I swapped my state-school teaching job for private – I regret it now

Marie*, 36, has had a rough couple of years. Based in the West Midlands, she has been teaching for a decade. In 2024, she joined a private all-girls’ school as a PE teacher after, she describes, being “lured away from my job at a lovely state secondary – the new role was a dream job!” While she quickly fell in love with the ethos and dedication at her school she, together with her colleagues, spent her time waiting for the other shoe to drop. The then-chancellor Rachel Reeves had officially confirmed the policy to add VAT to private school fees in summer 2024, which was coming into effect in January 2025. And the teachers could see that they were likely in financial trouble. “It was becoming rather strange around school,” she says. “Rumours flying and senior leadership started getting unwell. We all continued to work hard, doubling our workload with new starters, making sure everything was the best it could possibly be – then the roof leaked, the Microsoft account wasn’t renewed and bills started to take a long time to be paid,” she says. After a year of uncertainty and constant stress, the school was finally announced to be closing for good this summer. And the experience, she adds, has taken a toll. Shorts “I have struggled so much over the past year with all the uncertainty: my confidence is paper thin and I worry for my family, my mortgage and whether this is all a sign that I was not meant to be a teacher at all. Some days I really felt like it was impossible to teach my lessons. An email would be sent mid-lesson about a department restructure, and five minutes later you’d be reassuring a parent that everything will be fine. Surely it’s not supposed to be so hard?” In 2025, 43 independent schools closed (five specialist schools and 39 mainstream), and 35 in 2026 (12 specialist schools, 23 mainstream, with two closing as a result of mergers), according to government data. While the introduction of VAT has been the headline change causing this shift, other reasons cited include rising operating costs (including the NI increase and removal of charitable business rates relief) and falling pupil numbers – the number at private schools has fallen by 30,000 since 2025. While more independent schools have opened than closed as per The i Paper’s original reporting, there are many schools like Marie’s that tried to weather the storm, making significant financial restructures until they were forced to close. Marie says she feels very lucky that she has already found her next job at an academy, especially as the competition was fierce. “I was interviewed for one job alongside two other members of staff from another private school that had closed. 66 people applied for the job. It’s cut-throat out there. Many of my colleagues are looking at changing careers or retraining.” The process to get this job was gruelling: “I was asked to teach two full lessons including a practical – previously it would have just been half. Then I had to write a scheme of work for KS3 practical in an hour. We were then shortlisted for an interview with the head the next day.” She notes that it is particularly difficult for older and more specialist teachers – many of whom have been at their schools for decades. “I know many of my colleagues have struggled, mainly because of their age and therefore how much they are currently being paid. Many state schools wish to hire Early Career Teachers (ECTs) as they are cheaper and can be moulded to fit a particular school easier than older teachers”. This was the feedback that both she and a friend separately received when applying for certain roles. “This is true even when my experienced and brilliant colleagues have said they will go part-time or take a pay cut – they have been ‘too qualified for the role’.” While Marie is grateful for the security now, it has thrown her future in education more broadly into question. “I am not sure what this next chapter will look like for me as a teacher. I know that many have questioned whether this is the end of their teaching career- I know I certainly did.” This uncertainty is shared by other teachers. Sam* worked for 12 years as a primary school teacher and head of year at an independent school in South-East England before its closure was suddenly announced at the beginning of summer term, throwing him and his family into financial uncertainty. “I’ve got a temporary contract at an independent school, but it’s just for a term,” he says. “I took a 33 per cent pay cut just to get the job – when I told them what my pay had been they just laughed and said there was no way they could compete. I actually might have been better not working and claiming the Pay In Lieu Of Notice but it’s worrying having no income coming in with a family, it could take a long time for that money to come in.” Like Marie, this has made him reconsider his future options: “Now I’m asking whether I branch out, set up my own coaching, do online learning and so on. I’m just not sure what I will do.” While he says that his maths and science colleagues are faring well (“there’s always a shortage of them”) the rest of the teachers are struggling. This is partly because they were the only independent secondary in their area and jobs at state schools are hard to find. “It sounds awful to say, but there is a bit of snobbery about private school teachers. Some schools don’t consider you a proper teacher because you’re not in a classroom with 30, maybe even 50 kids. They think you’re not doing the ‘proper job’ and you couldn’t hack it.” And, as Sam found, the pay is significantly lower. Private school teachers can also face challenges regarding their qualifications. It is not mandatory to have a PCSE to teach in private schools – you can also teach if you have a degree or a specialism. But that’s not the case in state schools. Across the UK, there is a shortage of teachers – the UK government has missed its teacher recruitment target 12 times in the last 13 years – so it should mean that those affected by independent school closures can step in and fill those gaps. But this is not reflected in reality because of the geography of these closures: the closures are happening to schools in smaller, more embedded communities where the available teacher roles are already filled. Marie and Sam are both commuting far longer than previously to reach their new employers. By contrast, the pupils affected by the school are in high demand. “It was a reminder that the independent sector is a cutthroat business,” Marie says. – our neighbouring schools were like vultures on a carcass, offering our pupils matching price fees, guaranteed for their key stage. When we faced them at fixtures, they gave away marketing packets for our pupils, even approached our parents.” Sam explains that, in his area, the birth rate has bombed, bringing down the number of reception places needed and directly affecting the demand on primary schools. “There aren’t jobs for teachers and if there are, they’re all part-time or on contract or you’d be taking a massive pay cut. I don’t really know what the future holds for primary school staff, but a lot of my colleagues at the secondary school have gone into things like home tuition or homeschooling. “I think it’s going to be quite hard to find work in the independent sector again. I know some colleagues have gone to Cairo to the international schools, some even leaving their families here. It’s had an absolutely enormous impact on the wellbeing of those families.” The result is that these teachers are now joining the waves of others who feel they have to leave the industry. “Every single week my inbox is full of teachers trying to leave the classroom,” Jae Jackson-Loveridge, Recruitment Director at Connecting Education, says. “I think this is largely driven by the teacher recruitment and retention crisis in the UK.” He adds that this flow seems to come more from state schools than redundancy. All the teachers The i Paper spoke to for this story expressed frustration at what they see as a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of their school, and a genuine sadness about the repercussions for their colleagues but, more importantly, their former students. “Eton will always be full, the elite will always fill those places,” Marie says. “It’s the small schools, the ones with the lowest fees, the biggest hearts and most opportunities for the most vulnerable young people, ones who struggled in bigger classes or had difficult EHCPs to meet, that suffer. “I believed we were creating something wonderful, that we could do something other schools couldn’t. There are so many little bits of magic that the school held, but it’s impossible to describe, it’s only something truly felt and understood when you visit – but of course that’s not possible now.”