Being a primary teacher in London is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! I remember talking to so many teachers before I left who had done it and had the time of their lives! They were so happy to share how absolutely amazing it was. But here the thing is, with time, the everyday moments get forgotten, the hard times get erased, and the difficult experiences get turned into funny stories. I heard so much of the good, so I wasn’t really prepared for the hard. 

This is why I wanted to make a blog post both about my highlights and my lowlights of being a primary teacher in London, because most of all, teaching abroad is a life. It’s not always going to be the best time of your life all the time!  

Don’t get me wrong, I had some amazing experiences in London with some amazing people that I will cherish til the end of my days. You can read all about them here in this blog post, “ My Top 10 Best New Experiences as an Australian Teaching in London”. I found when I went in with the mentality of “this experience is going to be the best time of your life” it never met those expectations, but when I went in with even expectations, I had an amazing time. Now I talk about them like they were the best time of my life! It’s easy to forget the hard times. Which is why I wrote this blog post when I still lived in London. So, get ready for the raw truth of the hard times as I was having them. 

Are you interested in teaching abroad in London but don’t know where to get started? Get the Teaching Abroad in London Guide to get everything you need to get started all in one place! 

Teaching abroad in London is amazing. But this blog post is about the not-so-great times I experienced as a primary teacher in London. 

I started writing this post right as I was leaving London, and it was a great way to be able to reflect on everything that has happened. I, of course, don’t want to paint the picture that teaching abroad is awful, but I also want to let you know that it can be awful… at times. It’s totally normal for you to be lonely and to hate it, and that is even with the best job in the world, let alone a job you don’t like.

These are my bottom 10 experiences as a primary teacher in London, both about the job and just my personal life.  

Note: As I publish this post 2 years later – I have added in some thoughts from current me, who has now taught abroad for nearly four years. You’ll recognise these because they’ll be in italics. We all grow and change, and our perception does too. So join me on this journey of my challenges in London 

Here are my bottom 10 Moments being a Primary Teacher in London

1. Being let go 

Being long-term supply is usually considered the more consistent and reliable way to work, but one of the downsides of working through an agency is that you have no job security. Literally none! As much as an agency says you do, at the end of the day, you really don’t. A school can decide to let you go whenever they want. 

This happened to me. After working at a school for 9 months, I was let go randomly with about 4 days notice. I was devastated! I loved working at this school, and I had started to get really comfortable. It was just a bad timing. The school was going broke, and as an in-house supply, I was the first to go. Sometimes it is what it is. The Head Teacher was great, though and really helped me secure another job. They also gave me a great reference for my application to my current school in Hong Kong. But it still just sucked. 

 I still remember this. It did suck. Later in my next job, probably not long after I wrote this blog post, also cancelled my maternity leave cover by 2 weeks. That was harder the second time, because the first time was so rough but the person I was covering wanted to come back early. The agency I was with at the time got me 2 weeks supply somewhere else, but it still sucked because it was so close to me leaving London. It lined up perfectly, but unfortunately thats not how it went. 

2. Saying Goodbye

By far one of the hardest parts of teaching abroad in London or anywhere else in the world is having to say goodbye. From saying goodbye to your family to saying goodbye to friends you’ve made to the final goodbye to the city – it just sucks.  

Whenever you teach abroad, chances are you are going to make friends with people like you, expats. Regardless of their job, London is an international hub, and people flock from all over the world. The downside is if it’s not you leaving, it’s probably them. From my time in London, I had to say goodbye to a number of friends, but there were two which were really hard. I was lucky enough that one of them is from the city I grew up in, but the other would be a 6-hour plane ride from.

On the plus side, with modern technology keeping in touch across oceans is very do-abe, but of course, it isn’t the same. My favourite quote, though, is “aren’t we so lucky to have something that makes saying goodbye so difficult?”

I have found that the more I teach abroad, especially in a place like Hong Kong, where expats come and go, saying goodbye is easier, but saying hello is harder. When friends leave, it can be hard to have to start again in a city you already live in. 

I also want to say that 3 years later one of my friends leaving London, I have seen them three times since then and travelled to Japan together! So, while saying goodbye is hard, it’s not always a goodbye. 

3. Unsure if  was keeping my job during covid

This one seems like It happened so long ago, but it is definitely up there on my worst experiences in London. I don’t think this scenario is likely to happen again, but it does highlight one point: you have to understand that no matter what agencies say, a contract means nothing; schools can change their minds at any time. 

When London first went into lockdown, I was working as a Year 2 teacher and even though we weren’t sure how long it was going to go for (at this point, we definitely didn’t think it would last to the end of the school year. We thought maybe a month at max), my school didn’t know whether they were going to keep me on. This was a hard space to be in, not to know if I had a job, not to know how long Covid would last, and to not really be able to afford to go home. 

Again, I doubt this would occur again because this was before the government made guidance on how to treat agency staff, but the beginning of covid was really difficult for everyone. Nobody knew what would happen or what it would mean for them. 

4. Quitting my job

On the themes of jobs, there was one job that was just a nightmare! My first agency didn’t find me work and constantly said they would find me something but never followed through. But I had to pay rent, so I agreed to a job as a TA and was guaranteed that if I covered classes, I would get teacher pay. Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t the truth. I found myself working as an intervention teacher, one on one with a student who needed a one-to-one, but covering classes 90% of the time and still getting paid like I was a TA.

It didn’t help that the school leadership created a hostile work environment, not for me specifically, but for the school in general. The reason I stayed at the job for so long was that the teachers I worked with were amazing, and so were the kids. But it was an honest nightmare. I was literally on the tube to work one day, and my phone buzzed to let me know I got paid. Looking at the little amount of money that I got that didn’t even cover rent, and I just thought that it wasn’t worth it.

I would rather be happy and poor at home than miserable and still poor at this school. I called up the agency then and there and quit. 

Thankfully, I got connected with another agency through a friend who secured me work within the week at one of the best schools I have worked in London for literally nearly double the pay as a cover teacher. This story may have turned out great, but there were 3 months of misery. It was hard. 

I didn’t write this initially and I guess because while I want to share the hard parts, this was still my life, and while I am happy to share, I also want to keep a sense of privacy. I guess this really comes to the privacy of my friends and my small moments just for me, and the moments that are too painful to share with the world. As time passes, the hurt subsides. One of the hardest parts of this was saying goodbye to the kids.

When I called up and quit, it was a Thursday. I told my agency that I wouldn’t work from Monday. I went to work, didn’t say anything except to maybe the teacher whose class I worked with the closest. Saying goodbye was hard, especially because among all this, muck was also one of my most fulfilling experiences teaching with a student in my career thus far. I still think back to this experience and smile. There were lots of good moments, and I am also so glad that I quit.

5. Lockdown trauma

Of course, what would this list be if I didn’t mention the never-ending thousand lockdowns? I was so new to London that by the time lockdown happened, I hadn’t really had much time to make a life for myself. Working full-time for the first time took some time to adjust to. I literally was finally feeling like I had the energy to do something on a school night (I had tickets to see The Waitress), and it was literally the night the theatres closed and about one week before we went into Lockdown. 

Suddenly, I was living in a foreign country where I could only leave my house for an hour a day. This was a hard time. I was sad and really alone. I hadn’t even been in the country that long to know my housemates that well yet.

While there was lots of good out of this time too, it was still hard. You can check out the sister post to this on the best times. 

I think back to this time now, and I smile. I know in my mind it was hard, but most of it is forgotten. What I remember most is the wacky times I had with my housemates going crazy from isolation. As I write this, I really see how these hard times can be forgotten. I am so glad I wrote this post at the moment to share with you what it is really like. But keep heart, the hard times happen to everyone, and you need to be ready for them, but also know that when other people are talking about how wonderful teaching in London is, don’t think that they never had a down moment, or that if you did or are, it’s not valid. We all go through it. 

6. SATS Prep

It is no secret that the pressure on teachers in the UK is immense, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for it in any sense. It was my very first teaching job on a very sweet year 2 class. Within my first week, I had to supervise my class do a pen and paper test in silence. My students were 6 years old! I always use this example of just the stark difference between teaching in the UK and what I have experienced in teaching in other parts of the world.

Everything is really taught to the test. Besides the fact that I felt this pedagogical approach is so far removed from quality teaching and learning, the reason that this ranks is the insane amount of pressure and blame that is put on you as the teacher. I literally got my job because the expat teacher on the class before me (I started mid-year due to the academic years in Aus and the UK being different) quit after going to a pupil progress meeting where they ripped the the whole year 2 team to shreds. I got pressured to change my student’s grades had walkthroughs at least once a week, and this was all on top of being a first-year teacher, getting less time off than British New Graduates do and less support. It was really hard. 

7. Feeling stuck 

Moving abroad is hard. You are so far away from your loved ones. You are going to get homesick. What I wasn’t prepared for was the global pandemic and the inability to be able to go home. I spent all my savings on getting to the UK and planned to save enough to buy flights home. I did not expect flights to be cancelled to Australia, nor for them to be 5 x the price, if I was lucky enough to get them. This was a really hard part of living in London. I felt like I was stuck. I wanted to go home but I couldn’t.

Of course, this was exacerbated by the fact that I was literally locked inside my house for like 9 months in total or something ridiculously high. It was hard feeling like I had no other options. I mention a bit on the teaching abroad podcast to remember that during normal times that you are never stuck. If things get bad, you can always go home, and this was a luxury I missed. There are only two points I would have called in quits and seriously bought flights home, but most of the time, it was hard because I didn’t have the option to choose to stay. It was out of my hands. 

8. Lonliness

I feel like, after all of the rest, being lonely as a primary teacher in London is pretty much self-explanatory. I have an episode coming up on the Teaching Abroad Podcast all about how to make friends when you move to be a primary teacher overseas, but every tip and trick is related to meeting up with people, going to group events, joining sports teams, or joining hobby groups. But of course, during lockdown just after I moved to London, none of these were an option.

When the lockdowns did ease, this was still 2020; covid was rife in the community, people were dying on ventilators and the vaccines didn’t exist yet. Making friends was really hard. I am so grateful for the friends I did make along the way. They made my London experience, but the loneliness was hard. It was hard to be in lockdown and literally only have one friend outside of my house.

This, I am sure, was something that many people experienced during the pandemic. I was no exception.

This is the one story I always tell to explain how bad it got sometimes. I was on the phone with my brother in New Zealand, trying to explain what it was like when schools were closed for months at the beginning of 2021. At the time, I was working in Nursey (my students were like 3.5 years whose parents were key workers), and I was telling my brother that “I literally only see and speak to 3 grown-ups: My housemate, My TA and…” I stopped and thought, who was the third person, and then I realised I was thinking about myself 🤦‍♀️ I was the third person 😭 .

While I had so many great times (Nursey definitely made it to my list of top things I experienced teaching abroad in London), being lonely was awful, especially when everything opened up, and families and friends were able to see one another again. I felt like everyone had friends and family but me. 

I felt this, too, when I first moved to Hong Kong. It was a very similar experience. It was working from home, and people just weren’t out and about for the first 3 months. And It was hard. While I think this was an isolated incident to covid, I also think that perhaps there are other reasons that can keep you from getting out there. It’s hard, and I am glad that it is not the reality of everyday life. I made some amazing friends in London that I am still close to, and the same in Hong Kong. 

9. Missing Family and Friends 

This is a given, and of course, covid made it worse. I always joked to everyone that I kind of appreciated the fact that no one in my family could see each other. So I didn’t feel left out of family events. I have two young nephews. At the time I left, my eldest nephew was 3, and my youngest wasn’t even born yet! It was particularly hard to feel like I was missing out on whole chunks of their little lives. Never in my life did I think that I would be meeting one of my nephews for the first time when they were one and a half years old. 

It was really hard, inexplicably hard, when my good friend I did study abroad in Sweden with, as the only two Australians in the city, died in a car crash in mid 2020. I couldn’t go home for the funeral, and I was so far across the world. It was during this time that I wished I wasn’t in London. It was just really hard. I know I have written this a bit, but I want to acknowledge that it was. There is no bright side, no good thing that came from it. It was just hard, and when you teach abroad, some things are just hard. 

I don’t have an upbeat way of how 3 years later I have forgotten how hard it was. This was a really difficult time.

10. Missing food

I wanted to end with something that is a little bit light-hearted but still a reality. I think this is more linked to homesickness. Something I missed beyond crazy was chicken salt. This is a bittersweet memory for me, because the same happened to me in Sweden. My friend who passed away, Emily,  and I would always complain about how much we missed chicken salt while trying to explain the nuances of it to our foreign friends, who were very much dubious about what chicken salt was made from. But there is something to be said about the convenience of knowing your brands and your food. I just feel like there is nothing else in the world quite like Australian lollies. 

But it’s in that moment when you’ve had a hard day, and you want comfort food. Maybe you’re homesick, or just feeling down. So you go and buy yourself a Kitkat and save it all day as a little treat for surviving another day, and then you bite into it you realise that it isn’t the same. It’s not bad, perse, just not what it’s like at home, and that’s what you had been looking forward to all day.

One of the perks of living and teaching internationally is getting to explore new foods you don’t have at home and getting new favourites (hello 👋 rollo pudding!), but the downside is that when you crave that special something, it’s not there or crazy expensive. 

I do, however, on this topic, highly recommend Aussie food box. I always get these from my family for Christmas and birthdays, and it just brings that little bit of joy to my life that can be brought by a small handful of fantails. 

Being a primary teacher in London was, all in all, a wonderful expereince. There were so many amazing things that made my time there (you can read that blog post here).

But it is not perfect. Teaching abroad in London is a life. And like life at home, you have good days and bad days and sometimes the experiences of the good moments in the bad. I remember a lot of them, now just fondly. 

While I always recommend being an Aussie teacher in London, I want to make sure that I am sharing the full picture: the highs and the lows.

Being an expat teacher is more than just a job; it’s more than just the weekend or the good moments. It’s more than just the holidays or travels, and it’s more than the hard or sad times. It is all of these. It is about living your life and making the most of the opportunities you have!

I am not quite sure how to end a post about the hard times because, all in all, I love teaching abroad, and I don’t want you to be turned off. But also, I think it is important to know what you are getting into so you can be better prepared to push through the hard times and more equipped to quit when enough is enough. You never know; from one ending can bring a new beginning. 

If you are interested in teaching abroad and don’t know where to start – Get the Teaching in London Guide Today!. It is the perfect place to start your teaching abroad journey. 

Want to know why I moved to teach in London? Or what I have learned in my time teaching abroad in London? Check out my previous blog post: 

5 Honest Reasons I Became an International Primary Teacher Abroad

4 Big Lessons I Actually Learnt Teaching Abroad in London

5 Hard Truths that Bust these Common Teaching Abroad Myths

10 of the Best Reasons You Should Teach Abroad

Related Articles: 

Is Teaching in London Right For You? 

Surviving and thriving as a beginning teacher in the UK – Teach In 

What Living In London Taught Me About Life – Gina Bear’s Blog