Leaving teaching - would appreciate some advice.

casparg44

I would suggest that a career in training management or HR would be ideal. I left teaching and went into a training manger job for a care company. I then helped the company become an accredited center and managed the NVQ delivery side. Eventually this took me into funding within the skills funding agency where I have enjoyed a wonderful career. I now work as a freelance trainer. The most fantastic thing about teaching is it can literally take you anywhere. You have so many opportunities ahead of you! Good Luck!

claret_mike

Training roles within the workplace will not be the same as being a teacher.

Yes, you have to plan - but the planning is all done within your working hours. Yes you have to assess but again, done within the working day.

I know the trainers at my workplace, will never be doing anything at a weekend (which will be a massive head start for you) and if they are doing training off site, they are longer days or they stay over with the ability to dine out and stay in hotel - again, not saying that this is a plus for all but it's not like its everyday or every week and when it's in that frequency.

FBaby

No offense intended here, but are you sure the issue is not with how you are managing your job? I have a few friends teachers, both primary and secondary and yes, they are usually still at school until 5pm and occasionally longer, but they don't spend their entire evening doing work. It is a tiring job, but not so much so than equivalent paid jobs and.... you still get the holidays where you might have to do more work, but it is not the equivalent of a full time job every day.

Could you be a perfectionist and doing more than you actually need to, or maybe work a bit slower than your colleagues?

It seems a pity to give up a job you trained for as a second career, that you enjoy, that seems to be right for you because of issues with evening work that could be dealt with. As it has been said already, unless you are prepared to give up your income and responsibility, you will not find a 9 to 5 job that doesn't require at least some thinking about once you get home and could potentially be much more stressful.

DKLS

A teaching qualification can open doors to e-learning and instructional design roles.

Person_one

Look for a job in an independent/private primary.

Yes, you still have to plan and mark, but for a much smaller class of probably less than 10 kids. They don't have to meet the same standards and keep the same records etc. that state schools do, no SATs, no OFSTED etc.

I'm completely opposed to private education on moral grounds, but while they still exist you may as well work there if it suits and you have no objections.

justanopinion

I've seen the suggestions and as someone who works in corporate HR I just thought I would dispel the notion of it being 9 - 5 and no stress. It could be, but you would be stuck at about 22k.

HR is stressful. Running back to back redundancy meetings (I've done 8 in a day before, on the hour, each hour) takes its toll. You may be able to leave work at six -ish, but you will spend all night thinking. Unless you're super good at switching off.

Teaching could have a lot of crossover. At a more junior level in advisory roles a lot is about educating and helping manager's through processes. If you can deal with children and repeating the same thing 20 ways so someone understands, HR may work well. :-)

Also, you would have needed good attention to detail. Teaching will give you this.

Like most careers, starting roles are fought over. You would be lucky to find a basic HR admin role that pays more than 16 -18k. Depends where in the country you are.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

National_Careers_Service

Hi turns30

Well I think the good news is that as a teacher, you have a huge wealth of appealing transferable skills and experiences to draw from and as casparg44 says, the world is potentially your oyster.

If I understand you correctly, it sounds as though you’re hoping to be in a new career by July of this year. If that’s the case, it sounds somewhat as though you may need to think about your transferable skills, how you can “repackage” those and what they will allow you to apply for. The reason I say this is that I’m not sure how plausible it is that you can retrain for something drastically different in the time span that you outline in your post. What do you think?

Other posters have made some great, plausible suggestions in terms of roles that your skillset lend themselves to, such as HR, training roles, teaching assistant (or maybe HLTA?), careers adviser (perhaps in a school setting), education officer for an organisation like the National Trust or museums… What do you think about these ideas? Is there any scope to explore these further? I noticed that you said you’d looked a training role, but the planning and assessing element put you off, but is it the actual planning and assessing, or the time outside of work that is taken up doing this? claret_mike’s comment indicates that this isn’t an issue for trainers where he works, so I’m wondering if you’ve perhaps written this option off too soon. What would you say?

Kind regards

Victoria