Considering moving into teaching aged 45, how realistic and salary projections?

[BritBratGrot]

Hi, I'm a chemistry graduate and PhD. I moved into data and currently have a reasonably senior job heading a data science type team, £80k salary.

On one hand I love many aspects of my job: the technical wrangling, the people including my team, the serving my stakeholders with useful data products.

However I'm also a) bored b) frustrated I am never resourced properly and c) feel undervalued and unappreciated by the top bods who I've not managed to convince of the value my team brings and how much of the team's output outs driven by me personally - my team are all lovely but have significant personal or capability issues so I'm getting nowhere near as much out of them as I'd ideally like to given the headcount.

Anyway I am sensing redundancy in the next few months and I'm beginning to daydream about changing my career. I've always fancied teaching science but it's never been the right time to move and take a paycut. However maybe the time has arrived.

I'm not sure which teaching scheme would fit me best, open to ideas. Also if my starting salary is around £32K, given all my management and senior leadership, strategy etc experience, how might my salary be expected to progress?

I used to tutor gcse while I was studying and loved it, and I'm also a volunteer teacher in my (outing 😂) hobby, so I've got a good amount of reason and confidence for thinking I'd be good at it and more importantly enjoy it.

I'm am energetic and very positive 45. I know everyone is leaving teaching at the moment but could I do this?

It would be a huge mistake. IMHO. Every problem you have now would be magnified 100 times. Big mistake big. Don't do it.

I’d never recommend teaching to anyone. However, you sound lovely and enthusiastic and going into it for the right reasons, I’d like my kids to have a science teacher like you.

I think most of us don't think it's the right reasons!

You might enjoy it for a few years. Teaching has wonderful aspects to it, and there is an energy you get from working with young people that cannot be replicated in any other sector. It’s magic.

BUT…I can almost guarantee you that within a couple of years you’ll be frustrated, exhausted and burnt out and wonder why you ever gave up a cushty 80k a year gig.

Not even most SLT in a large London secondary school are on your salary. And for the money, you are worked like a horse.
I work 7am-6pm Mon-Fri on a normal week (that doesn’t include endless ‘special’ evening events!) I don’t get school holidays (52 week contract) I still have teaching hours, I take work home.

Teaching itself isnt just ‘teaching’ anymore. Get into a school for a few weeks and see for yourself.

This is spot on

Aargh! PROSPECTIVE!

I didn't see that autocorrect slip in.

The right reasons?! She's going into it because she thinks she'll escape being under resourced and under appreciated, when in reality she'd be leaping out of the frying pan into a massive great fire.

I'd try another company first before halving your salary and doubling your hours 😅 or look around for jobs you might have transferable skills for like project management. Teaching will still be there in 1 or 2 years.

Keep your current job or one like it and approved a school near you to start a chemistry club or something. Then you can dabble in education and only deal with kids who actually want to be there.

I've just left education and would never advise anyone to do it. There is no respect you will be assaulted many times a day. Kids are never wrong their parents will make sure you know this. Over run with additional needs and little to no support

Well, good to see you already have experience of under resourcing!
I would advise against - for the multitude of reasons already outlined by others.
But, if you're genuinely still considering it - go and do some observations in schools. (I don't know how easy that is to arrange. You would certainly need to be DBS checked).

If you really want to go into some form of education, you’d be better off from a workload and salary perspective as a workplace specialist trainer. You’ll be training people who, usually, want to be there, potentially setting your own training schedule, designing and delivering your own training based upon what a consultant has requested except you can go back to them and correct anything that you, as a subject specialist, feel isn’t appropriate for the training. You’d have to work all year round, but you’ll probably get a reasonable amount of annual leave, and all of your preparation and reflection is done within your paid work hours. Speaking from experience; to me it’s all the best aspects of teaching with very few of the downsides.

Either that, or an apprenticeship tutor. There seems to be an industry shortage but pay is better.

My husband did 15 years in industry and then retrained and has been teaching for 15 years.
He was about 35. He enjoys it and hasn’t regretted it at all. I think with you experience you could soon increase your salary, but even as a faculty lead he’s still earning considerably less than he was in industry. For him it wasn’t about the money, it was a change of lifestyle and having school holidays with our son. From our experience, I would say go for it.

Yes you absolutely could do it. However the the negatives of the job you are in are the same as those teachers share except they are not on a high salary. If money is your object you could aim for head ship but then really is there any point retraining to beca manager? Look at retention stats for teachers, a large proportion who join late leave quickly.
Have you looked at university posts? You should be employable with a PhD. The other attributes you list could mean you would be useful in a Chemistry or business environment. Fellowship is not difficult to achieve. Uni’ teaching offers a mix in one post of teaching, research and income generation. Often a lot of opportunity for travel, if you like it and can be extremely rewarding with many diverse career development opportunities.

You probably won't be bored of teaching....maybe you will become bored with the same complaints, behaviour issues and reinventing of the wheel but you definitely will be undervalued and you will be frustrated by not being resourced properly.

You could not expect to just walk in and be doing the top GCSE streams or A-levels. That's what all the science teachers will want to teach. I taught for many years and think you would have to be absolutely insane to do it at your age. Have a really serious think about why most teachers your age are thinking desperately of retiring. I think if you are an incredibly charismatic young energetic teacher then things might be a little bit easier or at least until the children get used to you. I can assure you that you do not fit into that category given your age! Nothing against you, I'm sure you would do a fantastic job but it really isn't like it was when you were in school.

You need to be a qualified teacher to be paid on the teacher scale. So can you afford to retrain.
Science teachers are in demand - but can you teach all the sciences.

you might be doing y7-9 all sciences.

behaviour is insane.

you are unlikely to progress quickly as you may move one band a year. Yes you have industry experience but telling more experienced teachers how to teach if you have only been a teacher for two or three years it might not go well

i think you would be brilliant, having teachers join from the workplace often brings an extra zing. Get them onboard and you will enjoy the fun at Secondary. You get the holidays off, but so many things going on you can easily opt in to all the things going on.

I won’t lie, funding is never enough so opt for a STEM specialist school and the best one you can find. Check out their policies that they suit you. SKITT training is a year if you have a degree so you learn on the job. Schools are a little more diverse than they were 20 years ago, the wages may take a little whike to creep up. Take your time and learn the ropes, then opt to be a Tutor and you could look towards being a Head of Department or Faculty, Head of Year, SLT in time etc which all adds to your earnings.

Keep a calm, quiet but firm class and where possible get them on side so a “look” is enough and you will be fine.

You need to talk to talk to others who have made a career change into teaching, and make sure you spend some time in school (which will help your teacher training application also).
Teaching is undoubtedly underpaid, busy and can be stressful. But a lot of the time when discussing the negatives of the profession teachers don't have experience themselves in other Professions so can't speak to the comparison.
I volunteered regular hours in a few schools before applying for teacher training which gave me valuable experience and great insight.
I was warned off proceeding by many well meaning teachers - all of which had gone straight from uni to teacher training to teaching. I'd definitely recommend going and seeing for yourself.

A lot of wise things have been said already - despite being a teacher who is happy in her job (mainly due to a move from a very tough London comp to a very well-known independent school, where my working day is pleasant and civilised, on a competitive package), I would agree that the picture being painted is one I have seen and experienced in my 23 years of teaching.
Whilst you will evidently have a lot to offer - particularly in terms of subject knowledge - and will definitely get a job (Science teachers are gold dust), I don’t necessarily agree that promotion (and the associated higher salary) is a given. School leaders are well on that pathway by 35. I have never seen anyone entering teaching at your age who makes it to that kind of level. Head of Subject/Department perhaps (although I strongly believe that this was a key factor when I was overlooked for similar, aged mid/late-40s - a much younger person got it, perhaps because of perceived malleability and energy) - but that would only mean perhaps £5-10k extra per year, once you have reached the top of MPS/UPS (which would take a number of years). SLT is where the big salary jumps occur and I suspect that a 50yo trying to enter that level (after having a handful of years’ teaching under the belt) would not be successful, irrespective of previous qualifications and experience.

Hey OP, I thought i wanted to switch from being my career into teaching. I signed up to be a summer camp coach in my career subject. I managed 4 days then quit. It was the worst work experience ever. I only had 4 kids. I had a migraine for the first 2 days. They were horrible little sh*ts. Age 9 to 11 and not one of them said please or thank you. They had zero interest in learning, did not care for the consequences and were generally entitled horrible kids. I'm glad I tried the coaching experience before committing to teacher training because it made me appreciate my career more and in a new light. Lol

Lots of negative responses here!

I’m going to go against the grain here and say I love teaching! It is FUCKING hard work but incredibly rewarding. The kids are great and I don’t think the pay is all that bad - I’m not in the south east though, so it might be different in a more expensive area.

One MAJOR thing to consider I would say is be careful where you work! As a science teacher you will be in demand so can probably afford to be choosy. I am also on the leadership spine.

I work in “one of those academies” that are very strict but it is what is needed in today’s society! It works because there is very little poor behaviour despite the fact that we are in a very deprived inner city catchment!

Agree. The pay will be 30k to.start with once qualified. . You won't only be teaching chemistry. You will be teaching science to ks3 too. This will include kids who don't want to do science. If you have a good work-life balance at the moment you will have to.kiss goodbye to that.

The pay might seem bad if you were previously on 80k though...

Money isn’t everything. My chemistry teacher had worked in industry and was brilliant.