Nigel Hodgkins studied for a PGCE in Secondary English at Canterbury Christ Church. Here he explains the reasons for his decision. 

I graduated in English in what feels like the distant past of 1986. For reasons which now escape me - I quickly found a job with a bank. 

I ended up there for twelve years, carrying out a range of jobs including training manager and branch manager. The job was well paid, secure, and offered good benefits. Obviously the only logical thing to do was to give it up and enter the teaching profession! 

Unsurprisingly a few people have questioned this decision, together with my sanity, over the last year. The word "Why?" has rung in my ears a few times, although not (yet) from my own lips. 

I recognise their curiosity, but my own feeling is that the attractions of teaching are actually quite powerful and obvious, maybe even more so when the trainee teacher has done something else for a few years, like myself. So what are these attractions? 

Well, I would focus on the freedom to be creative, the hectic sense of variety within the working day, the potential for spontaneity, and the sense of autonomy, notwithstanding the National Curriculum. 

Few other occupations offer the potential to see people change and grow and to be a key part of that development process. It is an occupation that offers extraordinary power and responsibility in guiding, shaping and inspiring. It can be extremely satisfying in ways that other jobs - in my experience - are not. I can think of few other jobs that offer so much potential to shape your working day and to use innovative and creative ideas to (hopefully) bring lessons to life. 

Training to be a teacher when you are a mature student does offer a unique set of drawbacks and advantages. Firstly, mature students often have a lot to give up in many ways, not least in terms of family "time" and financial pressure. Often they have marriages, mortgages, kids, etc that need to be juggled sensitively over a very demanding course. Notwithstanding the rudimentary support offered next year, mature students face a lot of financial issues. Generally they have taken risks and made sacrifices to get on the course and these concerns need to be considered and planned for. 

That said, mature students also have a lot to give. They can bring a range of transferable skills and experience that I feel the teaching profession can take advantage of. From my experience during teaching practice, schools are keen to use these skills and they value and respect them. 

To conclude, I feel that entering the teaching profession having done something else for a few years offers benefits all round. Certainly I feel excited at the freedom in teaching. Many experienced teachers contradict this view, but I would say that this notion of "freedom" is a relative one. Try working in a bank for twelve years if you want to know about dull, prescriptive, routinised work controlled by "Head Office". 

The autonomy in schools is startling in contrast! This is not to deny the demands of the profession. Lessons do not always go as planned. As someone once told me, "teaching can be the best job in the world and the worst job in the world - sometimes in the same morning". However, when a lesson does work - when that atmosphere of discovery and learning is almost tangible - at those special moments, I have no doubt that it can be the best job. Few jobs offer the same emotional see-saw. Boredom is NOT an option. 

I guess these are the reasons why I decided to get into teaching, and I haven't had a spare minute to even think about regretting it!