Nursing to Teaching

[Doobydoo]

Heloo. Just after some insider info. Been looking at teaching courses and just wondered if a Diploma in Nursing ( I am a Paediatric Nurse) and NVQ 5 in Leadership and Management is enough to enable me to train as a teacher ( prob 4-7 year olds)

*In teaching you would get decent school holidays which you won't get in nursing. So while the hours are long it's for 8 weeks but then you get at least a week off.

You would also get sick pay (unless you're supply).

Pay starts off rubbish but does improve gradually.*

The OP has chosen to work out of the NHS. In the NHS we get brilliant benefits. I get 6 months sickness full pay, 3 days carers leave, 2 days compassionate leave and 35 days annual leave.

Teaching is hard. Nursing is hard. Both can have some good benefits.

Regarding why I am working with Adults..I work predominantly with people who have Dementia I was drawn to it really. Anyway..exploring options,so thanks again.

converseandjeans
I think it's fair to suggest getting into schools and finding out a bit more before contacting providers.

I also think it's fair to point out some of the challenges of joining any profession if the person who is considering it is doing so for family reasons/work life balance/fed up with paperwork etc. It allows for an informed decision.

I love teaching and think the students are brilliant but this year I've started seriously considering whether I want to stay in teaching long term. If I'd joined teaching due to being fed up in my previous career rather because I wanted to teach then I don't think I'd have lasted more than a couple of years.
Some of the posters are making valid points imo.

In a primary school, it’s not unheard of to be in school at 7 and not leave until
6.30pm or later if you have parent’s evenings, twilight training, school plays/services, meetings, safeguarding issues etc. You never get to “switch off” from teaching. You go home and you lesson plan, you mark, you make resources, you do reports etc. In your first few years, you will probably be doing this into the early hours of of the morning, then be part of the 5am wide awake club. Seriously, NQTs survive on about 3 hours sleep a night. Then each day you are responsible for 36 children and their academic progress. Yes...there are “school holidays” but again, you will be planning, marking, making etc through them.

Sickness is massively frowned upon in schools. You are expected to show up, even when extremely poorly. I’ve had colleagues in teaching with pleurisy AND a broken leg, pneumonia, no voice at all, kidney infections etc. Our pay progression was always threatened and you’d be treated like shit be parents and SLT. Plus, children are little germ factories and you’ve got 30+ lots of germs aimed at you most days, so you spend September to February constantly battling something and desperately trying to teach through it lest you raise the wrath of SLT and the parents. One of my colleagues tried to kill herself and was in hospital. Within a working week, parents were emailing her to express concern about their children not getting good exam results as she was their GCSE teacher and they were unhappy that they were being taught by a supply teacher.
Then, yes...OFSTED. Having also been involved with CQC when I worked in a cafe home whilst at university, CQC inspections are about 50% less stressful than OFSTED. They last much longer and while, from experience, CQC wanted to work withus and there was a good relationship between the inspector and the home, OFSTED seem to want to catch you out at every turn, expect you to achieve impossible things in zero time, ignore the needs and challenges of individual schools and can be completely devoid of any sense of humanity.

I teach in universities now which I much prefer. School started off great but became hellish and made me ill, both physically and mentally.

The entire rest of my family are doctors, nurses and allied medical professionals. I grew up pretty much in the NHS (different times, my parents could sneak me into their office or ward during holidays and before I started school). My honest advice to you would be to get out of the home you work in and into paediatrics in the NHS. There are SO many options within the NHS and most of my family have ended up on wages that a teacher would never see. If you can’t hack wards and you don’t like working shifts you could try outpatients or community. All the nurses I know, have a much better quality of life than the teachers I know. This wasn’t the same during my parent’s generation pre National Curriculum when primary teachers did genuinely have lovely jobs that were all about the kids and not red tape and box ticking.

As for “patients complain” etc. So do parents. Disciplinaries are common. Teachers get sacked. Schools get sued. It happens.

@daisypond

You can certainly teach 4-7. Pre prep schools are this age range and so are infant schools. You can apply where you like.

Well, yes, you can apply, but you can’t do a teaching qualification in just that age range. And I’m not aware that infant schools are still a thing. There’s none where I live. There’s primary schools only. Pre-preps are a law unto themselves.

There are still lots of infant schools around. I've taught in one, in South Yorkshire, for the past 11 years. There are several in our city alone. They often have a nearby junior school,which most children go on too, but they are totally independent of one another, and have to be applied for separately at the right times.

Another thing...

I think part of the reason my family have all done so well within medicine and nursing is because they went where the work was. They would look for jobs all over the country and even world and apply, so they all moved up quite quickly and as a child we settled in an area with a huge teaching hospital with lots of opportunities for progression. Some of my relatives moved to Australia, Dubai, USA, Saudi, New Zealand and continental Europe for good jobs. So if you’ve no strings, consider that!

Every single one of them has said that there was a time limit to working with Dementia patients for them before it got them down and affected their own lives. My Dad always advised to “get out of geriatrics within 3 years unless you are passionate about it”.

Also, you must get as much schools experience as possible before applying for teacher training. You need to know, if you still feel passionate about retraining, exactly what it is you are getting yourself in for.

And one final thought...have you considered applying for school nurse positions? A lot of private and boarding schools need a resident nurse or “matron”. It’s a pretty easy job. My university also has several nurses on campus, though their role is more challenging.

OP
Do you have any experience within the classroom or other child-cased education/training establishments? If not, this is pretty essential to get, before applying.
You will be up against lots of students who have work placement and voluntary work within schools and other child-based placements. 18y dd has done extensive voluntary work in schools, children's drama groups, after school,clubs, etc and this was deemed to be a needed part of the application process. A couple of her friends without the experience struggled to get on to the teaching courses they wanted, whilst teaching struggles to retain staff the places for training courses, degrees, PGCEs and in service placements are usually very competitive. People are turned away every year. Last summer there were very few places available in clearing for example - we looked out of curiosity when dd accepted her place.

Especially in the early years you will need to be prepared to still put in those long hours and accept the increasing levels of stress and pressure from within work. Alongside this, however, comes some truly fantastic moments - reaching can be massively rewarding, it can also be a place of despair, I've experienced both extremes throughout my teaching career, and the negatives had me leave teaching for a few years. I'm back in education now though, with the little ones, and love it generally - though not this year, that's been beyond stressful at times.

You need to work out what you want to do in teaching. Although infant schools exist in many places there are far fewer of them than general primary schools. If you work in a primary you can, and will most likely, be asked to work in any year group. Many head teachers like to rotate staff over the years.

If you do not have a degree or equivalent you will need to start with that, though your current qualifications may help you bypass some parts. For example, I did a shortened two year teaching degree as I already had some higher Ed qualifications, however the availability of these courses are restricted and fairly competitive. Hence the need for my first point - some relevant experience,

@Littleyell your post did not make sense.

No I was exaggerating saying a ward full of CPAP. I was trying to make the point that a ward full of patients on CPAP would not be more stressful than teaching.

You really shouldn't ever become a teacher! The kids would be explaining things to you!

My mum was a nurse. I'm a teacher. She always tried to make out that the jobs are equally hard, but after hearing both sides, I do think teachers get the hard straw.

My mum would say she works 12+ hours shift. But then she would only be working 3 or 4 days per week.
Whereas I work 9-10 hours in school per day, plus 2 hours every evening. So about 12 hours, and that's 5 days a week.

My mum says she would have to do work outside of hospital sometimes too, in the form of courses. I pointed out that that isn't very often, whereas I have to work at home every night, at the weekend, and even during my holidays! Not to mention staff meetings and parent meetings etc etc.

Responsibility for all the patients on a ward - I suppose that depends what type of nursing you do and how ill the patients are! But teachers have responsibility for 30+ pupils.

Sickness! If my mum was ill, she could just take a day off. Not really a problem, by the sounds of it. But in teaching?! You just can't take a day off. It's just not done! You drag yourself in, no matter how ill. I don't know why it's like that, but it just is. It's not worth staying off. It looks so bad and leaves you with more work to do! And you'd spend all day worrying what your class are doing.

I could go on and on with the comparisons, but everything my mum said is bad about nursing, I could counter it with an equal or worse situation from teaching.

So this post has turned into an argument about who works harder, has the most stress and is more hard done by! How very British! I never understood this, if I could work one day a week and sit on my arse the rest of the time I would, it would be no ones business but my own!

@missbunnyrabbit my mum was a teacher and I'm a nurse! No way on earth would I ever have gone into teaching. At least with nursing when you leave for the day you don't have to carry on working at home.

Op you may enjoy community paediatric nursing? I work with ADHD nurses who love their job: they are in and out of schools too so you have that component. And that stress of being responsible for lives every day is gone.

[quote Harmarsuperstar]@missbunnyrabbit my mum was a teacher and I'm a nurse! No way on earth would I ever have gone into teaching. At least with nursing when you leave for the day you don't have to carry on working at home.[/quote]
Yes, same here. Our weekends were completely dominated by my mums lesson planning and marking. Yes. I work 12 hour shifts and it can be exhausting. I walk out of the hospital and my time is my own!

How about special school nursing.

There are many opportunities in different types of special school - some working with children with life limiting conditions, profound and multiple learning difficulties.

Generally you would be employed by the NHS.

Special school nursing is a role that most of our nurses loves and is a really important part of the school community but some of the nurses miss the work on the wards

Or learning disability nursing in the community both for adults and children.

You would be supporting children and families in the community - leaving hospital etc, hospital visits, liaising with services

Good luck - if you are burnt out it is good to change.
Doing your work - burn out is common
Life is too short to be miserable and great you are pro active

Special school teaching is another job which you might consider - with children with very complex physical and learning disabilities your experience would be invaluable.

I would contact the teacher training agency and see your options and what your qualification would enable you to do. There may be a conversion course

Some special schools do a schools direct where you train in post

I know it is a very stressful job too but have you thought about health visiting too.

As I say good luck and well done for taking the initiative