r/Glasgow Tools

Not a teacher but part of my job is working with secondary schools and I know a lot of teachers socially and professionally.

Whether and when you will land a permanent job after qualifying very much depends on the subject. Biology and social subjects tend to have their pick of staff and there's a lot of competition for jobs. Schools can't get physics teachers though so qualifying in that subject is almost guaranteed work. I think home economics is similar. And PE teachers seem to do well.

The teachers I know tend to either love it or hate it. I think it depends on a lot. The school, the management, your colleagues, your attitude. It really does have to seen as a vocation I think. Despite the holidays he workload is ferocious and teachers often seem to have to account for lots of stuff completely beyond their control, like pupil behaviour and performance which can be incredibly stressful. High school teachers do not have enough non-teaching time in the working day to deal with admin, marking, planning and other paperwork. Teachers absolutely spend a lot of time working in evenings and weekends and there is an expectation of taking on extracurricular roles (not obligatory but this is definitely something you will have to do to even get a sniff of a permanent job or promotion). I could imagine the workload would be very depressing if you didn't truly love what you do.

I know teachers who are utterly miserable in their jobs. I know teachers who thrive in the job and find it very rewarding.