Considering career change - how long to get to £50

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I’m considering a career change into teaching - would be secondary maths / physics.

Realistically, how long would it take to get up to £50k salary? And what is the workload like in terms of planning? I’m guessing marking these subjects should be relatively easy, not like reading hundreds of essays?

Have a look at the payscales. They are in the public domain.

Unless you're in London, where you get a London weighting of around £4k, you would need to be in management to make £50k. If you were very good and very keen, and willing to basically give up your life to teaching, I'd imagine you could make the lower rungs of management in 4-5 years after training...
Maths marking yes significantly less than English, not sure about Physics! Don't go into it if you're hoping for an easy ride...Good luck!

I’ve seen these, thanks, just wasn’t clear how long it takes to move through them.

The salaries of HoDs in my school vary. The lowest paid HoD is on £43k and the highest is £51k.
Realistic time scales - 3/4 years from ECT. Can be done quicker if smaller department.
As a HT, I would never consider anyone for a HoD role without a good decent track record and solid experience.

Yearly increments. TLRs for responsibility.

In case it's helpful I'll outline my daughter's experience. She is coming to the end of her 2 year ECT period.

In her first year as a teacher she was paid the minimum on the scale with no extras (just under £30,000 as she is in the fringe area)

At the beginning of this year she moved up a point on the scale and had a small TLR. Her current salary is just over £35,000.

Next year she will move up the scale again and is taking on an additional responsibility so her TLR will increase. Her total salary (based on this year's pay scales) will be just under £39,000.

She is hoping to continue to work her way up and to take on additional responsibilities in future years, but obviously that can't be guaranteed. If she doesn't (and assuming she retains her current additional responsibilities) she will be earning £50,000 by her 6th year.

I'd expect a career-changer to be able to climb the ladder reasonably quickly as they will be more likely to be able to demonstrate leadership experience than someone who is fresh out of university.

It's also worth mentioning that schools can offer recruitment and retention allowances if they think they are necessary to recruit and retain teachers. I have no idea how much the allowances are used in practice but I'd have thought a maths/physics teacher would be more likely to get one than eg a history or PE teacher, so that might help the OP get to £50,000 sooner than others might.

To reach 50k, you will have to become a Head of Department, you won't make it as a classroom teacher unless you've been teaching for 7-9 years in inner London.

The extra payment for a HoD of maths or science is generally in the region of 11k-13k (at least at a school with a sixth form). So look at the payscale for the region where you are based (inner London/outer London/London fringe/rest of England. Assume you move up one point of the pay scale each year. Add on 11k to each of the pay points, and that will give you the minimum number of years.

I would say to get HoD of a core subject like maths or science, you would need at least 4-5 years experience, if not more. But getting it before then probably wouldn't bring you to the 50k mark anyway outside of London anyway.

4 to 10 years

If moving into a middle leadership role is something you want to do, then I would recommend Physics rather than Maths. Maths teachers are hard to find, but nowhere near as hard a Physics. You might be the only Physics teacher in the school, so could progress to Head of Physics relatively quickly and easily, whereas with Maths that will be much harder, as they'll be lots of Maths Teachers. I think our Head of Physics had been qualified about 4 years before they took on that role, if you've got that position and are not in London, you'd hit £50k after about 9 years. You'd need to make sure you work at a school that offers the Upper Pay Scale though (not all do anymore unfortunately), as you'd likely need to be on UPS3 to hit £50k as a Head of Physics, unless the school is paying a premium for that role, which is possible. Once on UPS, progression up the points is every two years, not annually like the Main Scale. If you were Head of Science rather than just Physics (unlikely after a short time in the classroom, but possible), you could hit £50k after 5 years. A classroom teacher than hasn't got a TLR can't current hit £50k outside London.

Yearly increments through MS but 2 years at each rung of UPS. So it would take at least 10 years to get to the top of the pay scale, which is around £45k these days, I think. You could take on more responsibility to reach £50k. Teaching core subjects and having a TLR is a very demanding job.
I don't think having previous experience in another industry will mean you can jump the pay scale, unless the school is desperate to recruit.

By the way, I don't know anything about how it works, but I've just seen this on the Levelljng Up Premium which maths teachers in certain schools can benefit from (between £3-6k).

www.gov.uk/guidance/levelling-up-premium-payments-for-teachers

I have no idea whether the new government will keep them, of course, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had they had some financial incentives to encourage more maths and science teachers.

I recently broke £50k after 12 years experience plus being a HOD of a small department in Outer London. Outside of London I wouldn't have broken £50k. Most schools ime have a Head of Science rather than Head of individual science subjects. It's a big job and TLR normally 11-13k. Workload of a Head of Science is high, including managing a large team of teachers, and there is a lot of pressure to get results as a core subject.

Well, the good news is that both are in high demand.

The last few schools I've worked at are persistently short of Maths teachers, often also of Science teachers (though my current department actually has a surplus of Physics teachers and is short of Chemistry instead).

Getting to 50k will be the harder part. Whether or not you will get annual increments will depend on the school you work in, how often you change schools and whether there is any money. Some schools use the 2-year ECT to pay new teachers at MPS1 for the whole time, for example, others will make appraisals with such unrealistic targets that few if any achieve them. Changing schools can mean staying on the same pay rung for a while, or even dropping, depending on what is offered.

You don't need to be a Head of Department to get a decent TLR (I'm not and have successfully circumvented the role for many years now despite a few offers). To be honest, it's a job I really wouldn't want, especially in Science.

While Maths is seen as the more important Core subject, and therefore has more pressure, it also has far more support, both from SLT (e.g. first dibs at student lists, priority at interventions), and from students and parents with their efforts to succeed.

The sciences are lumped together despite needing different skills, you have a large team plus technicians to support, the kids often don't care because they "don't need it to get into college" and despite being a core subject, you will have little say over decisions made by Maths and English when it comes to set lists, intervention slots etc.

I hit £50k for a couple of years but that was as a top of the payscale middle leader in an SEN school (so had an SEN point on top).

I now teach physics as a normal classroom teacher and today's pay rise announcement, assuming it goes through, will take me back close to £50k I guess, 20 years into the job.

In the right school the marking load in science is entirely manageable but you have to seek a school with sensible marking policies and also being aware that you're only ever a change in management ethos away from a marking nightmare, even in science. Remember you would likely teach all 3 subjects at KS3, I currently teach all 3 to KS4 as well as that's the state of recruitment. I don't know a single school locally that is both fully staffed AND has everyone only teaching their own specialism.