The pension point above is a good one - check that. You can really shoot your financial security in retirement to pieces if you retire early. It is why companies love to sack workers who are 5 years off retirement age as it saves them a fortune in pension payments later.
Secondly fostering as I mention above might be a good compromise.
I agree nights wear people out. They are unnatural and I don't think very good for health so practice nurse until you reach retirement age and child's 5 year university course is over might be a good idea and then MSF or teaching English abroad or something.
I hope this does not incur the wrath of teachers on the thread but today's Sunday Times has this:
"The headmistress of Britain’s strictest school has defended her decision to employ more unqualified teachers than any other state school.
A third of the staff at Michaela Community School in Brent, northwest London, are learning “on the job”.
Katharine Birbalsingh accused some teacher training colleges of indoctrinating students with “progressive liberal values” that failed children in the classroom.
“Our teaching and behaviour methods are so different to what they teach in teacher training institutions that in many ways it is far easier to hire unqualified teachers,” she said. “We don’t have to reteach them and they don’t have to unlearn bad habits. They learn very quickly and within weeks — even days — you cannot tell the difference between our unqualified teachers and our experienced ones.”
Staff at Michaela have written Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, a book to be published this month that calls on schools to get tough with pupils and parents to raise standards and end a culture of “excuses, laziness and bad behaviour”.
The title is a nod to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by the American lawyer Amy Chua in which she expounded the benefits of a strict upbringing for children.
Pupils at Michaela must follow strict rules and can be given detentions for misdemeanours such as slouching in their chair or making the spaces between words in their homework too wide. More serious offences, such as lying, earn a day in isolation. They are expected to write thank you notes to their “tiger teachers” and are required to attend a “boot camp” before enrolling.
Despite some clashes with parents, the school, which opened in 2014, has a waiting list and pupils are making double the average progress in maths and English.
“I think this is likely to be the strictest school [in Britain] . . . Kids here are grateful for being reprimanded because they know it makes them a better person,” Birbalsingh tells The Sunday Times Magazine today.
“We are more than just a school. We are also about helping to question the prevailing orthodoxies of our British education system.”
Birbalsingh’s previous efforts to open a free school faced opposition from campaigners and unions. In the book, she writes: “In the early days the threats and abuse were so bad that I was scared to walk down the street.”
Staff who have contributed to the book include Sarah Clear, whose mother is a head teacher.
“Unqualified teachers here are better teachers after two terms than qualified teachers were after two years,” she said. “The advantage of being unqualified is I have . . . been able to learn in a school unencumbered by the burden of bad ideas.”
But Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said a survey by YouGov had found 80% of parents did not want their children to attend schools that did not require teachers to be trained. “We believe children deserve to be taught by qualified teachers and we know that parents think the same,” he said."