IF there’s one profession bucking the economic trend, it’s teaching.

With job security and any number of incentives to take up a career in the classroom it’s never been more popular – not just for people leaving college and university, but for those wanting to move into teaching from another profession.

Two Colchester people who have recently made that decision are former journalist James Burrows and senior marketing manager Anthony Varela.

James, formerly a crime reporter with the Gazette, has been an English teacher at Notley High School, Braintree, for the past year after taking the School Centred Initial Teacher Training course.

He said: “I did my training with the Colchester Teacher Training Consortium and my first placement with Thurstable School, in Tiptree, which I loved.

“I was there from October to Christmas with the aim of gradually working up from eight to ten hours a week. From there, I went to Philip Morant, another great school, until June.”

James said one of the most important things for him was the ability to go into a secure career which supported a family lifestyle.

He said: “I enjoyed journalism, but for a long time I had been thinking about teaching. My mum teaches in a special needs school and when I was at university everyone said I should be a teacher. I think that’s probably why I didn’t do it first of all.

“I think the experiences I have had since then and that of being a journalist as well have been valuable to the way I teach. I often use some of things I learned at the Gazette in my classes and they’ve worked very well.”

Anthony’s job experience managing a large team was one of the reasons he thought of going into teaching. The senior marketing manager with a Colchester-based trade magazine company starts as a maths teacher at the Gilberd School, Colchester, next week.

He said: “After university, I did my PGCE – postgraduate certificate in education – teacher training, but then decided to go travelling.

After 15 years in marketing, I had worked myself up to a very senior post in charge of a large team, but I was beginning to feel safe in my comfort zone.

“One of my strengths was I had always built strong teams around me and when I had gone on management courses I enjoyed that interaction with learning.”

But while financial security was a key reason for James to go into teaching, it wasn’t so for Anthony.

“I’m definitely going into it for the love of teaching,” he said. “I am making a salary sacrifice. Hopefully, in a few years time that will change.

“One of the good things about teaching is you can make big salary jumps in a short space of time.”

That’s possibly why, after so many years of Government pushes to get more people into the profession, recently more and more are doing just that.

James added: “When I applied, not so long ago, there were very few people. Now it appears there are a lot more people.

“I’m not surprised. I love my job. There is a real sense of achievement when you’ve had a good class or you see the penny dropping with a pupil.”