Primary or Secondary?

[Stinkbrain]

I am currently doing an access course in education and I am looking to send my application to UCAS in a couple of weeks, however I have a dilemma and I was hoping one of you wise people could offer me some advice.
There is a course offered called Primary Education which offers QTS which is my number one choice or my access course would allow me to apply for degrees in English, History or Education Studies after which I could take a PGCE.

I have read every horror story regarding teachers and I think I know what I am getting into although it's impossible to know for sure until you are actually experiencing it. Although I am set on becoming a primary school teacher and the degree offered would take me where I want to be, there is a niggling doubt about just how horrible being a teacher would be and will I be stuck with a degree in Primary education which could possibly leave me with a degree I cant use for anything else.

Going in the other direction will add and extra year of study which means I will be 40 when I graduate.

If you were younger, I'd say apply for a degree in English to give yourself the choice to change career later on. I'd choose English out of the 3 you list because it's a core subject, so lots of secondary teaching jobs and can also lead to various jobs outside of teaching. Education studies wouldn't give you any more choice than the primary education course, so I'd avoid that one.

HOWEVER, due to your age, whether you like primary teaching or not, you may just have to suck it up and accept it. I'm saying this because I'm 45, and a couple of years ago I pretty much decided I was going to leave teaching, but when I looked into the costs/time to retrain (and I already have a science degree) and the fact that I would have to start again at the bottom of a pay scale, probably lower than an NQT pay, I realised it wasn't worth it now at my age (I was mainly looking at computer programming). I've gone for the mentality of "accept the things you cannot change". It doesn't help that there's no other job/career that really grabs me anyway - all jobs end up just being work and therefore a bind at the end of the day.

Sorry, I sound so cynical and jaded!