Teaching lures 'dissatisfied' recruits from private sector

Everybody thinks they know what an easy life teachers have. A working day that gets them home in time for tea, seven-week summer breaks and extended Christmas and Easter holidays. All that and a job for life.

With such a reputation – however erroneous – it is perhaps little wonder that accountants and bankers should gaze enviously on the lifestyles of their professional counterparts in the classroom.

But now, more and more thirty-somethings are acting on their envy and switching jobs. So much so that, according to Ralph Tabberer, chief executive of the Teacher Training Agency, more than half those recruited to the profession in the past year are over 30 – a dramatic change for a profession which has traditionally drawn the overwhelming majority of its members from recent graduates.

Of course, those who make the move will already know that the hours spent in the classroom are just a small proportion of the total, what with the demands of marking work and preparing lessons, responsibilities which also eat heavily into the holidays. And the idea that teachers cannot be sacked was firmly debunked last week by Estelle Morris, Secretary of State for Education, when she said the bad ones should be rooted out.

Nevertheless, teaching is increasingly being seen as an attractive career offering more job security and satisfaction than the private sector.

And the greater maturity of recruits – compared with the traditional graduate intake – is being welcomed by experts who believe that the nation's children will benefit from a more experienced staffroom. And, perhaps more importantly, the new generation of thirty-somethings is also plugging the staffing shortages in state school classrooms.

The trend towards older recruits has been growing in recent years, with many now joining through the graduate teacher programme, which pays them a salary of £13,000 a year while they train – an option only opened up during the past couple of years.

Mr Tabberer added: "We are getting about eight or nine thousand people a year who are coming into teaching after rejecting other careers. They don't like the options they've tried and – if they come in at that age – it's a career decision and they're more likely to stick with teaching."

The reasons for making the switch vary. The lack of job security in the private sector, exacerbated by the economic downturn, is one. During the past year, teacher training experts have seen a number of recruits from dot.com companies that have gone bust. They have, in the main, trained to become technology teachers – one of the subjects with the largest number of vacancies.

Others have said they have become disillusioned with the competitive cut and thrust of private industry and are looking for a more family-friendly environment in which to work.

A further boon from the recruitment of over-30s has been a rise in the number of men wanting to enter the profession. At least 1,000 men over 30 have applied to train. A study published this month showed there was still a worrying shortage of male recruits, with only 13 per cent of those choosing to train as primary school teachers being men and the numbers of men on secondary school courses falling from 43 per cent to 36 per cent over a five-year period.

Gwen Evans, deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, welcomed the trend. "People who have an additional perspective to the school/university/back to school experience are welcome," she said.

"Their experience of the world of work is not confined to student jobs like working behind a bar, etc. Also, they have contacts and can be very useful to a school in finding sponsorship."

She added: "I think there is a trend of people going into higher paid jobs and paying off their debts and then looking for something more satisfying."

Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "We need to attract both mature people and those straight from university. We still need to attract young people into the profession who are going to stay there.

"The recruitment of older staff does still leave the profession with a difficult age profile problem – two-thirds of the profession are over 40."

However, he added: "They [the older recruits] will bring with them a wealth of experience of the outside world into the classroom. What they may not realise, though, is the intensity of the level of work once you are in a classroom working with children. There is no hiding place."

Mr Tabberer is keen to exploit the increasing popularity of a career in the classroom with an advertising campaign planned for the early autumn to woo the brightest final-year university students. He is swimming with the tide – the number of applicants to teacher training courses is up 14 per cent on this time last year.

"Our main campaign normally starts in January but we want to catch graduates early this year when they are thinking of what they want to do," he said. "The start of the final year is traditionally the time when the blue-chip companies go in but the private sector is being cautious over recruitment at the moment so we will go aggressively into the market place to compete with them. "

He said the agency would concentrate on the "family-friendly working environment" of teaching.

The £12.8bn boost to education spending outlined by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, in his comprehensive spending review last week is being seen as an opportunity for schools to offer crèche facilities to staff.

"There will be more part-time work and flexible hours," Mr Tabberer added. "If a teacher cannot start work until 9.30am because of family commitments that is no reason not to employ them.

"We will also point out that there are longer holidays so you can organise your time off to be with your children."