The “official” path into teaching sounds simple on paper: check your qualifications, understand funding, get some experience, choose a course, apply, train, get a job, start your career. But when you actually read Department for Education-style guidance out loud, it quickly becomes clear how little it prepares you for the reality of teacher training in the UK—or for what life in schools really demands.

In this episode, we unpack the parts that the checklist skips. Why do GCSE requirements sometimes feel oddly disconnected from the subject you want to teach? How do funding and bursaries quietly shape people’s decisions? And why does classroom experience matter far more than most applicants realise?

We also talk honestly about the different routes into teaching—PGCE, School Direct, Teach First and more—and the tension between seeing teaching as a “vocation” versus something you fall into through circumstance, bad luck, or simple pragmatism.

Along the way, we share stories from training and placements, including the very real issue of being placed somewhere you can’t physically get to on time without a car.

We finish with our takeaways: the formal route might be “graduate, train, qualify,” but the emotional journey looks more like hope, panic, and a lot of caffeine.

If you’re thinking about becoming a teacher—or you’re already in and quietly questioning your life choices—this episode offers honesty, humour, and a few uncomfortable truths.

Subscribe, share this with someone considering teacher training, and leave us a review. And tell us: what’s the missing step in the “how to become a teacher” guide?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Get Into Teaching website makes teaching sound like a clean, confident career choice: inspire from day one, teach with freedom, progress at your own pace, earn a competitive salary, and enjoy more holiday than your mates in office jobs.

So we do what any two qualified secondary teachers would do — we print it out and start reading it properly.

What follows is a line-by-line reality check.

We unpack the idea of “impact” and what it actually looks like when most corridor conversations are about shirts, toilets, and getting to period two on time. We talk about autonomy in the classroom — yes, you bring your personality, but curriculum pressure, accountability, and timetables can quietly reshape what teaching looks like in practice.

We also share stories from our own experience, where recruitment language starts to feel a bit like advertising that has never met a staffroom.

Then we get into progression, pay, pensions, and the great teaching myth: the holidays. We’re not here to exaggerate, but we are honest about what the job does to your evenings, your headspace, and your energy.

James brings the SENCO perspective, Ben brings leadership experience, and we land in the same place: teaching can be brilliant, meaningful, and genuinely funny — but it’s also far messier than the brochure suggests.

If you’re thinking about becoming a teacher, or you’re already in it and want to feel a bit less alone, press play. And if you’ve ever read a job advert for teaching and thought “that doesn’t sound like my school at all,” you’re in the right place.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

A supply agency calls itself “the home of happy teachers” and publishes a six-point guide to the differences between primary and secondary schools. That alone is enough to get us started.

We pick apart the claims one by one — from generalist vs specialist teaching, to workload, planning, marking, and the idea that pastoral care somehow disappears after Year 6. What sounds neat on paper starts to fall apart quickly when you’ve actually worked in schools.

We also compare notes on the uncomfortable reality of crossing phases, including a parents’ evening that makes a secondary teacher realise how little we understand about primary routines, language, and expectations.

From there, we dig into transition, curriculum continuity, and the ongoing problem: everyone says primary and secondary should talk more, but nobody builds the time or structure to make it happen.

Along the way we end up asking why science is always in labs, why behaviour systems change so sharply, and why “rewards” in education go from stickers to postcards that may or may not mean anything.

If you work in education — or just enjoy hearing myths about schools get dismantled — this one’s for you.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show