Studying for OU degree / teacher/ counselling.. advice!

[BGnz]

Hello!

Looking for some honest opinions and advice, I'm currently a stay at home mum, I have a 13 month old.

I have been considering doing a OU degree to better myself and get into a role which will give myself and my daughter a secure future and inspire her when she is older.

I've been going back and forth with my decision with what I want to study as taken on a degree and the student finance debt is incredibly scary to me!

The two careers I am interested in are counselling and primary school teaching.

I was swaying more towards teaching but after doing a lot of research I have been very put off by the difficulty teachers face with a healthy work/life balance. The threads and articles I've been reading are all a few years ago so curious whether teachers workloads have got a little easier or whether they are still having to work a min 60 hours a week!?
Any teachers willing share their typical working days and hours/ experience I would greatly appreciate to hear from you

Secondly I'm very interested in going down the counselling route, I find psychology very interesting and have done a lot of self taught work on on myself /how the human mind works/ breaking habits/ positive thinking and wellbeing, so feel that this could be a very rewarding career, I haven't done as much research on this as a career, I have read that it's a very long training process, so please again share your experience and thoughts on this.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I greatly appreciate your help, advice and opinions.

Hi

Having been a primary school teacher for 10 years, I definitely wouldn't recommend it if you want a good work / life balance. There just isn't enough time. I'd recommend working as a TA first to see what it's really like (I didn't and had no idea!) . I'd say yes 50-60 hours a week to start with but after a couple of years I got away with 9 hours at work each day and a couple of hours over the weekend, the last few years I tried not to take any work home over the weekends and evenings. A lot depends on the school.

I've had a few years at home now but feel like I'd like to work part time again. Missing using my brain, not sure it's still working properly anymore! Haven't decided whether to teach again or try an find something new. I'm also really interested in psychology but don't want to spend years retraining.

As an alternative to teaching have you considered speech and language therapy? No idea what work life balance would be like but always seemed like interesting work (some work closely with schools)