Teacher training part time

[snownsunshine]

Hi everyone,

I'm after a bit of advice and I wondered if anyone had an experience or words of wisdom for me?

I have a 1yo and a 3yo and am looking to retrain as a maths teacher, with the intention of working part time - ideally 3 days a week. I already have a maths degree.

Does anyone know how feasible it is to find part time teaching work/job share type options? I'm flexible about primary or secondary but I guess from the reading I have done that I have to choose before I start training? Would one be more suited to part time?

Also has anyone done teacher training part time? If so can you give me any ideas of how I would sign up for or access it?

In terms of training I could easily manage 3 days a week (full days) or even full time if a big bit of the course was distance learning (cos I could do some once kids in bed) but I don't think I could manage 5 days a week full days.

Any words of wisdom?

Part time training/teaching is full-time hours in any other job, so think very carefully about your childcare arrangements. I’m an experienced part time maths teacher (0.7) and could easily do a 35+ hour week, trainees and inexperienced teachers could do far more.

Secondary maths teaching is where the big money is for training, if you want to be a primary maths specialist then the bursary is far smaller (and you’d be a primary teacher, so have to teach all subjects).

Part time secondary teachers don’t generally do job shares. You might be lucky and find a school that will give you three full days and two days off, but you may also end up with a patchwork timetable that requires you to be in for bits of days with very few full days off.

I’m not sure it would be right for you with very young kids, the workload is immense and you will be doing a lot of work when the kids are in bed even if part time.

Thanks noblegiraffe - thats really helpful thank you.

I wouldn't mind working in the evenings - I currently run a company so work most evenings to fit round the kids anyway - and work well over full time hours now.

But I would want two clear days off (ie 3 days not part time split across 5 days) even if that meant a bit less than a 3/5 split if that makes sense.

Did you do full time when you trained? Or did you work 0.7 from the start? I've been looking at some of the on-the-job type training like schools direct which I think would work well for me, but I can't seem to see anyone who specifically offers this as a part time option. . . . .maybe because thats not easy to do with teaching!

As a maths teacher would be able to 3 day a week easily. Schools are desperate for maths teachers.

Depends on where you are and how picky you are about where you work.

I trained full-time. I think part time training providers do exist but are rare. If you’re looking at schools-based training you could ask if they would consider part time.

I did a flexible PGCE, which some universities offered at the time. So for all the theory stuff, I did that at home, on-line, I then did the 2 school based elements on a full-time basis, although I think I could have done it part-time if I'd wanted to. Look at all the universities that you are thinking of applying to and see if they offer a flexible PGCE course. I'm science, but they offered similar courses for maths.

I wouldn't recommend it though. People will go on about the workloads, which is horrendous, but it's worse than that. I don't mind hard work, as long as the push to work hard comes from me, but a lot of the work is forced on you by senior management and is often utterly pointless..

The total lack of respect is awful, and not just from pupils, it's actually worse from senior management (i.e. other teachers) and the general public, who really look down on teaching as a career.

And the feeling of constantly being watched, and constantly feeling that you're not good enough, however hard you work, however good your results are - this feeling was quite literally sending me mad at my last school. I'm moving to a new school in January, which I've worked at before and is much nicer, but nice schools are few and far between.

Maths would be fine in secondary go for it.

nowteach offer a part time training programme for STEM teachers entering at some point into their careers. Well worth looking at.

Hi, I did School Direct when my youngest started school. I was working 75 hours a week. You train on the job, so are in school all year, from day one and you study alongside. During holidays I would feed my children and study from 6pm to 3am every day. Teaching-wise you are teaching 50, 60 then 70% of the week with associated planning and marking (I'd get home and mark til midnight). I had an observation every week. I was lucky that the school I trained in had a job share come up once I'd qualified. I was 0.5 (2.5 days), working 35 hours a week for £11k. I'm worried you're looking at teaching as a nice, comfortable, fit-around-your-family option. It's not. It's exhausting, high-pressured, often thankless yiu get paid for half the hours you actually work. But you do get the holidays with your children (once you've trained) and you do get to work with some incredible little humans. That's what makes it worth while.

Hi,

Thanks for the food for thought everyone - those are really useful points and I'll take a look at nowteach and flexible pgces in more detail - that sounds exactly like it would suit me.

I get the point about the hours and I've got quite a few friends who are teachers and I see the workload involved. However I think periods of intense stuff and then more down time with the children in the holidays would work well for me - it mirrors a bit what I do now although the on/off periods are different and that works really well for me personally.

Thats a good point astuz and it is something I have been worrying about a bit. At the moment I work a lot of hours in our busy periods - masses more than 3 days a week teaching would be - and I am genuinely ok with that. But I have complete choice/flexibility over what I do; get to prioritise how I want etc.

I am a bit worried that after 10 years of being my own boss working for someone else who gets to choose what I do might be a challenge! I also work weird hours to fit round me - for example I have some afternoon time off nearly every day as its important to me to be around when the kids get home - which obviously I couldn't do on week days!