Once upon a time, I believed that nobody under 30 should be allowed to become a teacher. As a late entrant to the profession, I knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that the qualities I brought to the role were far superior to those of the 22- and 23-year-olds coming straight out of university and into the classroom.

How could they know about the group dynamics that exist when large numbers of similar people are thrust into a confined space? How could they project the same gravitas in a lesson as I did when things started to take a turn for the worse? And where was the worldly knowledge to put their lessons into a global context and connect their learnings to their own lives, now and far into the future?

Luckily, over time, my conceit has gone. Having seen many NQTs through their probationary year, employing as many as I could at the end - and having given jobs to a large number of new and upcoming teachers in their early and late twenties - I’ve come to value the hugely important addition they are to our profession. Their enthusiasm and willingness to learn - as well as their love of young people and the overarching desire to see them succeed - has been a revelation. Often, it is a tribute to the training, both in and out of school, that they have received at the start of their career.

Even so, as somebody who didn’t realise that they wanted to become a teacher until their early thirties, I still think there are many transferable skills from the world of work that can be applied in the classroom. Just now, with many sectors of the economy suffering the fallout from the coronavirus, there is also increased potential for a number of late-entry career changers to add new blood to the profession. So what are the best jobs to precede a career in education?

To prepare for the life of bureaucracy and meetings that awaits them, there can be no better training ground than a spell in the civil service, or another governmental or supra-governmental organisation such as the United Nations. These organisations thrive on the need to push paper around and ensure employees spend a fair proportion of their time sitting on their bottoms.

In my twenties, I had the pleasure of working for an executive agency of the civil service, and it was here that I honed my report-writing skills - especially the requirement to succinctly summarise complex problems. There are less engaging aspects to such jobs - unless you fancy being invited to endless meetings with circular discussions and neverending action points. One spectacular spring morning, while on secondment to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, among the pile of papers routinely delivered to my in-tray were the minutes of the seventh meeting of the Committee to Decide the Format of Meetings - I kid you not. If only I had been quicker to the photocopier, this Yes Minister moment could have been preserved forever.

On a positive note, the competition that’s inherent in the annual bun fight for limited government funding means that any ex-civil servant will have excellent project-proposal skills. They will, for instance, be able to tailor applications to Awards for All or local trust funds in the exact format required to gain the extracurricular money needed to survive in these times of austerity.

Newsroom to classroom

On the subject of paperwork, a spell as a journalist - particularly a sub-editor - will do wonders for the pedantic way you need to approach the essays of your pupils and, of course, the emails you receive from your colleagues. After a stint correcting copy for newspapers produced in a rush by an overworked news desk, you will be ideally placed to spot the difference between “practice” and “practise”, to criticise poorly constructed sentences and to gaze in awe at email diktats consisting of one long paragraph, random capitalisation and no thought at all for the 10 seconds or so it would take to run it through a spellchecker before pressing “send”.

While normally considered the province of English teachers, the journalist’s ability to spot an out-of-place apostrophe and - crucially - justify why a correction is needed to maintain standards (and to slow the inevitable fall of western civilisation), is a hard-earned skill that would be invaluable for anyone working in a classroom.

If a journalist becomes an English teacher, that is an obvious example of employment skills being transferred in a subject-specific manner, but there are many others: geologists and town planners becoming geography teachers; archaeologists moving into history; and chefs into home economics. The knowledge of research techniques passed on by science graduates will be a boost to physics pupils working on projects, and it is rare indeed to find a technologies teacher who has failed to spend some time at least learning the ropes in industry.

There are plenty more generic skills that can be gained from employment outside of education that can then be utilised to great effect in the classroom, when it comes to, say, planning, motivation of your pupils and bouncing back after a bad day.

In past times, an inordinate number of ex-army and police officers ended up as PE teachers. Using the bark they had perfected on the training ground (and, occasionally, some techniques for compliance that would probably not now be legal), they would try to whip pupils into good enough shape to win battles. Strict disciplinarians still have a role to play in classroom management, of course, but more than one has come unstuck after realising that organising a class of 30 reluctant young teens can be considerably more difficult than bossing around a squadron of more compliant older youths who have made a career choice to be there.

Many other skills developed throughout their time in the forces may prepare them to become teachers, though - anything from navigational skills in geography to engineering skills for technical lessons. In one case I know of, an intimate knowledge of the impact of different ballistics on entry and exit holes to the human body came in handy for a slightly wacky physics teacher.

Laying down the law

Former lawyers who have taken a significant pay cut for a more worthwhile and, dare I say, morally acceptable profession, bring their debating powers to the fore in a number of school contexts.

There is obviously a need for such skills in the English department but, as we all know, any teacher will spend a large part of their day discussing, cajoling and persuading young minds to do their bidding. There’s no harsher jury in the land than an S3 class on a windy Wednesday afternoon; anyone who has got a guilty party off on a murder charge will find that scenario pretty easy by comparison.

Other, more caring professionals such as medics and nurses may find their sympathetic nature helps enormously when dealing with vulnerable children. In other situations, the ability to cope with overwhelming pressure will come to the fore - during exams season, they may experience some déjà vu of the relentless 10-hour sessions worked in intensive care units; recently, two medical students on an education tourism sabbatical told me they had found the latter less exhausting than six hours in front of our classes.

Actors and other performers will already have the ability to play different roles and inhabit characters for short periods of time. Those who’ve been involved in a one-person show may be best equipped for the fast pace and ever-changing nature of the classroom.

Finally, the meticulous attention to detail and friendly interest of hairdressers will be a boon to any teaching role - a skill shared perhaps by chefs, plumbers, joiners and electricians, among others. And the techniques used by taxi drivers to learn facts and deepen their knowledge will be a great boost to pupils preparing for exams.

The list of skills and aptitudes that teachers employ is enormous: organisation, people management, diplomacy and tact (sometimes), meeting deadlines, performance art, subject knowledge, persuasion, kindness, patience and more. While many can be transferred from previous employment, this is only half the picture. As time has passed, I’ve come to realise there is no substitute for time spent working in schools.

Teaching is context-specific and - whether we come to it straight out of university or by a more circuitous route - it requires, above all, commitment to the cause and a realisation that every day is a learning day. That, perhaps, is the greatest teaching skill of all.

John Rutter is headteacher at Inverness High School

This article originally appeared in the 4 December 2020 issue under the headline “Paper pushers and pedants welcome…”