How to leave teaching UK — a teacher exit plan that works
What I did, what I wish I'd known and the career after teaching that actually works
I get this question more than any other. Teachers email me late at night, message me on Instagram during their lunch breaks, ask me at the school gate. They all want to know the same thing — is it actually possible and how do you do it without throwing your whole life into chaos? Here's the honest answer.
The moment I decided to leave
I was on maternity leave with my first baby when I found out — through the grapevine, not from anyone at school — that I'd been moved to a different year group. Nobody had told me. Nobody had asked me. I'd taught Year 1 for five years and built up everything I knew around it and a decision had been made about my working life that I had no part in.
Around the same time I was watching colleagues come back from maternity leave completely devastated. Crying in the staffroom. Missing bedtimes. Being denied part-time requests. And I made a quiet decision to myself in those weeks at home with my baby — that would never be me. I wasn't going back.
What most teachers get wrong about leaving
The biggest mistake is assuming you have to leave first and then figure it out. You don't. The teachers who do this well — the ones who actually make it work — build something on the side first, prove it works and then walk away on their own terms.
There's a difference between quitting and exiting. Quitting is reactive. It happens at 3am after a bad day, or in a meeting where you finally snap. Exiting is planned. You know your numbers, you know your timeline and you've already got students waiting for you on the other side. One feels terrifying. The other feels inevitable.
The financial question everyone asks
Can you actually match a teaching salary tutoring? Yes — and probably faster than you think. At £35 per child in a group of four, that's £140 an hour. M6 on the main pay scale is roughly £42,000 — around £805 per week before tax.
That means you'd need around six group sessions a week to match it. Six hours of actual tutoring. Add in some 1:1 work and a few extra group sessions and you're already earning more than M6 in a fraction of the hours. The maths genuinely works. The hard part isn't the numbers — it's believing the numbers.
The full financial workings — pricing, group ratios, tax, your exit number — are walked through inside The Ultimate Teacher Exit Plan.
What I did in my first four months
Kitchen table. Two or three children at a time. My baby asleep upstairs on the monitor. I started with the children I already knew through friends and the school community, charged a fair rate from day one and asked every single parent to tell one other person if they were happy.
Four months in I had 60 children on my books. The growth wasn't magic. It was three things — word of mouth, being visible in the local area and spotting a gap. In my case, the gap was phonics. Schools were emphasising phonics more than ever and there was almost no tutoring provision for the youngest children. I positioned myself specifically and parents found me.
What you need before you hand your notice in
Three things only.
A financial plan. You need to know your number — your actual minimum. The amount you genuinely need to bring in each month to keep your life running.
A way to get your first students. Not vaguely. Specifically. Where they'll come from, how they'll find you, what will make them choose you.
A timeline. A real date in the diary. The thing that turns this from "one day" into "by next September." Everything else can be figured out along the way. These three things cannot.