After leaving the classroom last year (and recently returning), I want to share the things I learnt from my time away.

What I learnt about….money

Teachers pay is below the average of other public sector workers. The best example is in comparing the pay of doctors and teachers. On the issue of pay, the current minimum starting salary for a junior doctor will be £27,000 with some earning up to £40,000 owing to salary supplements. Eventually, doctors can earn up to £69,000.

NQTs outside of London will start on £22,000. For the teacher with no desire to take on extra responsibilities, the most they can expect to earn at any point in their career might be between £34,000 and £37,000.

When I was considering leaving teaching, I worked out that my hourly rate of pay was £9, a fee I could expect to earn stacking shelves at Tesco. Not only that, my wage was being decimated by tax. With the first £11,000 of earnings tax free, earning less money would mean paying (much) less tax.

Of course, many who leave teaching want to find jobs on a similar or better salary level, and here is the flip side. When scouring job agency sites, there are plenty of jobs. But, the best ones attract hundreds of candidates. The Channel 4 programme The Interview is a fair reflection of a job market congested to saturation point in many sectors.

If you do want to leave, you will need to assess what you want and what you need. What kind of lifestyle are you after? If you are planning to leave for a better quality of life, then with that, it’s likely you will need to take a substantial paycut, at least in the short term. Can you deal with value baked beans and less “going out”?

In saying all that, there are jobs out there “around” education but outside the classroom, and not just for uber consultants.

Take my friend Colin, a science head of department in South Wales, who swiftly moved into a comparable job working for the Welsh government developing science curriculum resources. Further to this, my other friend Anna, who left her job as a biology teacher after her NQT year and is now training to be a midwife. Museums around the UK employ education managers and resource developers; these are relatively well-paid jobs and offer some career progression too.

My story involves setting up a business. If you have a passion, you could turn it into one too. Do you love gardening? Set up your own gardening venture. Do you love art and crafts? Set up an online store on Etsy and start selling your wares.

Do you enjoy training other teachers? Create your own online courses for teachers worldwide. The Chamber of Commerce has a small business grant scheme which is relatively easy to access. In addition, the government backed start-up company offers loans of between £3,000 and £25,000 at very low repayment rates for those with “bigger ideas”. These loans are even on offer for those with low credit scores.

Setting up a business does provide the autonomy that many teachers crave. But equally, its not all a bed of roses. Working for yourself is hard graft and can be a lonely path. My advice would be to read the book The $100 Start-up. If anything, it will deepen you’re understanding of what a “lifestyle business” really is.

I am speaking on this very topic in November, alongside Russel Tarr, at Practical Pedagogies 2016. Perhaps I will see you there?

What I learnt about… children

The thrill of working with young people is a tough rush to replace. When you are literally working at the cutting edge of developing future generations, its hard to imagine a scenario where you would be doing something as fulfilling.

My good friend John left his role as an administrator in a pensions company to become a maths teacher at the age of 25, four years after finishing his degree in law. It was the monotonous boredom and pointlessness of his work that inspired him to trade the office for the classroom. Since then, he hasn’t looked back and is now a head of department at 32.

He always says: “I’m never bored in teaching - I’m never looking at the clock”. The sense of belonging to something bigger is the key draw, in my view, of wanting to remain working in schools and even more so a classroom teacher. The sense of making a difference that is so hard to capture elsewhere.

The flipside to this “thrill”, of course, is the energy and commitment involved in managing student behaviour. If you work at the cutting edge, then there will be days when you come home exhausted, just from simply dealing with the myriad of behaviours that have presented themselves to you on that given day, forgetting about the other demands. At that point, and especially if you have a significant other or children, you are called upon to be a pleasant and functional human being.

The “performance” element of excellent teaching shouldn’t be overlooked for its unique demands. Imagine a West End actor being asked to perform five or six matinees in a day. I recently read a tweet by Michael Tidd where he said teachers suffer from the disease of seeing themselves as different from others. Yes - I think teachers do.

But I also think this is understandable given the nature of teaching as a “job”. Is it a job or a life? Perhaps outside of the UK, in other countries, it remains a job. But in the UK, I’m not so sure it hasn’t taken on a whole new meaning. Hence the record numbers of teachers seeking to leave. Read Mike Stuchbery’s recent pen portrait for an insight into feelings felt by many on this.

So, if you leave, you’re (probably) going to miss the kids. But, will that keep you in?

What I learnt about…myself

I recently penned this blog about my experience of leaving and then re-entering the classroom here in Spain. My conclusion from spending time in and out of the classroom (pre-teaching, I worked a number of office and call centre based jobs) is that teaching is, hands down, the best job in the world. Let me rephrase, it could be the best job in the world.

The fundamentals will always give it that potential; the opportunity to pass something on, the chemistry of the classroom and when a young mind sparks to life. It’s the interference of human kind in these facets that have altered the cosmos.

So, for me, “the leaving” gave me time to consider the reality of it all. To gain some perspective. On how teaching had fit in with my life and how I wanted it to in the future.

That’s why I think teacher sabbaticals are such a good idea and why I think it would be great to hear more education influencers plugging their virtues. So far, government have been pretty hush hush on them, which is a real shame. I feel they could be a key component in any strategy on teacher retention.

What would you learn from leaving? I guarantee something. It might make you a better teacher. Consider asking your head for a year of unpaid personal development time. I know at least five former colleagues who have benefited from this and they are all still in the classroom now.

Making a decision on staying or leaving can take months and even years. Take that time and weigh it up. In a few weeks, I’m going to hopefully share some useful tools for supporting you in making the best decision for yourself. 

Tom Rogers runs rogershistory.com and tweets at @RogersHistory

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