I turn off the lights and look across my classroom. After 16 years this really has become my room. The walls are covered in my displays; my field trip photographs. On the desk are my exercise books and my unwashed coffee cup. The room echoes with memories. Laughter, tears, frustration, anger: the whole emotional rollercoaster of life as a teacher. I rub my eyes, which suddenly seem to be watering. Hay fever, I tell myself. And with that, I close the door on Geog2 for the last time.

If anyone had told me five years ago that I would be walking away from a career I loved, I would have said they were crazy. I was that teacher who gave themselves to the job completely; the one who ran the sports teams, organised activity weekends, ski trips, theatre visits and field excursions. I was the guy who invested everything in ensuring that students attained their targets.

While there has been much media attention on those leaving the profession at the extremities of the career spectrum ─ retiring early or leaving teaching after only a year or two ─ there has been less focus on the growing trend of people like me who are leaving at a midpoint in their career and turning their backs on a profession in which they have invested so much.

Leaving early or late in your career is understandable in many ways. NQTs are often twentysomething graduates who don’t yet have a mortgage or dependents and so are free to manoeuvre their career. Likewise, it makes sense that those between the ages of 50 and 59 would choose to go. Having bought their homes at the right times, teachers of this demographic may have paid mortgages off completely. And some financially stricken schools needing to cut staff may even offer severance packages to those in the twilight of their career to encourage them to take early retirement. Combine this incentive with the current workload and accountability demands afflicting the profession and the choice begins to seem not only explainable but inherently logical.

The romance died

But what of those who leave in the midst of a career? It concerns me that so little attention is paid to this group of experienced and committed teachers who feel that they have no choice but to leave the job they love. Rather than focusing on getting people “into teaching”, the government should be looking at why so many dedicated teachers like me are getting out.

Undoubtedly, the 60-hour weeks that I was working were a big part of the problem. They left me perpetually fatigued and rendered my personal life of secondary significance. I was exhausted by the ever-increasing demands of ensuring that all students attained their targets, and the suffocating levels of accountability in which every sub-level of variation had to be identified and any deviation from linear progress explained. Since the word “satisfactory” was banished from the Ofsted dictionary, all focus has been on the need to be seen as “good” or “outstanding”.

This whole situation is undoubtedly exacerbated by increased burden of responsibility being placed on my teaching demographic due to the diminishing pool of both NQTs and more experienced colleagues.

But it was not the accumulation of these factors that really forced me out. My decision to leave came from the fact that, even after somehow struggling to manage the forever changing parameters and achieve the increasing demands, I was still left with that sinking feeling of not doing my job well enough.

Ultimately, in any relationship, if a person does not feel their care and appreciation is reciprocated, the positive feelings can’t last. This demoralising reality is why many people like me are making the decision to join the mass exodus of those leaving the profession.

It is with a heavy heart that I leave a career I once loved. But without reciprocation, love eventually dies ─ and as with any loveless relationship, it is finally time to move on.

Neil Fatkin is a former head of geography

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