Use your head...teach...if you can find somewhere to train you

After a lot of thought I decided mid January that I'd like to teach.

I'd done the research and investigated what is involved in being a teacher and still decided to want to be one. Specifically a primary school teacher. Obviously as someone approaching their mid thirties it's quite a big decision changing career, but also the financial aspect. Dropping from the mid thirties to nothing whilst training and then maybe twenty or so when qualified is quite something.

Still with all the adverts out there telling me to use my head and teach I thought why not. According to the TDA I was someone they wanted teaching primary, as there were a shortage of males teachers and I had very good IT skills.

One thing they failed to mention is if you want to teach you should be applying a year before the course starts.

Being only the start of February I thought someone must still have a place...and according to the GTTR website (who now handle all applications, rather than applying directly to the university) there were loads. So off I went and filled my application in, only to be told almost straight away that both my choices were full.

Actually they didn't tell me that, I'd phoned the universities after submitting my application and they told me they were no longer accepting any more applications. Of course the GTTR website didn't reflect this as it hadn't been updated it seems.

So I then went about the laborious task of trying to get the courses off my application, because you are only allowed to apply for two at a time. They were both full but there was no option for me to remove those applications and add a new one. I had to phone up to ask someone to do it.

Now this time I phoned the university first to check they had places (Goldsmiths this time), not trusting the GTTR website that said they had. They did, but I should be quick to apply.

A day later having got the old choices off I'd added Goldsmiths. Off went my application. I e-mailed to make sure they had received it and guess what they wouldn't be looking at my application as they had enough people to interview. I asked if they knew that their course was still showing as having vacancies. They did. Apparently they technically have vacancies as they've not allocated them to people. However, they have enough people to interview to fill those vacancies. They didn't think it was better to update the GTTR website so people like me didn't waste time applying for places I couldn't get.

So here I am another university chosen that I'm waiting to here from. Hopefully I'll hear back from them very soon with good news. Especially after all I've been through with the above...and applying for a GTP place (I'll moan about the shortcomings there later).

However for someone who is apparently wanted in the teaching profession, and being told I should use my head and teach, it seems quite a frustrating experience. And I haven't even started to teach yet. Maybe I should give in and stick in industry where I can make a lot more money.