So, you want to get out of teaching?

I taught in a variety of schools in London for twenty-five years, from ‘bog standard’ comprehensives to academies, and then in the independent sector too. I loved the job much of the time and, by many metrics – whatever they’re worth – was deemed good at it. Children (mostly) seemed to like being in my classes, and did well. Parents (mostly) appreciated my approach, and school leaders were (mostly) very satisfied with the job that I did and the results that I was able to help young people achieve, many of whom did better than they expected, and found themselves enjoying a subject (Mathematics) that they had previously found hard. For the latter part of my career, I was a Head of Department, and those in my team (mostly) appreciated the way that I sought to lead the teams I was a part of.

I say this because I think it is important to note that I could be seen to be a successful teacher, a ‘good’ teacher… and yet I also found that, after a good number of years at the chalk face, I wanted to get out of teaching. I wanted to do something different. It is important, because there is a quiet but prevalent opinion that people want to ‘escape’ teaching because they aren’t good at it, or can’t cope with the demands of it. These things may be true, but if they are, it is irrelevant. People go into teaching; people want to leave teaching. And it ought to be possible to exit gracefully and without too much friction. This is often not the case. Those who want to leave can be seen as somehow letting the team down, or committing some act of heresy by – god forbid – letting children down. This is nonsense. For most, teaching is a job, not a religious vocation. I do not want everyone to get out of teaching, but I do think that – if people feel that they want to – the path out should be better signposted.

I did not find this to be the case. Indeed, judging by the number of people who have asked me, ‘how the hell did you manage to get out?!’, it would seem that many people feel somewhat trapped. They are teachers. Their identity is fixed. They are stuck as teachers. They would like to do something else, but have no idea how to make that transition.

This is what this short guide looks to do: offer some practical steps for those who are thinking that they might want to move into a different career. But I hope it does more than that. I hope that it also serves to help people who are thinking of leaving reflect on where specifically that desire is rooted, and whether there might be things that can be changed at the internal level that mean that they can remain, rather than having to leave entirely. The grass is not always greener; teaching has some wonderful benefits, and moving into another sector might not be the panacea that it might seem when it’s bottom set Year 9 last thing on a Friday, again. Moreover, with the unfolding world of AI bringing major pressures on so many areas of the labour market, it may be that teaching is a ‘safer’ career in a world beset by automation risk. So I hope that some will read this guide and decide to stay.

For around sixteen of the twenty-five years that I was a teacher, I was also a workplace representative for a major teaching union. For the majority of this time, I juggled a full-time teaching load with some national responsibilities too. I thoroughly enjoyed this work, and it gave me a deeper perspective on some of the wider issues in education beyond those being experienced in my local school. It also afforded me the chance to speak to many, many teachers, school leaders, teaching assistants, support staff, catering staff and facilities staff about their experiences and – too often, sadly – the issues that they were having with their work.

It is clear from these years of listening and trying to advocate for people that schools are not always brilliantly led, and that people with great expertise are often treated poorly. So you may feel that you want to get out of teaching, not because you have struggled with performance, or no longer love the role, but are fed up with the system within which you are required to work. I absolutely understand this feeling. But it is also important to note that, while education is a sector under great stress, often with people in leadership who are not always brilliant at what they do, these problems are very present in other sectors too. Leaving teaching and moving to another sector may not mean leaving workplace stress behind.

My work at this national level also gave me some perspective on the systemic issues that face the profession. Drives to recruit more teachers to fill shortages are not working as much as policymakers would like. So I hope that some will read this book not because they are teachers looking to move on, but because they are interested in some of the reasons why so many teachers are looking to move on – and take some learning from that back into policy discussions and look to make things better.

I have been out of teaching for just under five years now. In my mind, I had wanted to leave and do something different by the time my two children were ‘done’ with secondary school. Both went to the local primary, and on to the local state school. One was fortunate to be accepted – at the age of fourteen – into a state-funded specialist school focused on the creative arts, where he was able to pursue his passion for music. One left one school after GCSEs and went to another local state Sixth Form. Both had brilliant experiences, and tough ones too. Throughout their school careers, I was hugely grateful for all that their teachers sought to do, often in quite difficult circumstances.

As it happened, an opportunity to move on from teaching presented itself before my youngest had left school. In some ways, I am glad about this. One of the reasons that I adored teaching was that it allowed me to spend time with my children as we shared the same school holidays. Leaving while my youngest still enjoyed these meant that I have perhaps been better able to contrast my experience with not sharing these holidays because, I’ll be honest, ninety per cent of the time when people hear that I’ve left teaching, they want to know if I’ve coped with not having the long holidays. (The short answer: yes, and especially when I’ve taken a week’s holiday in late September, or been able to take the odd day off on a whim. The longer answer: yes, but… damn, the holidays really are a wonderful perk.)

As a final piece about me, much of the work I do now is focused on how the UK labour market is changing. I thus spend quite a lot of time thinking about people experiencing work transitions, and what kinds of ‘frictions’ they might experience. I have had the privilege of working in teams researching careers guidance and how people move from job to job. That has meant talking to people involved in the front line of these things, and listening to experts who had spent even longer trying to understand the issues in play when people look to switch careers, and the reskilling and upskilling questions that that might raise.