What are my employment prospects please?

[Travailleuse]

Hello,

I would be very grateful to anyone who will take the time to read my post and advise me accordingly as I absolutely need help.

I am married, have 2 DCs, late thirties, have a BA and MA in Humanities. I am a British Citizen but not originally from the UK and both my degrees are from my country of origin. My work experience (7 years as a whole) before coming to the UK a decade ago was in media, PR/ communication as well as a stint as a part-time lecturer at university while working full time. This last one lasted only one year as I left for the UK at the end of that academic year. I also speak and write perfectly two languages besides English (English is not my native tongue).

I have never worked in the UK and never looked for work before now as I was raising my DCs full time. My youngest will start school in September and I would like to start looking for a job. Ideally, as a start, I would like something part time or flexible that I would enjoy doing. WFH would be ideal. What would you suggest I start doing now? What are my prospects? If you are a recruiter or a company boss, would my qualifications be attractive enough for you? What about the 10 year gap in my work experience? I've always enjoyed working and excelled in whatever I did.

Thanks

I think you might want to post this in the employment section - or ask for it to be moved. This is the teaching staff room aimed at people who work in schools,

If you are specifically thinking about teaching, tutoring is a possibility working from home but otherwise, you would need to be in school.

I had a long employment gap - but I volunteered in schools for quite a few years, and did further study. Anything that shows an underlying interest or commitment towards working in education - which presumably is what you are thinking about?

Thanks for your input. Yes I am interested in education. This is why I posted here too.

What sort of job in education do you feel you can do from home?

For the most part you need QTS to work in UK schools. It is possible to be employed as unqualified but it isn’t particularly common. If any of your languages are French/German/Spanish (I am guessing French must be by your user name), there are a number of companies that provide specialist staff to primary schools to cover PPA. You don’t usually need QTS for that. But you would have to be in school.

It is not clear from your posts what you are looking for. I would suggest volunteering in your children’s school as a starting point as to whether work in school is for you.

@EllieNBeeb and @Getawaywithit thanks for your posts.

If I find something interesting in any of the local schools of course I will have to work there, not from home. I said in my OP ideally I would love to work from home but not necessarily. @Getawaywithit Yes you guessed it right, french is one of the languages.

I do not know yet what I am looking for exactly as I have never looked for a job in the UK before and all my whole working experience was before I had children so didn't mind about hours, distance, etc. Was just asking to have an idea of the market and what my prospects might be in it.

You can look at jobs available in schools on TES, but honestly, if you can't even give an idea of what sort of thing you would like to do, it really doesn't show the self-motivation necessary to be successful in education. Do you want to teach? Get a teaching qualification. Teaching assistant? Can possibly do without a qualification. You could look into peripatetic language teaching, but not sure how common that is. You could tutor students. Perhaps an admin role, but the idea that you have no idea of what you want to do, have done no research, and would like a job that is flexible and allows you to work from home just sounds lazy. Like, you can't even put in the 10 minutes of effort to Google and then think of what you'd like to do? You just know you want to be at home and work, you know, in your own time?

@EllieNBeeb Thx for your input. I am certainly not lazy and I've done lots of research but wanted to have different perspectives from other people and this is why I gave a summary of my qualifications and past experience. Asking for advice is what this forum is for and I am grateful for anyone who read and responded to my post.

It can be extremely daunting returning to the workplace after a long time, I’m sure it must feel more-so if your qualifications are overseas, so I do empathise OP. I too felt like this when I planned my return to ‘paid work’, and spent ages mulling every prospect from reigniting my old career..to the pre-covid luxury of working from home - and hearing some kind words of perspective, really does help. From a school specific perspective, any relevant experience is good - so your previous tutoring would definitely be relevant. If you did want to consider teaching, I have a European friend who lived abroad with her British husband for many years, and started teacher training with a local school’s programme teaching secondary french, so that might certainly be an option. Good luck.

@Homez Thanks so much for your extremely nice post and info

How about looking at the local colleges to see if you could get work marking distance learning courses, which could be done from home. Or look at their apprenticeship departments - you would need an assessor qualification to assess apprenticeships - but you may be able to get a college to fund you to do the qualification. You would be travelling to see apprentices in their workplace, but should be able to do some work from home.

OP, I think the problem here is that you posted in ‘The Staffroom’ which is for school staff so it seemed like you wanted to work in schools - without experience or qualifications. Posting in ‘Chat’ (or I think there’s a section for returning to work?) might be more relevant.

@chocolateisavegetable Thanks! Good idea :)

@AttaGirrrrl Thanks. I did post in the relevant sections but then I thought I would post here as some pps suggested working in schools. As I taught at university level I would have thought this would qualify as experience.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your input :)