Mon, Feb 16, 2004 page11

• City slickers swap rat-race for school

  BACK TO BASICS A UK government-sponsored ad campaign is urging people to leave their jobs in the city for a more rewarding experience in teaching

  • REUTERS
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  Boardroom lunches and presentations to high flying British executives were routine for Martin Evans during his 15 years as a management consultant.

  Now multicoloured drawings of fish hang above his head as he walks into work, his lunch break is spent supervising school dinners and he gives presentations to his hardest audience yet -- geography students at a North London comprehensive.

  "The whole thing has been more refreshing than a walk on a cold windy day," Evans, 39, said over a cup of tea in the staff room of Camden Girls' School.

  "A whole new world has opened up -- it's like a spotlight has been turned on, showing me things I wasn't aware of before."

  Evans's decision to swap his high-pressured office lifestyle for the classroom is one that Britain's Teacher Training Agency is keen to trumpet.

  The agency has launched a campaign directly targeting disillusioned employees from big City of London financial firms as potential new recruits.

  Posters of headless office workers behind desks now confront commuter's on London's tube with the message "Use your head," prompting them to question the satisfaction they get from their current jobs.

  The approach is riding on a trend of people entering teaching after a spell in the corporate world.

  One third of new teachers in the UK are now over 30, opening up a rich pool of potential new recruits to teaching authorities who have long struggled with staff shortages.

  The allure of a career change is not a new phenomenon and every year doing something positive outside the corporate world triumphs over the lure of big bonuses for many workers in some of London's largest institutions like investment banks.

  "It was a creeping realization, an increasingly nagging itch that I wanted to do something else," Evans said.

  "I felt I was getting paid more and more to bluff better and better, and after a few years of that you ask yourself if that's a ladder you want to continue to climb."

  It is precisely such disillusionment that teaching authorities are keen to seize upon.

  "Lots of people perhaps were seduced by offers of big bucks which seem a bit hollow after a few years," said Mary Doherty, Director of Teacher Supply and Recruitment at the agency.

  "Making a difference matters to people -- they want to do something that fits in with their values," she added.

  But recruitment experts feel the government's money would be more useful if it improved teachers' wages rather than fund poster campaigns.

  "The money would be better spent on increasing salaries, or subsidizing their mortgages if they left a well paid job to be a teacher," said Jon Tait, director of Bright Young Things, a recruitment firm that specializes in offering career counselling to young career-changers.

  "If people feel so strongly about leaving their career to be a teacher, they will do it. An advertising campaign won't make the difference," he added.

  Evans said the satisfaction he gets from teaching leaves him in no doubt that he made the right decision.

  "You get a tremendous deal out of working locally -- I'll be walking down the High Street and the girls will say `hello.'"

  But any preconceptions that school would offer a calmer existence than the rat-race were quickly dispelled.

  "The pupils are the toughest audience I have ever had. The classroom audience is harsh and honest, but you feel the most fantastic satisfaction when you do get it right," he said.

  But life in school is not all rosy, with budgets unable to provide the same resources as management consultants.

  "There are major administrative headaches. I wasn't used to running around trying to find a video that works, rather than having someone to sort it out for you," he said.

  His salary has, in his words, "fallen off a cliff" and yet work takes up more of his time than it ever has before.

  Evans has coped with the salary drop because he earned a reasonably high wage earlier in his career, but for other career-changers the lifestyle that accompanies their new work can take the gloss off their job satisfaction.

  "The problem is, many find it difficult to rationalize their career desires with the simple truth of living costs, particularly in London and the south-east," recruitment expert Tait said.

  "We recently met a strategy consultant who left his ?80,000 (US$149,800) a year job to work for a leading charity for ?30,000 pounds. The satisfaction he got from this was tremendous, but he is now looking for a job in the ?50,000 pound range with more of a lifestyle balance."
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