Retraining as a teacher with young children

[Livelifefortoday]

Has anyone retrained with young children? I'm looking at a pgce (part or full time) or school direct. A teacher friend advised me to wait until dc are at least in reception class due to workload. This is another 3 years away.

I currently work part time in an unrelated profession and I'm just looking for some ideas. I also volunteer one day per week in a school.

I looked into level 1 TA roles but this would require a huge pay cut and level 3 would mean going to college for a year.

Is retraining realistic with young children?

Yes, CurlyhairedAssassin - I think that getting rid of league tables is key. Schools should not be in competition with each other. I read a book about Scandinavian societies recently and the section about education (especially in Finland )was very interesting. They have some of the best educational outcomes in the world but there are no league tables, no systematic inspection and hardly any official testing before teenage years. Apparently there is hardly any difference in results between the 'worst' and 'best' schools in the country. As egalitarian a system as you could have, probably.

Someone said to me the other day that the trouble with our system atm is that it's as if the kids are only being taught in order to generate data. The data has kind of become the actual purpose of schooling!

OP. A good friend of mine did a full time PGCE a few years ago, having waited until her youngest DC started. Her closest options for training were all at least an hour's commute (more on a busy day). She had some weeks where she was in college full time and others in school on placement. There were also assignments to work on in the evenings/weekends and planning for placements. Her DH was working long hours and away from home a lot. I know she found it harder than she expected, including some issues that she'd not foreseen eg. availability of child care to have DC in time for her to get to college/placement and who could also take DC to their school, the fact that she did not know very far in advance where her placements would be (so harder to work out what child care needed) and how to manage if/when DC were ill and when DC schools had inset days (if she missed a certain amount of her placement it would have had some kind of impact on when she could qualify- not sure on the details).

She did manage it and loves her job but I know that for the duration of the course she rarely saw her DC/DH.

If you decide to do it I'd say make sure you look in to the practical arrangements for the various training options very carefully- and get childcare and fallback child care sorted very early.

"The trouble with our system atm is that it's as if the kids are only being taught in order to generate data. The data has kind of become the actual purpose of schooling!"

That's spot on. Whenever a school gets inspected I alway feel it is almost like it becomes a human being putting in their evidence for their NVQ assessment to gain their qualification in "being a school". I did an NVQ in business admin many years ago and became competent at each requirement. It wasn't enough for my line manager to tick each one to show that I could do that task, I had to provide evidence that I had actually done it so that the assessors could validate my claims that my line manager thought I was competent. pissed me off no end. I was in effect being asked to do 2 lots of work - the first being to learn the actual competencies themselves and the second to write a folder full of evidence to prove that I could do it. I didn't bother doing any higher levels.

I hate all this self-reflection nonsense. "Well, first I did this but considered it to be less effective than this other method, so I changed my......."

FFS, the education system should be less about self-reflection And providing evidence and data and more about good old-fashioned TEACHING. Assess the pupils at Xmas and in summer and Leave them to do the rest.

Thanks everyone, this is really useful.

I have a 2 year old and a 4 year old. I will be starting my flexible /part-time PGCE in September whilst continuing to work part-time in my current job (also public sector but outside education). I am also just about to complete a level 3 TA qualification (also completed part time on a flexible basis with a day's placement in school every week).

I know what I'm getting into and how stressful teaching can be. Some of that is symptomatic of the public sector generally at the moment. The rest is specific to the role. I do have a plan B but I do still feel like I need to give it a try rather than always wondering "what if".

Childcare has been the main challenge so far. This has meant I've needed to continue working in my current job whilst retraining (to cover the childcare costs).

My children will both be at school by the time I do my NQT year. I am also fortunate to have a supportive husband (who has flexible working arrangements); a mum who lives locally and good wrap around care to cover things with the kids during term time.

Tbh I have never found the childcare thing a problem. I had a great childminder when mine were little, and their primary school has breakfast club and after school club. The problem for me is the job itself!

I never found childcare a problem either. I used the same childminder I had when I was working in industry. I don't think the children noticed my career change.