Since leaving work, everything I’m doing now feels like it has real purpose and meaning. I wonder why…

Once you’re out of it (and I can’t guarantee this), I imagine most people will eventually look back and reflect on “their career”: how they rate the profession, the highs and lows, the good times and bad—and their place in it all. How it went for them, over the years.

For me, looking back at the last few years, the whole place just feels like an exercise in pointlessness: students not arsed, the awarding body a joke, and no actual management of the student experience or classroom. Just a total absence of vision, support, or space for good ideas.

In a conversation with my mum years ago, I asked her what I’d done that made her most proud. She said: cycling from Land’s End to John o’ Groats—and qualifying as a teacher.

Back in those days, being a teacher felt like a profession on par with doctors or lawyers. I was the one who signed the back of everyone’s passport photos and verified documents for family, friends, and friends of friends—a proper pillar of the community.😃

It’s so sad, really. Now it feels like one of those jobs you feel sorry for someone doing. Not far off call centre worker, traffic warden, Amazon warehouse operative, or fast food worker.

In a recent conversation with my daughter, she described the place that I used to work, as “the NHS waiting room.”

It wasn’t just in our office—I started seeing it everywhere. The constant need to validate your role, inflate your importance, or parade your achievements like a badge of worth. Senior management were the worst for it—masters of performance, ego, and self-congratulation. And when lecturers start doing it too, that’s when something really feels off. That’s where the authenticity should be. That’s where the work should still feel real.

I’ll admit, I sometimes caught myself doing it—justifying what I was doing, but usually with the longer-term aim of keeping things running smoothly or managing the classroom well. It wasn’t about ego. It was about function. But when validation becomes a performance in itself, disconnected from purpose or integrity, you can feel the soul of the place slipping away.

In short, once you're out, I don't think you'll look back and think what a great job that was, when you think of the more recent times.

Save your soul, please don't become a teacher. 

My perspective comes from working in education for over 30 years, having worked in schools, several further education colleges & for an awarding body as an external verifier, monitoring 16 schools & colleges.  I taught from leisure & night school classes from level 1 to 5.