Leaving pharma for teaching, what is the workload really like?

[MammyofTwoB]

I'm thinking of leaving my job (lab analyst at a pharma company) to become a teacher. I've thought about it for a while and been researching the funding and courses etc. I think I'd like to do primary age, or potentially science at secondary. Just wanted some current insider perspective on if they enjoy it and if the workload is too much as I've been reading some older threads and seen stats of people working 50+ hour weeks and bringing lots of work home with them! I'm quite an organisation plan oriented person so dno if that would make a difference!

I would think really carefully about this.
The workload and pressure is insane.

It is a lot of hours but not everyone is exhausted and disillusioned!

Im not a teacher but have loads of teacher and TA friends both primary and secondary

A friend recently moved from primary to become a maths secondary state-school teacher as she wanted a new challenge and to go full time. And she enjoys her new job. She likes the long holidays, and being able to escape from work at 4pm to dash off to the theatre using her Blue Light card!

You don’t become a teacher for an easy ride though it is rewarding sometimes.

Take a couple of days off and go into a local school to spend a couple of days shadowing teachers.

Believe everything you read on those threads. Every career changer thinks they will be different - more organised, bringing their transferable skills with them - and every single one will be shocked to find everything they heard was true.

Lucy Kelloway set up Now Teach and only survived by going part time. 50 hours a week is absolutely standard for a full time teacher.
Exclusive: Teaching full-time ‘unendurably hard’, says Lucy Kellaway | Tes Magazine

I'm not saying don't do it - it can be a meaningful and rewarding career. But don't assume you are in some way different to all the people who complain about it. The workload is just endless and there is so much to get on top of before you even start to feel competent. And you will be micro-managed by people with much less management experience than you, and find that all your pre-teaching accomplishments count for nothing!

I am in primary and 50 hour week is the bare minimum before the school adds events, parents meetings, trips etc. There is just so much to do. I quite often bring home work and once I have put the DC to bed I get the laptop back out! I now have extra responsibilities which means I get some time out of class, but it doesn’t give me enough time to fulfil them. I’m very organised and I think anyone that’s not would struggle in this job. I would think very carefully about this choice, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

There’s absolutely no way I’d do this.

I always see these posts about 50 hour weeks and getting laptop out after kids are in bed but many many of us work these hours and do exactly the same, and we don’t get 14 weeks holiday (I realise that many teachers will be working during holidays but surely it all balances out?) I work in the city and those hours and working pattern are absolutely normal.

Ha. I left teaching to go back to IT and the workload is incomparable. I stop work at the end of my day and I don’t think about it till the next work day. My weekends are my own time, as are my holidays. Don’t believe people when they say that teachers have long holidays - I would always be working at home the majority of every half term, at least half of Christmas and holidays as well as during the summer. Often because the exam syllabus had changed, or the curriculum had changed, or many other things that were beyond much control. Then of course there was marking coursework/mock exams in the run up to exam season. Teachers tend to be organised and plan oriented people, not that it makes a difference.

You spend evenings thinking about the next day’s teaching, weekends thinking about the next week, and so on. Then you’ve got parents evenings, open evenings, after school clubs…. If you have any responsibility beyond your own teaching then that’s another layer on top. Etc etc.

Can I ask why you want to leave your job?

Exactly this. DH leaves the house at 6am and is rarely home before 6:30pm, his job is incredibly stressful (construction) and he earns about as much as an experienced teacher, but with a much less generous pension and no extended holidays.

I respect teachers, would never want to be one myself, but there are plenty of stressful careers out there that don’t pay as well/any better, and don’t have the same benefits attached.

Don’t do it mate honestly it’s insane hours

I don’t think anyone is saying that teaching is uniquely challenging? They are just describing what their experience is, as the OP asked. Presumably in comparison to her current standard office hours job. She’s not asking about a move into the construction industry.

I’m currently staying for a week with my son and Dil. Dil’s unpaid out of school hours work load is ridiculous . For example yesterday was parents evening. She didn’t arrive home till 9pm after being out of the house from 7am.

She has too many days that the Head expects the staff to stay late for meetings etc. She leaves the house at 7am for her 20 min drive to work to get ahead of her day.

When they come to visit me for a weekend she arrives with her laptop and a pile of marking. Her days off are anything but a day off. Sorry to be a killjoy OP but she regrets her career choice and after 18 years of it is considering other options.

As others have said - there are many, many stressful and demanding careers and teaching is just one of them. But it's common for people outside teaching to assume teachers are just whingers. And it is almost always a shock for those who career change to realise that everything teachers have told them is absolutely true.

I think it's hard to understand the sheer intensity of the teaching day (when you are trying to meet the needs of 30 very different and often demanding individuals) and then the volume and complexity of the workload outside the teaching day. Plus, being accountable for progress which is impacted by factors you have no control over and working to implement multiple policies, some of which seem utterly pointless.

Plus, if you are in the city you may be rather better paid than the average teacher? Though obviously there are many stressful careers which are not well paid.

@SilenceInside our company has been bought by a different company and it's all up in the air about what will happen to our current job/benefits. We're also very over the top GMP and heavily micromanaged. I'm more on the side of waiting it out and seeing what happens now after reading everyone's experiences 😅 I do enjoy that I leave my work at work when I finish and am currently part time while my kids are still little

@MammyofTwoB wait and see sounds sensible. I didn’t find teaching to be compatible with small children, for me. I went back part time but tbh I was still working the same amount of time I was before, just trying to fit it in around activities and naps with my little one. I was still expected to do as many after school things as before even though I was 3 days a week.

What age primary would you ideally want? There’s a huge difference between a class of 5 year olds and a class of 10/11 year olds - the older class come with a higher workload (but not by too much), and the younger kids come with a host of their own problems.

Personally I only want to deal with the older ones, as the kids have bedded into school life and routines, the parents are a little less intense than in younger years and you’re left alone a bit more. I used to want to go into teaching older kids, but the secondary school hasn’t had the same appeal to me over the last 15 years or so as teenagers have become more unruly.

The holidays are great though, and honestly all of my teaching colleagues get a real break for them, particularly at Christmas (in primary school, most of December is “fun” time and there’s honestly not a lot of work being done so even though we’re present as teachers, it feels less like being at work) and the summer. Half terms are less of a break, but it’s still usually possible to take 3 or 4 days for myself.

I would say that it's a young person's job purely because of the amount of energy you need to meet the workload and additional responsibilities. It's really is non stop and new ideas, energetic, enthusiastic new teachers are fantastic. Just what every school needs.

However, by time you reach probably mid 50s it can be exhausting and many leave before they even reach that age. The demands are relentless but it has it's rewards in other ways.

Trigger warning: Suicide, bullying, PTSD.

As a primary school teacher, my husband and I worked around 12 hours Mon-Fri plus 4-5 hours on a Sunday. We were usually too tired to do much with my stepdaughter. There was no flexibility for going to things for her that fell in the school day, like assemblies or nativities. We were constantly scrutinised and criticised. Whatever you do is not good enough and everything is your fault. Bullying is rife. In my first post, I was bullied so badly that I tried to unalive myself. We found ourselves overreacting to small things. My husband once cried because he ordered a chicken tikka masala and got chicken tikka. He was just that exhausted and anxious. I fantasised that the bus would crash on the way to work and I'd suffer a horrible injury that would keep me off work for a few months. Eventually I had a breakdown and was signed off for 3 weeks.

I quit when my daughter was born, my husband stayed. When I had a severe medical emergency and had just been discharged from hospital and my daughter was also sick, my husband was refused one day of compassionate leave to help us. Then he dealt with severe bullying from his Head (who was later dismissed for bullying several other people too). She started monitoring my social media and questioning him about things on there. She forced him to call me and tell me to take down a post where I was seeking a removals company because we were moving house. She told him I was toxic and he should leave me.

We both had symptoms of PTSD but are now mostly recovered unless we encounter a trigger.

There are no holidays. There is unpaid time off which you spend planning, marking and doing paperwork.

Oh, if it were only 50 hours a week.

Yes, I know there are other people who also work 60 hours a week.

We're also very over the top GMP and heavily micromanaged

Not sure what 'over the top GMP' is, but if you are looking to escape being "heavily micro managed" the DO NOT go into Primary teaching. Seriously. Teachers are not allowed to use their knowledge and experience to make judgements any more.

Plus you have to deal with SO much crap and criticism and complaints from parents who cannot grasp their dc is only one of the 30 you are working with all day.
Plus, the amount of children with really significant SEND that are just dumped into mainstream schools now mean you are likely to have a child in every class who is non-verbal, non toilet trained, unable to follow instructions, and is really getting nothing out of being there but takes up an inordinate amount of your time.
You have to justify everything, including things over which you have no influence, such as the limited progress made by dc with parents who are not capable of parents, dc who are hungry, dc who are traumatised, etc etc etc.

I have two DC , one is a teacher and one in IT.
The teacher absolutely loves the job but is never "off". Works every evening and weekend, works through at least half the holidays and has extra lessons over lunch every day. He's six years into the job and it's significantly easier than it was.
DC2 works strictly 9 to 5 and is paid more. However he doesn't have a scrap of the job satisfaction the teacher does.
My worry would be, as others have said, in 20 years time when the energy and motivation wane.

seen stats of people working 50+ hour weeks and bringing lots of work home with them! I'm quite an organisation plan oriented person so dno if that would make a difference!

No, it really wouldn't. Honestly - most teachers are organised and good at planning. It's not incompetence or being disorganised that gives us the 50 hour plus week! It's the fact that you are teaching all day and then have all the planning and marking to do in your evenings and weekends.

It’s not just the workload.
The culture in so many schools
is so toxic.
Pettyfogging rules; lack of respect
for skilled professionals, treating staff like children, spiteful co-workers monitoring your every move…
No doubt this culture is a trickledown from the education policies and chronic underfunding, but there is a pretend, shiny,patina of team support underpinned by spite, jealousy, exhaustion and non support from
the senior ‘leaders’ as they call themselves.

Going into a school
as a highly skilled professional used to autonomy and dignity will
be a huge mistake.

I left Pharma to become a secondary school teacher. The 1st year was tough as I was getting used to things and there were a lot of hours.

now I have been doing it for a few years the hours have decreased and it is no more than when I was working in industry.

the parents on the other hand are another matter, they can be an absolute nightmare.

I did this a few years back and it put me off completely! So OP needs to do this as part of her deciding.

A lot of workplaces have toxic cultures though, hardly unique to teaching.