Please advise - primary teaching, paediatric nursing, childcare or social work?

[leicestershiregirl]

Hi,

Have been reading all the great advice people have been given on here and wondering if anybody could help me. Since having my little boy I think I would like to work with children but am not sure in what capacity.

To tell you a bit about my background, I have a degree in Politics and after graduating I worked as a teaching assistant in secondary schools for a few years. Then I had my son and stayed at home for two years, then just three months ago I went back to work part-time as a healthcare assistant.

I worked across the whole secondary age range, 11-18, and enjoyed it but realised secondary teaching was not for me because I didn't want to have to deal with the behaviour management side of it. I also enjoy my current job (on an adult medical ward). But I want the challenge of pursuing a professional career.

The things I'm considering are: primary teaching, paediatric nursing, childcare/nursery nursing and social work. I know I'd need a PGCE for primary teaching, a degree for nursing, an MA for social work and a Level 3 qualification, e.g. a BTEC Diploma, for nursery nursing.

Can anybody tell me what the work/life balance is like for these jobs? What are the stress levels like? How competitive are they? My strengths are communicating and organising - would these jobs play to them? Do I need more experience? My partner is a secondary teacher and he brings loads of work home which is a pain in the ass in terms of our home life - could I be looking at a similiar workload if I do primary teaching?

I've looked at training full-time as an Early Years Professional (you know, a graduate leader who works in early years settings) but 1.) it would involve a crazy commute every day, and 2.) I don't want to be a manager (a year running the local NCT branch has completely put me off managing people) - I just want to learn a profession and practice it. So if I went into childcare I would just do a Level 3 qualification at a further education college. There are lots of jobs in childcare locally but would I be over-qualified? (I'm about to start, purely for my own interest, a Postgraduate Certificate in Social Sciences with the Open University too).

Somebody once told me I'd make a good social worker. I love the idea of making a difference but am not at all sure how I'd cope. I suffer from anxiety and depression and the stress of dealing with harrowing cases could be too much.

Really looking forward to hearing people's opinions.

Social work v stressful & getting worse with more cuts/higher case loads etc. Depending on which area you work in you may find more direct work is done in holidays/after school so that's not compatible with children. On the plus side working for the LA usually gives flexitime which enables you to take time off for kids events/appts which doesn't happen in teaching.

Well am in similar palce (religion degree, MA in ASD pending) and considering similar work.

SW was written off for cost reasons for me; if that's not an issue for you go for it, in CP field there is lots of need for new people.

Teaching- bloody hard to get primary PGCE; am taking that road myself and praying AM in Autism helps (want to do SEN teaching) but all colleges warning me intakes are dropping hugely in 2012.

I shall be honest: all those jobs have high percentages of stress and depression in practitioners: I am wondering if you have counselling and whether talking to a counsellor before choosing would be wise?

SanctiMoanyArse, good luck with the MA and getting on a PGCE. SEN is great, I worked with a lovely boy with Asperger's syndrome when I was a TA.

I thought you get a bursary of about £4000 a year to study social work? (I wrote off for an information pack from the CWDC that I'm still waiting for) (not loads of money but I could manage on it).

I've seen a number of counsellors and been on and off medication (currently off). The thing is, where do you draw the line? When should having problems yourself stop you helping others with theirs? I've struggled with mental health issues all my adult life but I get by and I want to be a productive member of society. I want to achieve meaningful things, and I'd also quite like to earn a decent wage. But then I don't want to have a breakdown or not be able to help the people I'm employed to help.

Is working in early years - nurseries, playgroups, Sure Start centres - stressful?

Childcare you're looking at the new Diploma for Children and Young People's Workforce. You would be seen as overqualified with a degree and postgraduate certificate. EYPS is a better route for your profile - nothing says you have to work as a manager when you have it. Depending in what job you do it can be stressful. O don't find nurseries a particularly supportive working environment for staff and you may end up working with people with whom you have nothing in common.

Primary similar workload to secondary, if not more.

I work with young people (can't be too specific on here, I'm afraid).

If you found the behaviour management aspect of a secondary school TA role tough, I would think carefully about social work. It is an incredibly demanding role - makes secondary school teaching / TA work look like a nice rest, to be frank. You will inevitably be dealing with children with serious behavioural difficulties and parents with challenging and confrontational behaviour on a daily basis.

I have to agree with Sancti - teaching, social work, nursing - all very full on careers with high stress levels and potentially non-family friendly working hours.

Have you thought about something in health? Speech and Language Therapy or Occupational Therapy, maybe?

Good luck. Interested to hear what you decide to do!

University's may vary but here they charge more than the bursary covers so student ahs to find £2k; that may well vary. you need to speak to those local to you.

Thank you for wishes; I have a child with AS, one with ASD, one with dyspraxia and one being seen soon by CDC so hope I know enough that I would be good at it LOL.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I currently work alongside occupational therapists and their job doesn't appeal but have downloaded some information about speech and language therapy and will have a think about that. The thing with doing EYPS is that any nursery that employs you is going to expect you to perform the role of EYP, leading change etc. - I can't see a nursery being happy to employ a qualified EYP as a regular nursery nurse.

SantiMoanyArse, out of interest, if you weren't going into teaching what else could you have done with your MA in Autism?

Maybe I should think about working in schools but not as a teacher e.g. as a learning mentor or a higher level TA? Anybody out there done these jobs and got any comments about them? I know a bit about mentoring but none of the departments I worked in as a TA had a HLTA.

I've been looking at how I could build on my studies with the OU and one possibility is doing an MA in Childhood and Youth. It's interdisciplinary and aimed at people who work - or want to work - in a wide range of occupations: education, healthcare, early years, social work, youth work, youth justice, the voluntary sector...I thought it might help me with whatever I ultimately choose and I've always fancied doing an MA, but though I'd be very educated I still wouldn't have a professional qualification...any thoughts?

leicester- either set up alone in carer's support (am trying but so much grant aid etc ahs vanished so nobody can afford to hire me) or train as a social worker; it was pretty much 50/50 SW or teacher long term though so don;t feel cheated on that: just that teaching palces so hard to get as well now so might be an altogether wasted venture IYSWIM

It's shame that OT does not appeal, as there are massive shortages in that field, but the SLTs I know enjoy their jobs.

Don't bother with an MA unless you've already got a professional qualification under your belt - waste of time and money. Given your current level of education, I suspect you would find nursery nursing tough on the colleague front unless you were going in at leadership level, which you don't want. Social work way too stressful and traumatic. I would go for nursing or primary teaching, and you would only have to do a little more training for teaching rather than a whole new degree.

Remember, teaching may be busy and stressful, but it has a routine to it, and you don't have to work full time unless you want to. You can even work supply and have no ongoing responsibilities. There's also a long-term career path, and with the current baby boom good long-term employment prospects.

Sounds from everything you've said so far that primary teaching would suit you best.

And don't be put off by the competition over places on the PGCE - you already have loads of experience in schools, and if your degree is half-way decent you should be fine. References count for a lot too - make sure they're as supportive as possible.

Thank you everybody for your suggestions.

My degree isn't great, only a 2:2, which I believe doesn't reflect my capabilities. But I'll be aiming for a better result in my PGCert.

The posts on this thread have really got me thinking. I may build on the PGCert and do an MA, purely for my own personal development and satisfaction. I'm also going to look at doing some undergrad science modules with the OU, as I loved science at school/college and was good at it - it is almost certainly what I should have done my degree in. And then I think I will go back to working in schools, as a science technician, a learning mentor or a HLTA, or, if I'm feeling strong, as a teacher.

I'd go for primary school teaching. At least you don't do nights and weekends as with Paediatric nursing.

Just a thought - have you considered teaching in the FE sector?

I have worked as a HLTA and learning mentor in secondary schools.

Both jobs are challenging and can be stressful if you do them full-time, although you do get the respite of the school holidays.

I felt I learned an enormous amount from my work as a TA/HLTA - a very rewarding role in many respects - but ultimately, it wouldn't be a job I could do long-term for two reasons. Firstly, it is very poorly paid. For somebody with postgraduate qualifications, it does eventually begin to gall (or did for me) to be working so incredibly hard for so very little renumeration. Secondly, the role of HLTA is only well executed in a minority of schools. Many schools don't employ HLTAs, and of those that do, they are very often used as cheap cover supervisors. I was lucky enough to work in a school where HLTAs had more interesting and varied responsibilities, including setting up and supervising homework clubs, specialist one-to-one teaching with students on the EAL and SEN registers and, in some lessons, 'team teaching' with NQTs. But this sort of set up is few and far between.

I much preferred learning mentor work, personally (usually better paid, too), but a word of warning: the learning mntor role is completely different in different schools. It would definitely be worth having a good look at the school sector where you live - do schools employ LMs at all? What are they paid? What do the roles involve? What experience do they ask for? (experience very important - perhaps more so than quals - in LM work)?

I would second having a look at FE as part of your research. You may be able to pick up sessional tutoring work without too much difficulty in some areas, and this could give you a good insight into this sector. I have taught in FE and found it much less of a lion's den than secondary, although with it's own unique stresses, like every job!

Good luck.

I have thought about FE - I did some voluntary work as a classroom assistant at an adult education college about 5 years ago. But I don't think there aren't many jobs locally - I know somebody who has a PGCE in FE but is working as a TA in a secondary school, and somebody else, an archeologist, who is doing the Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector course but isn't hopeful about getting work afterwards. At the time I did my voluntary work there was a shortage of numeracy tutors but to do that you need an A level in Maths which I don't have. My numeracy is ok, I quite enjoyed Maths at school and got a B at GCSE but my Maths teacher was adamant I would struggle at A level. As an adult have thought about doing it just to prove he was wrong...

Oh my God leicestershiregirl you are me!

Sorry that sounds a bit weird! What I meant is we've had pretty much the same career path!

I also have a Politics degree and have been doing a year of (voluntary) TAing and am now looking at doing something related to children. I've also considered doing some postgrad social sciences/youth stuff with the OU.

YY to the building it up to an MA - if you've got a PGcert you may as well build it up an get the whole MA - the dissertation especially would be a great excuse to spend ages reading stuff you already interested in

These are some of the ideas I had -

my ideal would be getting EYPS, I know you've said you're not too keen on managing but I've been looking at other related jobs so maybe try looking at Early Years Visitors jobs or family support worker jobs. The other thing I've noticed is that a lot of pre-preps are employing EYPS to work in conjunction with the nursery teachers- so again, probs less managing.

The other thing I've been looking at is using my Politics degree to get a job with a children's charity. A lot if benefits advice type places seem to a special children and young peoples team.

Youth Work - the only prob is that connexions is pretty much being cut in my LA.

Thanks OP for starting this thread, and everyone else - you've given me lots of good ideas.

gives everyone unmumsnetty hugs

Ooh sorry just thought of one more thing-

Are you the kind of person that gets annoyed when you see things running not very well/not how you'd do them? Personally, I'd quite like to have a managementy type position because it would hopefully mean I'd get to change things in my organisation if I didn't feel it was being well run. I think, for me personally, the stress of managing would be smaller than the stress of working somewhere where I thought things were badly run or even detrimental to the kids/patients/service users

I think that you need to bite the bullet and get a professional qualification in one field or another - by all means, continue your OU studies for your own interest, but an MA is not necessarily going to make you more employable.

Public sector recruitment processes are almost always criterion based and so often I have clicked on an interesting-looking job and found that the first criterion is to have a professional qualification in education, social work or another field. I am a primary teacher so can fulfill this, but until you have a formally qualified status there will always be a number of jobs out of your reach.

You could definitely do EYPS and work as a Nursery Nurse in a school or other Early Years setting without having to 'manage'. A setting may want to employ you simply to obtain good quality provision.

Primary teaching is much better paid and very rewarding, but the workload grind and stress can be relentless.

I think it sounds as if SLT could be a good choice for you. I have worked alongside quite a few SLTs and their job seems to be a mix of visiting schools or settings to assess children, carrying out support 1-1 or in small groups, attending meetings and writing reports. There are obviously funding pressures but none of the ones I have come into contact with have ever seemed stressed or unhappy in their work.

I am an inner city child protection social worker and agree that it is a stressful. I get alot of the school hols off as I take back my TOIL then and the felxible hours mean I am around for school appointments etc for my children.

There are lots of different areas of social work but in my area I can guarantee you won't feel like you are making a difference. I work with alot of foster carers and look at them as people who have the chance to make an amazing difference.

Social work is a vocation and something you really need to want to do. These days you need good IT, organisational and communication skills. You also need to be able to challenge people and manage conflict. You mentioned these are some of the skills which you already have. There is very, very little direct work with children anymore.

Regarding your metal health lots of people on our teams have now and in the past had metal health issues. That would be discussed at university interview. I would not worry about that though.

Hi all,

Sorry for posting after such a long break but having done some research I just wanted to clarify something for anybody else out there considering training as a social worker. To do a postgraduate qualifying course in social work you do get a bursary, of £4575 if you live outside London and £4975 if you live in London. You can also get help with childcare costs - up to £148.75 a week for a single child, more if you have more children - but this is dependent on your household income. At my local university there are no fees as they are paid by the General Social Care Council (but I understand this may vary from uni to uni).

Please note the financial arrangements for undergraduate courses differ.

I had to dig quite hard to find all that out, they don't make it easy for people.

P.S. I've also discovered that as nursing is moving to an all-graduate profession you can now do your training in two years instead of three if you already have a degree.

If you decide to go into Early Years/nursery nursing it doesn't have to be in a nursery setting. With a level 3 qual there are roles in the NHS - such as community nursery nurses where you work alongside health visitors, or nursery nurses/maternity assistants working in maternity and neo-natal wards, or in mental health (residential mother and baby units etc). Plus, schools often employ Early Years Practitioners to work in Foundation Stage classes.

If you do go into childcare, I would look at Children's Centres rather than private nurseries - wages are higher and there are often more opportunites to do family support work, or run various groups, so more variety in your day.