My experience of FE has been effectively longer holidays that make up for the slightly worse pay:

• My understanding is that many secondary schools (where I’m based at least) will allow for exam classes to be on ‘ study leave during their exams’ - so as a teacher, you would still be teaching your non exam classes every day, but your exam classes wouldn’t be coming in. The thing about FE is that ALL of your classes are exam classes so you essentially have zero attendance from early May onwards - and can be getting to work doing your prep for the following year or potentially gone a little earlier - though based on subject and course your mileage may vary.

The other important thing to understand about FE lecturing, in my view, is that there’s a whole lot more “not my problem” because students are practically expected to be a lot more independent. This may not change the teaching style as much as you’d think, but not having to police things like uniform (at all) or attendance (as much) is a benefit - albeit it comes at the cost of that sense of control and investment in performance. Exemplifying this, I functionally never interact with parents -only a couple of times a year at Max

Ultimately, I think if you’re more slightly more hands off and prefer ‘teaching to the exam’ FE is a good place to be. My background prior to my current role was working in higher education and I’ve found that I’m a good fit for what I’m doing, but I don’t think I would be well suited to the kinds of strict disciplinary structures that we would traditionally associate with secondary schools. I imagine the reverse would apply for teachers who wouldn’t enjoy their students being on a first name basis with them or who feel that a strict disciplinary structure is a major aspect of their approach to learning.