Work after maternity - retrain as teacher? Private school?

[Teacheryesorno]

Hi all,
I hope this is the right forum for this. I’m a new mum to a 3 month old and I’m considering a career change to teaching. I’m no stranger to career shifts, I qualified as a vet and worked in clinical practice for five years before moving into civil service and latterly commercial roles. I have about 12 years of professional experience now, and I’m paid £72K + discretionary 10% bonus. My pension is crap.

However, my current job is brutal. The hours are intense and my work area is really under resourced. I currently manage a team of 2 DRs and could easily use another 3 but it will never get approved. Instead we try to do the work of that team size and I’m well paid but not that well paid if you see what I mean, certainly not for the hours and stress.

I have been thinking ahead to school years and thinking that nursery to then wrap around care and holiday clubs will eat most of my salary. We have joint finances so it’s not “mine/his” but still thinking if I want to be burning the midnight oil for corporate America and never seeing my children. I have always loved the training aspects of all my jobs, both continuous learning for me and passing on knowledge. I love teaching vet students and now interns and my DRs, as well as running training for the whole org. I always get good feedback from peers and managers on my soft skills.

Would I be mad to consider retraining as a teacher? How long would it take to reach a similar level of pay and what is progression like? When people are leaving in droves (just like vets) am I crazy for thinking it could work for me? Is it reasonable to aim for private schools? I do appreciate this is elitist and also that many (most?) of the retention issues seem to affect the state sector more. Is primary or secondary a better option? We live in the midlands and wouldn’t be looking to relocate as my husband’s job is based here, but there are a good mix of schools in the area.

I miss how rewarding clinical veterinary practice is but don’t want to go back to that environment, but the bits I love the most I think I could transfer into teaching - basically relationship building and knowledge transfer. Is it family friendly in reality? Could some teachers please comment on your experience of seeing mid-career professionals retraining and how it has worked out? Thanks in advance for any and all support and advice.

Hello, you sound like an amazingly clever, well-educated person who has had an interesting professional life already! The thing that jumped out at me was 'how long would it take me to reach a similar level of pay?' I'm talking primary here... The top of the main pay scale is now just over £50k (so before you go into management). You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there and it will be a minimum of 9 years. Private schools sometimes pay a bit better but in my experience can also pay significantly less. TLRs (extra pay points for middle management) are rarely seen these days. Another thing to consider is that teachers lost their 'pay portability' years ago: this means that you could get up to a certain pay level in one job, but if you wanted to move jobs, they could offer you a lower pay scale. Many primary schools won't pay over M6 now, which is £45k. I know of many deputy heads and even heads in small schools around here (an we live in an expensive area) that don't earn as much as you. So in short, if you are thinking of going into teaching to match your current salary levels, I wouldn't!
Having said that, I love my job. I work in a small private school and am paid around £50k FTE, but I have 20 years' teaching experience. The holidays are fab for my family but my hours are long, and your children would be in a lot of wrap-around care if you didn't have a partner who could pick them up. Good luck!

I think you’d be able to progress much more quickly in secondary school, simply because there are so many more opportunities for promotion than there are in primary schools. I would also hope that a school would recognise your previous experience, so you should be able to move up into a management position more quickly than would normally be the case for a brand new graduate. Schools can be funny places though (I’m not a teacher but I have lots of friends and relatives who are) and some may dismiss your previous experience because it wasn’t in a school.

Even so, progression can be fairly swift, I think, if you happen to find yourself in the right place at the right time and if your face fits. My daughter is currently in her 4th year of teaching in a secondary (she trained straight from university, so no other relevant experience) and is earning just over £51k as a head of year. An experienced teacher at the top of the teaching scale doing the same role would be earning over £60k.

Obviously that’s still a long way off your current salary, but she hopes to progress further in the next few years. Her pension is also likely to be a lot better than yours!

On the subject of pensions, if considering private, it’s worth bearing in mind that many independent schools have come out of the Teacher’s Pension Scheme which, although not as good as it was, is still one of the best pension schemes around.

Good luck whatever you decide.

@CeciliaMars thank you for your insight and your kind words. It’s really helpful! Could you explain a bit more about the long days and need for wrap around care? Is that in primary or secondary or both? To be honest the school day is so comically short (for pupils) that whatever job my husband and I do we’d need wrap around care. I currently work 40 hours over 5 days (on paper…reality more like 50-60) and was hoping to compress to at least give me a day off each week with my child. So that would be 8am-6pm which is doable with nursery but I don’t even know if school wrap around goes that late. My husband’s hours are similar. It all just feels unachievable.

That’s where I was thinking about private because at least it is a longer school day and I see this as an advantage but maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it? Thank you for the comments on salary as well. Do you know if management positions at private schools follow national pay scales too? I’d probably want to progress I think, it’s just who I am, so would be good to know where it could reach.

@Fifthtimelucky this is also super helpful, thank you. It’s really encouraging to read about your daughter, well done to her! Why i you think she has progressed so quickly? As elsewhere I have read about teachers getting stuck on lower levels/grades (apologies, I don’t know the correct terminology yet) for years. I’d like to think that as an ambitious person with experience outside of education I might be able to make good progress fairly quickly so thank you for the reassurance there.

It’s a good thought about the pension too. I really should look at valuing that because my current employer pension contribution is truly abysmal. I have a reasonable total pot from previous jobs but really it doesn’t entice me to stay because I am not really putting meaningful money away for retirement at all at the moment.

@Teacheryesorno My daughter is extremely well-organised and thorough, but I think she has been lucky in a number of ways.

Most importantly, she has been lucky that her first job has been in a good school which is well-managed and where the staff feel valued and respected by pupils, parents and the senior leadership team.

She has a real interest in mental health and well-being so was keen to take on a pastoral role at some point. She was lucky that a deputy head of year role became vacant at the end of her first year - for a year group that she regularly taught. She was a form tutor in her first year, which seems fairly common, and clearly impressed the head of that year, because they encouraged her to apply for the deputy role, which she had originally decided against doing because she assumed she was too inexperienced.

She got the job and obviously did it well, but was lucky two years later that a head of year role came up, also for a year group that she regularly taught. She was encouraged to apply by a number of her colleagues.

So she has been lucky that there have been opportunities available that have suited her. She is also lucky I think that, for whatever reason, her face seems to fit.

@Teacheryesorno working hours...in primary, most people I know do a minimum of 8am - 5pm, often taking work home afterwards. The school I work in has a teaching day of 8.15am - 4pm. We do get a few free periods but they're often taken up with cover, so most planning and marking has to be done on top of those hours. I would say even an experienced teacher would be working approx 7.30am - 5.30pm, taking into account meetings, displays, clubs etc. Probably around 50 hours a week. So if you took your child with you, they'd be there for that time too. Remember you will have to pay for your child to go there, albeit with a discount, so that reduces your salary further. It is doable - lots of teachers at my school do it, but it's not an easy option. Like you say however, I am not sure there is an easy option! Private schools do not have to follow any kind of pay scale, so I would imagine it varies wildly. My friend works at another local private primary and only gets £42k after 20 years of teaching. If you are entering teaching with the specific aim of working at a private school, could you approach some local private schools and have a conversation with them? One more thing - good private school jobs can be hard to come by - a lot of teachers these days want the smaller class sizes and longer holidays (even though pension and sometimes pay isn't as good)...at my school, no one leaves unless they retire or die!! Some teachers have been there for 40 years!

You need to be realistic that the long hours, stressful job and underfunding will be exactly the same as a teacher. Yes spending holidays with your child and not paying holiday club fees is a big plus, but your initial pay will be a lot lot less. You will never earn as much as you do now unless you go into management, and that will take years to build up to.

Teaching can be because incredibly rewarding, but you need to research it carefully before taking the plunge. It's definitely not a career people take up for the pay. For the (unpaid) hours you will actually need to put in to get everything done, it's not far off minimum wage these days.

I echo all that others have said, particularly about salary and about progression being dependent on if you "fit" into the school. This is particularly true in smaller schools.

Progression opportunities are minimal in primary. There are more roles in secondary that allow you to mostly teach but take on some management, for a moderate uplift in pay.

It also strikes me that you feel you might be interested because you like training adults. That's good, but you might need to dig a little deeper to decide whether you definitely want this (you may have already. I appreciate I only read a brief post!). Do you have a subject that you'd like to teach? Would you enjoy teaching small children? How would you feel about teaching teenagers?

@Teacheryesorno

Would I be mad to consider retraining as a teacher?

yes, don’t do it! There’s a reason why people are leaving in droves!

@Onbdy thank you, I do appreciate it is a difficult sector. So is veterinary medicine, half my qualifying year have quit first opinion practice and do something else now either within or fully outside the profession. What would be your main reasons for hesitation and telling me not to do it?

@ThesebeautifulthingsthatIvegot very valid questions and I honestly don’t know whether I’d prefer primary or secondary. I’ve always thrived on variety and a breadth of work rather than depth so perhaps primary might be better. But equally I think I would get this from having some teaching time, some preparation time, report writing and analysis, management time, initiative time etc. If secondary, or prep if subject teachers are employed, I would probably teach Biology and Chemistry as those make the most sense from my academic background. I need to look into qualification routes and see if that could be possible.

Thank you @BoleynMemories13 . I should run the numbers really but I’m sort of imagining that my pay cut would equal out with the cost of holiday clubs and a better pension, or at least not be far off. And then once into management it might even be better off.

@CeciliaMars I might do that, that’s a good idea. I could ask if there are any teachers who’ve retrained as a career change who might be willing to have an honest conversation with me. I’ve spoken to a couple of teacher friends already but they have only ever worked in education so have perhaps a different perspective. They all really love it, despite the challenges, which is encouraging given I’ve spent a couple of days reading very depressing threads on this forum about the state of things.

@Teacheryesorno
Where do I start? 😂
Well firstly, it’s likely to absolutely nothing like you imagine and remember from your own school days. Teachers used to be respected, this is no longer the case and poor parental behaviour and attitudes towards teachers is a big issue, especially when this negative attitude is passed onto the students.
The fact that you think it’s remotely family friendly concerns me, it has to be one of the least family friendly jobs going. This is also a big factor in the retention crisis. There’s still a misconception that teachers work 9-3 and have lots of holidays. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Most teachers get in at 7:30 and leave around 5/6. Running after school clubs is usually compulsory too. This was the case in all of the schools I worked in. Then most work every evening and weekends just to keep on top of things. In my last school it was expected that teachers gave up their time during holidays to run revision sessions. Working 60 hours a week is exhausting so most teachers are too tired to fully enjoy their holidays. The only one that feels like a break is the summer holiday. Of course there is work to be done during the holidays as well. If you don’t do it then you won’t be able to keep up, it’s relentless. Then there’s behaviour which is pretty horrific these days. There is no discipline and few consequences and many classes are completely unmanageable. Obviously this is very stressful.
Senior managers in most schools are ineffective and just want to please parents and tend to ignore any issues. If you highlight any issues then you’ll be on a support plan and bullied out. As you progress up the payscale you become more expensive and at risk of being ‘bullied out’ I’m sure there will be some who come on and say that they are in a lovely school and it’s not like that for them, these schools may exist but they are definitely the exception to the rule. There’s a group on Facebook - Exit the Classroom. If you’re not convinced by my words then have a look on there. There are currently 178K members! My career involved primary and secondary and in 5 different schools, all in different areas. Not a day goes by when I don’t see some awful experiences on there. On a personal note, I can’t emphasise strongly enough how much better my non teaching job is in comparison. I will never return to teaching and my only regret is staying as long as I did. This is the same for everyone else I know who has escaped.

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/maternity-returners-leaving-teaching

Almost 40% of teachers quit within 4 years of returning from maternity leave, and that's established teachers who know what they are doing. Worth bearing in mind!

I highly doubt you'll ever earn more in teaching than you currently do, even in management. I have been teaching for 15 years and I earn significantly less than you currently do (under £50,000, full time). There really isn't a massive difference between each main pay scale and even upper thes days, the pay increases are always more significant further down so those of us further up the pay scales really don't earn significantly more than newly qualified colleagues these days. Pay progression is shockingly bad in teaching.

It will take years for you to reach management and that's even if you want to (you are highly unlikely to get there within the first 10 years, then you'd start on a minimum leadership pay. It's definitely not as much as you're paid now.

Many who assumed they'd like to progress through to leadership decide leadership really isn't for them once they start teaching. Personally I'd hate to be out of the classroom. I went into teaching to teach children, not manage adults. Obviously you may feel differently, but many do change their minds on future plans once they actually get into teaching. In fact, many don't even make it past the first 5 years (so never even come off the main pay scale).

Good luck if you do choose to do it, but you definitely need to research it carefully as I think your pay expectations are way off.

Agree with this too, after 20 years I only earned 49K! Pay varies depending on what country you are in but 70K would probably be deputy head in a large school or head of a small school. The earliest you can get to the top of the upper payscale would be about 10 years after starting. You don’t say how old you are OP but schools are becoming increasingly ageist so if this would put you over 40 then you may struggle to get a management position.

In primary you won't make anywhere near your current salary. Secondary I feel like there is more opportunity because the schools are bigger.

Teaching is hard work and frankly all consuming sometimes. I have been teaching since 2012. I enjoy my job but I just don't think it will be what you're hoping for. You're saying your current job is brutal - I think teaching is brutal and it's even more brutal in the early years of the job.

I would say I go to school and work from 7:30-4:30, without a lunch break. Then I pick my kids up from after school club and then deal with them and put them to bed, then work from 8-9 most nights making sure everything is sorted for the next day. I am 4 days a week - but I work about two hours on my day off which means I then don't have to work on my weekend, but during crunch points I also work on the weekend for a couple of hours. I am not over egging what I do -

I am at the top of the pay scale (UPS3) and I have a TLR of about £5500 for managing ECTs and PGCEs and trainees. I do have a large workload because of the amount of organisation and reports I have to write and I am having "challenging" conversations a lot. This results on 0.8 at about 46k right now.

I think if you go into it because you're finding your current job too much work - it's the wrong reason and you should look for a different job - like many teachers are currently doing now.

As an ECT - lesson planning will be the majority of what you do and it can take forever planning decent lessons. Now it's organisation that takes up the majority of my time.

Behaviour is a big drain - can be emotionally exhausting at times. Parental complaints have definitely risen in the last few years.

Summer holidays are great - but my children don't get the best deal during term time and my oldest has just been crying about it! Both me and my partner are teachers - with my partner being a deputy head.

I do love my job - but I think if I knew what it would entail and how exhausting it would be - I would consider some sort of office based job where the day ends at 5 and I don't have to work afterwards - but I wonder if they actually exist!

@Smeegall
Well said!
They do exist, I left teaching for one with the civil service. I work my hours and on the rare occasions I do extra I can take this time back.

Secondary teacher.

A few things:

You can progress quickly, I'm a career changer and I'm Head of Dept in my 4th year of teaching. As someone else has pointed out, though, sometimes it's luck of the draw, I was in the right place at the right time. That said, I do have a First, a Masters (in my subject) and years of experience, so being the right person also helped progression.

Teachers pay - London have a significant uplift, i.e. around + £7k per spine point on main scale and this widens on the upper scale to +£11k. In other words, you have to consider where you are in the country when looking at pay.

Pensions: the Teachers Pension Scheme is good, however, a useful rule of thumb is that you contribute about 10% and the employer about 30%. So that person on £51k is actually paying £425 into their pension every month. A fair few private schools aren't enrolled in the Teachers Pension Scheme which would mean the advantages for retirement and death in services cover aren't as good.

On the flipside, a lot of private schools offer reduced fees for children of staff. That could be a big benefit for you.

Although I have no experience of private, my understanding is that extra-curricular is compulsory for most staff - days are long. There's also the added complication that parents are paying for a service and the assumption is that many want that service to include good results and a guaranteed career trajectory. I believe this will likely add to workload.

Bursaries for retraining: available for sciences and maths at secondary. These core subjects mean that you'll probably find yourself teaching classes with no aptitude, so you'll find yourself endlessly 'adapting' resources to ensure they pass. Obviously, that would be different if it were an exam entry private.

I could never teach primary. I wouldn't want to deal with 30 kids day-in-day-out who are busily developing attachment disorders. Too much interpersonal stuff for me. I have my own family. I don't need a work family.

OK, so honest appraisal. My experience doesn't match most of the people who are struggling. This is despite working in state, in a deprived area, and joining a school in Special Measures straight out of PGCE. We're now rated Good. Some of that is definitely down to me (hence the rapid promotion) and a decent head / leadership team.

In terms of workload, yeah, I don't get these people who are doing it 24/7. Years of management experience, in both the public and private sector, mean that I have a lot of transferrable skills. For example, you mention 'analysis'. I can do this standing on my head. I enjoyed making the QLA (question level analysis) for recent mock results. I know how to get it to spit out the data I need to use for targeted intervention. And I'm not at all phased by the idea that our papers will go for external moderation because two years ago I figured out that I'd need to be an exam marker for the relevant board so I've had all that training and my grades are bullet proof. Meanwhile, I know of another department in another school who cocked up their mock analysis, gave the kids all the wrong grades, don't have any meaningful intervention plans, completely lack marking experience, and are now being carpeted - frankly, as they should be.

The other thing about workload is autonomy. 1265 in state schools, where the employers are tied to the 'Burgundy Book,' means you can only be 'directed' for 1265 hours every school year - works out at something like 32.5 hours pw. No teacher can get their work done within this timeframe (see a previous post of mine on this board about a colleague who was insistent she wasn't going to work more than 32.5 hours pw), so the rest falls under some amorphous statement about 'and any other reasonable additional hours'. The thing is, they can't tell you where or when to do these 'reasonable additional hours' and the only things that can be required of you in this time are planning, prep and assessment. In other words, all this extra work people are talking about being forced to do by management, I don't know what it is. Sure, as HOD I have to lead a department and this can come down to producing general admin stuff, and I'm responsible for ensuring we having a working curriculum, but I can do these tasks where and when I want. I just don't get how I'm putting in a 40-45 hour week while other general classroom teachers seem to be saying 60-70 hours. And I teach humanities, so the marking load is horrendous. Anyway, point being, state schools with strong unions are good for being able to push back on workload. It's more tricky in private schools who aren't tied to the 'Burgundy Book'.

My school isn't lovely, as mentioned above, it's in a very deprived area (bottom 10% nationally in terms of income), majority white working class (not very aspirational) and roughly half the kids in every class are SEN. That said, I don't have many behaviour issues in my classroom, and by behaviour issues I mean any sort of disruption that interferes with teaching. To be honest, I couldn't 100% tell you why. I think it's related to the years of work experience and an understanding of firm boundaries. I don't believe it's solely a school culture thing because other teachers have really big challenges with exactly the same classes.

Anyway, I've probably said enough to get me torn to shreds. But my experience, as a career changer, i.e. someone with decades of experience managing resources (including people), is that teaching is kind of OK. The kids make me laugh every day, I have a lot of job satisfaction, I sleep well, I eat well, I go out and have holidays. If I'm honest, the biggest issues I face are either from sub-30 y/o teachers or those who have only ever been teachers. Both struggle as they haven't built up the skills or experience that would make their jobs so much easier.

Wow. You are basically saying that anyone who is working horrendously long hours is doing something wrong as you can do it all in 45 hours and that those who are struggling are doing so because they haven't 'built up their skills'. And that you don't have behavioural issues because you use 'firm boundaries'. Just wow.

Exam marking - "I needed to take on a second job in order to learn how to do my first job effectively" .... shall we ask about workload again next June?

Exactly that! The arrogance is shocking!
I forgot to add that schools are also full of the ‘they’re not like that for me’ and the ‘I can get my work done in half the time’ brigade.
I’m yet to meet a teacher where this is genuinely the case! These people can really damage your confidence.The last time I observed a ‘they’re behave for me’ colleague, I was horrified at the complete chaos I witnessed. I shared a GCSE class with an ‘I only do my hours’ colleague. Let’s just say it was very obvious on results day. She had already left for a promotion! I also discovered that she was selling resources I had made on TES resources! 😳😂
I am yet to encounter that in the civil service, teams I have worked for have been genuinely supportive of each other.

As I say, I knew I'd get torn to shreds for offering an alternative perspective to 'it's all awful, don't do it'.

I'm saying I don't understand how people who should only be directed for 32.5 hours pw are saying they're being directed for 50 hours a week. They're entitled to a directed time calendar. I'm a union rep. The union will back them in seeking a directed time calendar and checking that the directed time doesn't exceed 1265. The union will then support them to go on strike if necessary at a local level and even pay them strike pay. If people aren't doing this, then yes, sorry, I do think 'they're doing something wrong'. Outside of directed time a general classroom teacher has to plan, prep and assess and if they can't get this done in their 10% PPA, then they have to complete it in their own time. Again, I don't understand how people are claiming they spend more time planning, prepping and assessing than they do actually teaching. If it's taking longer to make the resource than deliver the resource, it seems like something's a bit funky and I believe this might be connected to skillsets.

Re: exam marking, you can ask again next June, but I've done it previous years, so I already have the answer. If you want your learners to do well in exams, then understanding how those exams are graded by going through the training that's offered by the relevant examining board seems sensible. It eliminates time-consuming guess work.

As for the 'shocking arrogance' this seems to be followed up with anyone who says they have good behaviour management is lying, anyone who doesn't do horrendous hours can't get the results, anyone who gets a promotion has done that under false pretences, plus they're steal your stuff. That's your perspective. It sounds a bit jaded.

@ProudCat
Wow! Your second post really hasn’t made you sound any better! 😳
You clearly didn’t read my post, it’s hardly ‘my perspective’ if I’ve actually witnessed the so called ‘great behaviour management’ or have actually seen resources I created for sale by someone else on TES! All of these are easy to prove. The ‘good behaviour management’ I observed included the students sitting wherever they wanted and yes, they may have been sat there without kicking off as they did in my lessons. Were they engaged in learning? Maybe 3 of them were, the others were playing games on their phones, putting on make up and eating sweets. Did they get any work done?, absolutely not! This isn’t just ‘my perspective’ either as the school went into special measures soon afterwards with behaviour management being one of the major reasons. If you think this is acceptable then you have no place educating anyone!
How much time you spend planning and assessing varies widely from school to school, you cannot say that people are exaggerating. In my second last school, the expectation was far greater than in any other I’d worked in. Am I jaded? You bet! Me and the other hundreds of thousands who have quit the profession in the past few years. Always remember in teaching, you are potentially only one change of head or line manager away from having the same horrible experiences as the vast majority of us.