Advise on career change into teaching?

@horsedobbin: Teachers being made redundant? Then who is teaching the children, themselves? I sincerely doubt that. If anyone in education is getting hit by government cuts then surely it's the teaching assistants.

Due to a little thing called 'equality', primary schools now have to boost their number of male teachers in the coming years. So provided I'm good at it, I think I should be alright.

I know a lot of primary school teachers and from what they all say to me, OP you are correct. If you are a guy you will get a job easily. There is a massive shortfall of male teachers, and guys will get enrolled on courses at unis & employed at schools much more easily than an often better qualified girl.

I believe I am right in saying that placements are blocks, so you will have teaching for X weeks, then placement for Y weeks etc.

And you definitely need experience as a TA for a week or 2 before applying.

The first year or two once you are qualified is a bit of a nightmare because of all the planning, but obviously you can recycle much of this from year to year, so it gets easier with time.

I often work with a few teachers at weekends doing corporate work, and they seem to have most of the weekend free to do what they want, and in this instance that is earn some extra cash. But equally others I know are propered knackered after such a full on week, and spend a bit of the weekend planning.

If you work at a good school, then I can imagine it'll be no problem and that it'll be a real enjoyable job.

But should you only be able to find a job at a bad school, it will be a very difficult job. A friend teaches 5 year olds in a **** area and has kids punch, kick & headbutt her all the time. The parents aren't interested, and blame & even threaten the school & staff. She's working there in the hope that it'll look good on her CV and prove she can deal with even the worst kids, in the hope of getting a job at a better school that she will enjoy.

Good luck with it, if thats what you really want to do. Its never to late to change career. I've just switched career at 24, no point living with regrets!

Well sorry you haven't read the news yet, so have a look at this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/13/schools-make-fifth-staff-redundant

teachers are being layed off , class sizes will get bigger and more classses will be taught by minimum waged cover supervisers with no qualificatons

hey, but go ahead and follow your dream

edit
and there are plenty of unemployed teachers out there for you to enjoy competing with
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6059576

so why do you think all the male unemployed teachers aren't queuing up to work in primary?

I think your article may be more relavent to senior school teachers?

The vocational subject teachers esp, as the way the league tables work for GCSE's is changing, so schools are now going to have to push traditional subjects more.

So I would of thought although vocational subject teachers will decrease, the number of traditional subject teachers will inevitably have to increase to counteract the increase in students sitting these subjects?

I wouldn't of thought these changes would have a drastic affect on primary school teachers. Unless a mass of vocational teachers made redundant requalify to teach primary school kids?

But I am not in the teaching profession, so this is just my interpretation.

well for your information, any qualified teacher with a teaching qualification that is accepted in the uk can teach in a primary school if the school wants them. There is no legal rquirement for them to retrain fro primary.
So why do you think male unemployed UK teachers are not queuing up to teach in primary or doing voluntary work in primary to make themselves more attractive to primary schools?

A few facts to contradict the argument that too many teachers are being trained:
1. There are 37,000 trainee teachers this year.
2. 80 per cent are studying on university PGCE courses.
3. Only 2 per cent will enter teaching through the Teach First scheme.
4. This year’s Good Teacher Training Guide reported that just 71 per cent of teacher trainees in 2008/09 were in any kind of teaching six months later.

The 71% mentioned above covers those who drop out during the course or are removed as teaching is not suitable for them. The evidence clearly shows that large numbers of trainee's are needed each year to replace those lost to the profession. A quick calculation of 71% of the 80% of the 37,000 comes to over 21,000 trainee teachers NEEDED just to maintain the status quo each year.

The idea that somehow teacher training is producing an endless over-supply of teachers is simply a myth and not supported by evidence. End of story. This anti-teacher-training propaganda is part of Michael Goves attempt to transfer the training of teachers from university PGCE's to school based programmes. He wants to close university education departments & cannot do this while using current actual evidence.

Having seen the myths created around the civil service involving over-paid, under-worked staff with gold plated pensions before the ConDem's sacked 500,000 civil servants; I just hope the public are getting wise to the tactics about to be employed in the education sector!

More current evidence.
1. The TDA are very good at planning how many teachers are required each year and only fund that number of places for ITE providers one year in advance.
2. Every week in the TES employment section there ARE jobs. There are 258 this week on a rather 'slow' week.

By the way the TDA are on Mr.Goves Quango-hit-list and if they are assassinated like the GTC it really will be the Wild West in terms of training teachers..........................Who'll ensure quality? Will a teacher in trained in school A be accepted for a job in school B? Who'll match demand to supply, especially in shortage subjects like Maths & Physics? If markets are allowed to dictate 'price' will we see the 'price' of Maths & Physics teachers rise due to a current shortage or the 'price' of English teachers fall due to a glut? (Education is not & never has been a market; the sooner our politicians realise this the better for all of us.)

Firstly thank you to everyone who has offered up help and advice, it is greatly appreciated.

Horsedobbin - thanks for the articles, however if the content is true, can I ask why on any given day when I'm watching TV will I without fail see the TDA teacher adverts? Surely if there are already enough teachers to go around, they wouldn't keep advertising?

Also, on your second link I read all the comments at the bottom of the article and would just like to highlight this:



Is this wrong then in your opinion?