Career Advice?

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ajn1610

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I know there have been a few "What do you do" type posts, but I'm interested in hearing peoples opinions and some unbiased honest advice.

I'm currently working as a Secondary Science Teacher (11-18) and considering a career change. I really enjoy my time in the classroom and have great relationships with my pupils and co-workers but my level of job satisfaction is at an all time low. My work load is ridiculous and thought of still doing this post 60 makes me feel sick. I'm 32 I have no dependents and can manage to cover my household bills so now seems like a good time to jump ship. The question is what can I do as an alternative?

I'm currently bringing home £1,600 per month after tax. My qualifications are:
GCSE, A Level, BSc Hons, MSc, PGCE. Through work I've done various middle management ILM training courses. In other job incarnations I've worked as a play worker, managed a wine bar, done a working pupil stint on a 4* Event yard.

The idea of being a Teacher was it was a job I enjoyed, that paid me a reasonable wage and left me time to ride. None of those boxes are currently being ticked. I know my annual income isn't bad on paper but it doesn't seem fair recompense for the hours I'm putting in. I also know that there isn't much job security outside the public sector now but atm that job security feels like a bear trap. Any suggestions or pointers as to where I can get some good Careers advice. I don't mind paying for it but I don't want to waste my money and all the websites I've found seem fairly generic.

Any and all suggestions welcome!

ETS. I would consider a total change, retraining, etc.
 
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What's your BSc in? And your MSc? What part of the country do you live in? Jobs in IT can be very well paid and range from quite people focused to heavily tech focused. A lot of IT business analyst roles need you to be good at training / standing up in front of a roomful of people etc etc so teaching experience would be helpful.
 
How about research ? or retraining as a physio - human to start and then combine with equines?
nursing ? they work very hard but dont have the planning / marking / assessment out of work hours that teachers have [ sorry if im wrong !]

also not sure if you are in private or public sector but I know private school teachers get up to 18 weeks of holidays and some of the larger boarding schools have livery facilities on site -just a thought !:D
 
Thanks for your thoughts guys. I'm based in the North West, Cheshire/Manchester area. My BSc is Environmental Biology and MSc is Equine Science. Flicker51, I'm Teaching in a State school atm and you are right that Private schools get more holidays but I have a few friends working in that sector and I don't think think they have a much better time of it to be honest. It's the PPA that is killing and you can't get away from that, unless you are prepared to be totally rubbish!
I've had a look around myself and come up with a few ideas, corporate training/HR seems to sit in quite well with my skill set but I'd need to do some new qualifications. I thought about training as an NVQ assessor for equine/animal care but I'm not sure if you can do that without being an FE/HE lecturer. Also Medical Writing/Writing Text books.
I had thought of Physio, I already have some Equine Massage training and I really enjoy and I'm interested in Biomechanics.
Does anyone do any of these for a living, what are they actually like in terms of work/life balance? I know I probably sound like a right slacker, I honestly don't mind working hard but I either want that effort to be better financially rewarded or alternatively be able to actually have a life! I worked past midnight three out of the five days this week and I worked all of yesterday and I'm starting again now. :(
 
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I'm currently training to be a human physio (2nd degree, 1st in equine science). It's very time consuming as a student, you'd be looking at a minimum of 20 hours in lectures/practicals, plus many many hours studying around that. You also get clinical placements where you have to work 37.5hrs plus work around placement in the evenings. As a qualified physio, I can't truly answer, but having worked as a physio assistant, the department highly depends on your pace. Outpatients is slower than medical wards, Neuro even slower.

As an equine physio, you don't need to do your 2 year rotations anymore, and can train in Liverpool and Hartpury only. You'd be likely to bring in £35-45 per horse, an hour per horse... Probably looking at 6-7 horses a day. But obviously you'd have to do your taxes and insurance isn't cheap. You need to be prepared to work hard in all weathers, you'll knacker the joints in your hands too from the hands on stuff.

Eventually, I may do my animal physio qualification and do a few horses on the side, but I plan to always be a human Physio primarily. This probably is portrayed in my post. Good luck if you do consider it. :)
 
Thanks Stroppy Mare. There are some graduate recruitment fairs at Manchester University in June. I think I'll go and have a look for some opportunities there too.
 
Science teachers are much in demand at the moment due to the lack of them and you are doing a very important job. The fact that you have a science degree may indicate that you may like to step up and take another degree in one of the medical professions such as Veterinary, Medicine, Dentistry, Podiatry, Physiotherapy, Opthamology etc. however be aware that most professional jobs involve a lot of additional work and stress out of hours.
 
I have been a human physio for 10 years and always found the pace of out patients to be the fastest, I have just finished the vet physio course at hartpury, it's a tough course with a lot of placement days on top of travelling to hartpury! I have definitely found my human work and post grad courses to be a definite advantage! It's also not cheap!!
 
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