Becoming a primary school teacher

[ToysRus56]

Hiya, I'm considering becoming an early years/ primary school teacher. I have two children 6 and 8, so I'm conscious life is busy as it is. But I'm stuck in a corporate job I hate. Everyone seems to warn me off it.... What are people's views? Both good and bad welcome...

What does everyone do now?

I teach Year 6 and I’m also an English (particularly writing) specialist. I LOVE my job. I love the kids, my TAs (we have a great time every day) and my school is fab. I’ve had ups and downs in my career and some times have been really stressful, but honestly my work/life balance is fine, although earlier in my career not so much.

I’m in school early most days (before 8) but some I do the breakfast club run so 8:20ish, but I don’t stay past 5pm (our school actually shuts most days around 5:15). I take my PPA from home if I want. Our head and deputy are fantastic. Honestly in the right school I think it’s a great job!

Disclaimer: the pay isn’t amazing. My salary now is £50k although I will progress. My husband earns double what I do. The holidays and pension are good though which I guess pushes 50k up to 60k if you factor those in.

Have you ever considered speech therapy?

Everyone I know that has done it - hates it.
I know a qualified teacher who work as a cleaner and a teacher who works as a TA.

A key difference I found when teaching Early Years was that I had way less marking, so I could leave my work at work. There was more physical set up of the learning environment, but TAs would help with that too, eg filling up the water tray, re-stocking the writing area. It was more tiring with children that age though. Teachers in KS2 have so much marking. My DH often has 180 books in a day (he takes a 15 min lunch break in his classroom literally to eat so he can mark all through lunch and then until 5.30-6 so he can at least see his own children after that).

I think it's a very tough job. The workload is heavy and there is a lot of stress. Next to no flexibility. I know quite a few people who have left teaching because they couldn't hack it.

But I also know a few primary school teachers who still absolutely love it and wouldn't do anything else. And I know of one family with two primary school teacher parents whose two adult dc are now planning to go into the same field, so it isn't all bad!

Spend some time in schools and see what teachers really have to do, warts and all. Talk to teachers to get a better understanding. And then make a decision.

Well quite a few teachers who have posted above have left. Out of interest when did you finish teaching? You used the past tense, and things have been getting steadily worse, even more so since I retired 10 years ago. I did enjoy the job before the new Head and academisation, it wasn't the children or teaching per se that was the problem

I taught for just under 20 years and got out last summer. The actual teaching is lovely; seeing little proud faces when they achieve, experiencing new things with them, seeing their progress.
Then you have the much bigger parts of being a teacher; endless marking (around 150 books a day), meetings which could have been an email, disgruntled parents because you told little Johnny to leave the class when he was throwing things, planning and replanning to make sure every lesson covers a zillion different criteria. Forget going to anything at your own children’s school because if you do get the time off they will use it as a stick to beat you with for months after. Then you have SLT which if your face doesn’t fit, they can make your life an actual hell.
I knew I was done when I’d be crying on the way in to and on the way home from work every day. I missed so much of my own children’s lives because I was attached to my laptop. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Less marking but a huge amount of record keeping including photos and observations. On my school there were assessments to update every 6 weeks and targets to set (for 4 years olds ugh!).

I’m an educational psychologist. Still get to have some lovely bits interacting with kids/parents/teachers but with quite a healthy work/life balance. Very long and competitive training route though.

Michael Gove's reforms really sucked all creativity and joy out of primary education. I left after 10 years for similar reasons.
Maybe the new government will change things for the better?

I have friends who love it but they work in good schools with good SLT

I’ve been teaching primary for 25 years. I still enjoy the job. I have a lovely class this year. But. If you want to pursue teaching, you need to be free of commitments outside of teaching. You have 2 children who need you. I was able to devote 15 years to my career before having children. I only returned part-time.

I would not advise you to pursue this until your children are at Uni.

Yes, writing with lower ability 4 year olds is really tough! Many start school unable to hear letter sounds or write them

Well why should they be able to?! In Europe they would have years ahead of them before going to school! This race to get children to achieve achieve from such a tiny age is just crazy, and dangerous to their well-being.

I don’t understand your point? I think we agree. The point I was making was that it seems obvious to focus on teaching 4 year olds letter sounds and how to form letter shapes correctly before sitting them down to write as in ‘today we are learning to write a list/set of instructions/letter to Santa’- many children cannot write at all, so are completely unable to engage with this. Others are ready to do this. You start from where they are at, which is different for all children.

Throwing it out there - have you considered childminding? It is "family friendly" in the sense that you are working from your own home, but obviously you're looking after other peoples' children at the same time. As yours are a bit older they may like having you around more even if you are splitting your attention with other children? Or some kids may hate that. You have to do a course with your council and register with Ofsted and be inspected. The rules would let you have basically one baby and a couple of toddlers/pre-schoolers, and then you can be more flexible about before/after school care and holiday care, as long as you can meet the needs of all the children. Some childminders do a lot of school run activity and others stick to focusing on the younger ones. You get to be your own boss, but would need to manage working with parental expectation to some degree or you could find parents don't want to use your services if e.g. you don't want to work Mondays or Fridays, or decide you don't want to do school runs, or don't have outside space at home or have a big dog. But there are shortages of childcare in most areas so some parents will take what they can get! You would need to have space in your house to manage the children and if yours are older it would mean a bit of a return to baby/toddler toys and equipment, unless you can designate space like a conservatory or garden room as the main play room.

It may be that little children aren't so much your thing, but figured would mention!

I teach in secondary, but it’s the same story as everyone has commented from the start. Definitely try to get some experience in a primary/early years classroom if you can.

Occupational therapy or speech and language therapy? Or forest school leader, but that's less secure/well paid.

I did the move from corporate to teaching and I absolutely loved teaching and didn’t regret changing jobs (I’m currently at home with my son hence the past tense). I worked predominantly in year two and year six and loved both for different reasons.

I worked as a TA for two years first to check I liked it and that made teacher training pretty straightforward. I was a TA in a private school (I couldn’t afford my salary to drop too much) and then I trained and worked in a state school until mat leave. In both schools, I had great colleagues and generally had a good work/life balance (although I realise now I rarely socialised during term time and just caught up with friends during the hols!) .

I think plenty of parents teach and make a success of it. Looking at the responsibility teachers have and how much I felt I needed to put into the work week (e.g pretty much always leaving after 6pm), I personally would worry about doing all that and having children to pick up/look after too but maybe that’s slightly skewed by my year 6 experience! Plus I’m not sure how much your partner could share those responsibilities. I would 100% work as a TA and offer tutoring as I found that work load much more manageable but budgets means TA jobs aren’t as easy to come by.

Finally, I will also say that I have never felt more tired than I have after a challenging day teaching. The stresses and challenges of my corporate job were much less stressful for me than the intensity of teaching. I definitely went into teaching with rose tinted glasses but the reality was still something I loved. I do think I also lucked out with really incredible SLTs which can make all the difference. Good luck with your decision!

You’re getting a lot of negative replies (those are people’s experiences so I’m not knocking them). But for balance, my husband and sister are both primary teachers and, though there are some negatives, on balance, they are happy. My sister did a couple of other jobs before and prefers this. You need to find a school that fits with your wishes. Smaller infant only unit or village school for example. My sister and the teachers at my children’s school leave by 4/4.30 if it’s not a meeting night. My sister and husband do some evening and weekend working, but not crazy. The holidays are largely their own and a godsend from a childcare pov.

I do!

Been teaching for 12 years and maybe I’m just lucky in my school but never had a huge workload issue. I get to work at 8, leave at 4.30 (do tend to work through my lunch, it’s worth adding) and I never, literally never, have to take work home or work at evenings.
We reuse/adapt planning from previous years, every couple of years our scheme changes for different subjects so fresh planning has to be done, but it’s not like we are doing brand new, reinventing the wheel planning for every subject every year. I work in a three form primary so all jobs like planning/setting homework/website updates are split between three.

There are downsides like arsey parents, difficult children, unsupportive management, but the pros (working with a great team, the holidays, the nice side of working with nice children etc etc) definitely outweigh the cons for me.

Early years only jobs in a school are few and far between. If you work in primary, you can move from year to year. F2 and year 6 are worlds apart and like different jobs.

What is it you hate about your corporate job? You may find teaching isn't all that different but less pay and respect.

I've taught for years and it wore me down. I now do part-time supply work and part-time elsewhere. I've rekindled my love of teaching and love not being tied to the politics and boundaries of one school. I also have my free time back but couldn't do it without the experience of being a class teacher first.

My husband is a deputy head in a primary, still has a class.
he leaves before 7 every morning, gets bavk around 630 then works every evening 7-9. Works all day Sunday. Works about 30% of every school holiday .
I used to be a teacher in secondary/ I’ll be honest I rarely was at work till 5 and only had a few hours most week of preparation.
primary is so intense and the workload is huge
yes the pupils are less intimidating and irs a nicer atmosphere than secondary but a young kid with challenging behaviour can be just as disruptive and stressful as a teenager and a lot harder to reason with. I think a lot of potential teachers are completely unaware of how challenging behaviour can be in primary schools.
also you have to teach everything whereas secondary you specialise in one subject and can often recycle plans.
I do think it is well paid- my husband is a high earner and moved up to management quickly but it’s very stressful - calls and emails at all hours of the day and weekends

Smaller infant only unit or village school for example.

Small schools can be an absolute nightmare for workload these days-trying to plan for and teach multiple year groups/key stage curriculums simultaneously whilst coordinating maths, phonics, history, geography, ICT, SEND and PE curriculum areas as there are so few teachers in the school, everyone gets 50 (unpaid) jobs each! Small schools round here can't keep teachers-they just burnout.

It’s a very heavy workload. Find fulfilment elsewhere in your life or try another job but don’t go into teaching at the moment. Private schools are better though.