'Becoming a teacher at 56 was the best thing'

Ms Melbourne said she was "loving the buzz" of being in the classroom

A civil servant who quit her job in Whitehall to retrain as a teacher at 56 said it was "one of the best things" she had ever done.

Beverly Melbourne decided she wanted to "give back to the younger generation" so made the dramatic career change.

She began training in 2022 and is now an English teacher at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy in Wolverhampton.

"I am loving the buzz of delivering lessons to my students and ensuring that they are learning," she said.

Ms Melbourne spent more than 20 years working on state policies at the Department of Education, helping people get into work, training, and education.

However, she became inspired to change careers by her nephew earning two scholarships and her sister, who turned to teaching aged 50.

"One of the most challenging things for me in the early days of learning to teach was the school day is fixed and everything must meet the demands of the timetable," she said.

"When I was in an office, meetings could be rearranged if you had planned them far in advance."

Ms Melbourne said career changers should persevere with teaching

The West Midlands suffered a 20% drop in trainee teachers last year, following a 29% drop the previous year.

However, applications from over 35s are proving more resilient, according to the charity Now Teach, which said their older starters tend to stay in post longer than the national average and are more representative of society in terms of gender and ethnicity.

The organisation was founded five years ago by FT journalist Lucy Kellaway and is funded by the Department for Education.

"Teaching is traditionally a young person's game, but as recent graduates increasingly shun the profession, older people are stepping into the classroom," Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler, CEO of Now Teach, said.

'A culture shift'

According to the firm's workforce study with YouGov, more people in the West Midlands changed their career in the past five years than anywhere else in the UK.

Ms Melbourne urged anyone thinking of a career change later in life to seize the opportunity.

"One of the things that you can use to be a successful trainee is to know that most of your experience from your past career will become invaluable and you will be able to use it further down the line," she said.

"But also accept that this is a new path and you are the novice for now, and respect the subtleties of a culture shift.

"The best advice that I can give a career changer entering the teaching profession is to persevere because it is one the best things that you can do for disadvantaged young people.

"If it was easy everyone would do it."