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!

Who made you the feckin thread police?

High at first for sure, then it settles over the years as long as you don’t get promoted.

i am a teacher and absolutely love it. It isn’t an easy option, you need to want to do the job tbh.

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

Micromanagement is the name of the game in many schools, that and pointless initiatives introduced on a whim and not properly thought through. Not a bug but a feature.

Spot on re FE colleges. This is an extreme example but last year I had 6 EHCPs in a class of 21. And minimal support.

My husband left a job as a software engineer 15 years ago to become a secondary school teacher. He still maintains that his worst day in teaching is nowhere near as bad as his worst day in industry. I would try and do some shadowing first to see what day to day life in a classroom is like.

I recruit to basic admin roles and I cannot tell you how many applications I get from teachers trying to get out of the profession. A lot prepared to take significant salary drops.
if work life balance is important to you I’d think again.

…and really confirms my view that most governors have no idea what actually goes on in a school, yet genuinely believe they do!

Exactly!

Exactly how would you know? The governors at my school wouldn't have a clue what hours I work, particularly as much of it is in snippets at evening and weekends.

OP, primary teaching in particular attracts Type As who are very organised generally. Lack of organisation is not the issue. I actually enjoy my job and think it's reasonably paid for what I put in but I'm benefitting now from years of experience and also know I'm onto a good thing where I am - tiny class sizes for a start - and as such would struggle to move elsewhere and get such a good deal.

I am in a perhaps completely unique position of having been a female builder and primary school teacher (or perhaps there are more of us? I've never met one!). Have you actually done either? Construction was easier in many, many ways and not necessarily much more poorly paid if you're in demand. It's definitely a young person's game though and you're out in all weathers. But let's not pretend a lot of teachers haven't done other jobs and can make comparisons. Many of the posts here have been from teachers who have got out. And not one teacher has suggested teaching is worse than other professions, yet many other posters have brought that up (which actually makes me despair of the comprehension skills of these posters who are supposedly lawyers and the like).

I‘m a teacher of 25 years. I was part time while my dc were primary age, then went back to ft after.
This week was standard, apart from the bank holiday. I worked most evenings for an hour or two plus all day today. I did take Saturday off.
It’s half term in 2 weeks and I’ll work maybe 3 days then.
I tried management and hated it so went back to the classroom.

The workload is not over exaggerated but I think if I was you and had to pick I would be a secondary science teacher over a primary teacher. There is a massive shortage of secondary science teachers and whilst I'm not suggesting secondary workload is any less, I think it might involve less weekend work/random extras. My MIL used to teach at a primary that was co-located with a secondary and it was a well known phenomenon that the secondary car park was empty long before the primary teachers could leave their classrooms. Please be a fun science teacher who does loads of experiments and makes it all come alive for the kids, and come and work at my daughter's lovely secondary school: we need you!

🙄 if you have no experience in what someone is asking advice about....don't post, simple.

I need a lovely secondary school! Where is this!

This!

Listen to this person, that's exactly what the days are like, from the second you arrive until the second you leave.

Almost ten years in to teaching a Humanities subject in secondary after a previous career. I’ve had the hardest year pastorally ever - I’m mentoring a student going through an impossibly difficult time, all the agencies involved etc. I wouldn’t go back for anything.

Teaching is either for you or it’s not and if you have even an inkling that it might be for you then I think you should do it. Do observations first, but I didn’t look back. PGCE and ECT 1 year are the steepest learning curve but the workload becomes more manageable after that. One does have to draw the line - not every lesson of every day can be perfect, you have to choose which class gets your focus.

One also needs to be prepared to look around to find the right cultural fit. That said, I sure as hell never had colleagues wanting to fist bump me everytime they walk past nor did I ever have someone crochet me a watermelon key ring simply because I said crochet was cool.

Don’t do it. Teacher of thirteen years. Makes me sad to say but big changes need to be made to make education a happy space for students and teachers alike.

How can children thrive when their teachers are pressured and harassed and overworked? We can’t help but pass some of that on to our students and the whole place becomes toxic. Honestly, it’s terrible.

For context.

I have been a primary school teacher for 33 years (so very experienced)…I’ve recently (since I turned 60) cut down to 3 days…and can only now have a ‘day off’ at the weekend. Workload is INSANE and I’m now averaging around 45-50 hours a week. When I was full time, it was never less than 65 hours a week.

Just to make you ‘laugh’…my pay slip tells me I’m getting paid now for 19.5 hours 😵‍💫😬. Full time pay slips say 32 hours…it’s a complete joke! 🤬

I changed career to primary teaching in my early 40s and it is a different kind of pressure to any other job I’ve done (mostly retail and arts management with lots of budgets, deadlines, tricky customers and late nights).

Part of the pressure comes from having a role that everyone has an opinion on and the feeling that you can never quite be good enough, especially with increased academic expectations, frequent observations and feedback alongside reduced budgets and support, while children with SEND and behavioural issues increase year on year. Not to mention the frequently changing goalposts in relation to Ofsted or school priorities.

The other pressure of course comes from the responsibility of keeping 30 children safe and happy while making progress. You spend so much time thinking about them, trying to figure out how to meet these multiple needs and inspire a love of learning. All while searching for lost jumpers and water bottles. When it goes right, there is little more satisfying feeling. When it doesn’t - the opposite.

I work almost every evening and weekend to get the job done to the standard I want to achieve. I do see teachers who feel able to do more of a bare minimum and do not seem to take work home or bother to think deeply about lesson planning. I am not sure what motivates them and I find it hard to understand.

My own children have come to see that during term time, I can’t be there for every event and have to work very hard, but the holidays are the payoff. For the first few years, I worked a lot in the hols but that has improved with time.

I trained via School Direct salaried route and worked for a year as a TA first. It was hard financially for those two years but then jumped up fairly quickly.

Oh and one thing I hadn’t realised is that there seems to be an expectation of progression - middle leadership roles, further study and so on. I hadn’t anticipated that aspect. I don’t know if that’s every school though.

To summarise, it’s a very personal job and I love it while finding it very frustrating and often unpredictable. To me, the more you put in, the more you get out - but you have to be careful not to give so much you burn out. Good luck!

Primary and Secondary are very different animals. I think you need to think about it carefully and go into schools to shadow some teachers.