My Last Blog as a PE Teacher

If you have known and engaged with me on Twitter or in person over the last 11 years, the content of this blog will come as a great surprise. However, I can confirm this is my last year as a teacher and middle leader, following my resignation at the start of March.

I am using this blog to verbalise my thoughts around the process that has got me here. I hope it will provide some answers to people questioning why I am doing what I am doing.

The journey to resignation was surprisingly quick. In fact, only 9 months ago I wrote a blog titled “my first year as head of PE” and included the line “I have never been so happy in my job as I am now.”

So what the hell happened?

  1. My daughter changed everything

at the time of writing that blog in June 2022, my daughter was 7 months old and my wife was just finishing up maternity leave. It wasn’t until she returned to work as a teacher in September that we really began to get to grips with our new life as parents that teach. It was around this time when we began questioning whether, in the long run, this was the lifestyle we wanted for our family. The inflexibility of teaching was a bugbear we spoke a lot about, and was something that we both accepted for 10 years before having a child. What might it be like if we had a job that gave complete flexibility? But at this point, it was nothing more than a discussion. What we both knew, however, is that every decision we would make from now on was to make the life for our daughter (and any other future children) the best it could possibly be. Every set of parents will interpret what that means in their own way, but we had a clear idea in our head what it meant for us.

2. My school changed

I have to be careful with this one. This blog is not anonymised and there will be people reading this that are colleagues or even senior leaders at my school. But the title statement above will come as no surprise to any of them – we do not work in the same school anymore.

Several parts of this have been difficult for me to grasp. Increased behaviour challenges. Reduced funding. Greater pastoral commitments as a form tutor. I know these are not unique to my school and are being experienced across most schools right now.

I have always considered myself extremely thick skinned, but for some reason in the first half term of this academic year, stuff was sticking that previously I could brush off without a second thought. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated, cynical and above all negative about where I worked.

This is a place that I have worked for 11 years, holding multiple different faculty and whole school responsibilities. I have loved working here for most of that time and been proud of my school when talking about it to others.

The last 12 months have changed that, and I feel extremely sad to admit it. “Why not just look for another job in a different school?” I hear you ask. Firstly, head of faculty jobs are few and far between. I also have a trust wide TLR. How many years would I be waiting to get an equivalent job in a close location? Alternatively, I step back down to being a PE teacher, which I have no intention of doing.

3. My aspirations changed

Starting something is easy. Launching ideas and being enthusiastic about change is exciting. When I wrote that blog 9 months ago, I was in the midst of an incredible high, looking ahead at the amazing direction I was about to take our faculty.

But some of my plans didn’t work. Or students didn’t take to them as I had hoped. Or logistical problems got in the way. Or excessive cover took us 2 steps back again.

the latter of these was a real turning point as my 2nd in faculty left completely out of the blue. Whilst this blog isn’t about their story, the moment they decided to leave was a significant catalyst in the journey I have embarked upon ever since. I sat across from a brilliant professional telling me they were done with this career and needed to leave immediately, with no plan in place. So much of my vision to improve our faculty depended on their involvement, and it was a setback I really was not prepared for. One that came at a time when I was having doubts about my own commitment to the profession.

That week, I decided that if I were to leave teaching, I wanted to do it with a concrete plan behind me. So I set about exploring what that plan might be.

4. The landscape of teaching changed

All of these thoughts were occuring at a time of significant turbulance in education. I was considering my place in a profession that was being balleted for strike action in an attempt to secure real term pay rises and improved workload. If you are a non-teacher reading this and think that strike action is unjustified, know that someone in my position earns 11% less in real terms than the same person in 2010. Also know that the job probably demands somewhere upwards of 11% more than it did in 2010. The phrase “we are at breaking point” is over-used and ultimately subjective. But eventually, something has to give and people have to fight for what they believe they are entitled to.

The profession is also on the precipice of a recruitment crisis. It is being felt in some quarters already, but the statistics for ITT recruitment in 2023 are the bleakest they have ever been. The statistics for number of teachers leaving the profession is also the highest it has ever been. Compounded together, these two problems signify a ticking time bomb for education. The truth is, the standard of teaching is slowly (or quickly) eroding across the nation.

As I was contemplating my role as a teacher against this backdrop of negativity, something I read on a “thinking of leaving teaching” website really resonated with me.

“You do not need to be a martyr for your profession“.

Yes, the problems are significant. But someone choosing to leave the profession shouldn’t hold any guilt whatsoever for the mess that the industry is in. People working in education already do miraculous things for students on a daily basis, despite constant struggles of underfunding, under-resourcing and over-working. Anyone who hasn’t experienced it cannot truly understand the emotional toll of working with teenagers, many of whom are experiencing higher levels of deprivation than ever before. “But you get 12 weeks holiday a year” I hear you say. And we do, and they are wonderful. But if it were truly that simple, the number of teachers leaving the profession wouldn’t be the highest in a generation. I wouldn’t be leaving the profession if it were that simple.

SO WHAT NEXT?

Making a plan is difficult when you don’t know what your first step is. Mine was this:

Step 1 – Get informed

I decided to speak to as many people as I possibly could. Ex-teachers who have done it. Friends who work in other sectors. Family members. Blog posts about different career routes. I signed up to a career coach to identify the skills and characteristics I have that can transfer into different sectors. I began reading job descriptions on Indeed and similar sites, reading up on the jargon used to describe often relatively simple jobs. Between October and December, this was my one goal. The hope was, all this discussion and reading and researching would help me identify a career that might be viable for me. And when I say “me”, I mean “a career that can help me and my family achieve the lifestyle we think we want”. A lifestyle that is financially comfortable and provides flexibility of time to allow my wife and I to always prioritise our children in everything we do.

Step 2 – Focus in

Eventually, I had to make a choice about the direction I wanted to go in. Two routes garnered significant traction due to their transferability from my current job: Learning & Development Manager, and Project Manager. Both were readily available on job search websites in a variety of companies, and there were plenty of case studies of ex-teachers and leaders who had moved in to these roles. They also pay relatively well after 1-2 years, without requiring extensive working hours.

The problem, however, is that I was not in any way passionate about either of them. They may have made sense purely from a rational stance, but the thought of spending the next 30 years of my career on a job I wasn’t passionate about didn’t sit well with me at all. Thankfully, there was a third option that I was passionate about: A financial adviser.

Sometimes, the availability of a career only becomes apparent when you know someone involved in it. It is possible to remove so many barriers to entry, simply because you can ask them “what did you do?” or “how long did it take?”. A close friend of mine retrained to be a financial adviser 10 years ago from a very different field, so I know it is possible. I have always had an interest in personal finance so asked him about the process. One of the most significant barriers for any career change is always transition time to retrain. The time and money investment to retrain as an IFA is relatively low when compared with other professions. I knew it was feasible with 6-12 months of studying and only a few thousand pounds. When compared with other professions that require years of studying and tens of thousands of pounds to complete university courses, this felt extremely appealing and accessible.

From here, I repeated step 1, but in this much narrower field. I spoke to several people already in the profession, including regional managers, the president of my local CII society, and people going through the training process themselves. These conversations happened through a combination of twitter research and “friend of a friend” contacts. Everyone I spoke to was incredibly helpful in directing me to navigate my journey into this profession, and also challenge my assumptions about what the job entailed. No point retraining for a profession that ends up being wildly different to what you first thought it was.

After all this research and networking, I still felt excited about the prospect of doing the job

Step 3 – Decide my route

Picking a new industry is easy. Starting a training process whilst working full time as a teacher is too. But I had to eventually decide what the next 12 months of my life would look like. This is where the fear began to set in. How long can we cope with lower wages? What if, several months down the line, we run out of money? Then what?! Also, how quickly can I get the exams done? They are the equivalent of an undergrad one year degree, so 12-18 months part time study is quoted in the official texts. I can’t afford to be a part time student for that long, so how quick is realistic. 9 months? 6 months, according to certain reddit users?

Spoiler – I have completed 2 exams in 10 weeks. It has been exceptionally challenging whilst working full time, but still feasible.

Getting qualified is one thing, but what about actually being employed at the end of it. Do I want to work in a big company? A small one? Do I want to be self-employed or work in an office? What aspect of finance do I want to specialise in?

All of these questions are largely still undecided. The preferred route at the moment is to go through a short term academy with the view of being assigned to a practice or working self-employed after a 2 month (unpaid) training programme. This route is not set in stone, and has specific time frames with which it can start. There is a possibility I will have a period of time between ending my teaching job and starting my training, meaning a potential need to do some supply teaching. This is something that I would like to minimise, but the priority has always been to do what is best for my family, even if it means a slight bruising of my ego as an ex-head of PE.

Conclusion

The last 6 months have been some of the most uncertain of my adult life, involving countless conversations with my wife about whether I am making the right choice for me and for us as a family. The imposter syndrome is real when you realise you have only worked for one establishment since university, and question whether you could possibly be good at anything else. The doubt is real when you ask whether you’re making the right choice, moving away from a career that you’ve decicated a decade to. The worry is real when looking through your finances during a cost of living crisis to see if you can afford to take a pay cut for X months when you have a mortgage and a toddler to provide for. All of these are made so much easier when you have a wife as supportive as mine. Above all else, the long term view has kept me going, and the belief that every decision I am making will move us one step closer to the lifestyle we hope to achieve for our family.

To my twitter followers – my account will no longer be used for PE purposes, but will soon be used for my new career as a financial adviser. I will not be offended if you choose to unfollow me. I do intend on keeping one eye on the PE community that I have invested so much time into over the last few years. The old saying “once a PE teacher, always a PE teacher” will be true for some time, I suspect.

To anyone reading this with a nagging feeling in the back of their mind that their time in teaching may also be up – feel free to reach out. My advice would be simple. Trust your gut. Speak to your loved ones. Make the decision that is right for you and no one else. Remember – “you do not need to be a martyr for your profession”.

My closing comment is this. Life is too short, and if a plan doesn’t pan out, there is always a plan B. I am fortunate as a teacher that my qualification is for life and I can return to the classroom or playing field at any point. At this moment in time I think that is unlikely, but you never know. A year ago “I had never been happier in my job”, so who knows what I will be feeling 12 months from now. I hope all the hard work and uncertainty proves worth it.