaching experience he's very employable, although he might miss the status. I was very happy when I moved on: someone I knew walked right past me, did a double take, said I looked ten years younger. I certainly felt it.

I kinda get it. Teaching and tutoring are completely different and even though there's things he hates about teaching, there'll be things he loves too. Maybe he's just not ready to give up those things.

I guess this is quite individual. DH and I both work 0.8 and he's a teacher and I'm not - we both feel that he actually did get to drop 20% of his work and I did not! The only time he goes into school on his non-working day is twice a year for parents evening. He has 20% less planning, 20% less marking, 20% less time in the classroom. It's made a massive, positive change to him having that reduction.