High-fliers swap cash for questions

HE rides to work on a bike when, as Brendan Mahoney cheerfully admits, he could have been driving a Porsche by now.

He gave it all up - the career in the City, the big salary, the expense-account lunches in the very best restaurants.

Instead, 36-year-old Brendan became a teacher.

He is one of a breed of high-fliers who have come down to earth to start new jobs in the classroom.

With estimates last week that up to 4,000 teaching vacancies remain unfilled, the Government is pinning its hopes on tempting more like him.

They're offered incentives, such as a pounds 4,000 "golden hello", their own laptop computer and a fast-tracking climb up the pay scale.

Brendan, for example, already earns pounds 35,000, after just two years at the blackboard. It sounds impressive - until he mentions that the colleagues he left behind in the City are now on pounds 200,000 a year.

So the perks, alone, couldn't have been enough to tempt him.

"I suddenly realised there had to be more to life than helping the rich and powerful become even more rich and powerful," he says. "I had a champagne lifestyle, but it was a pretty shallow way to live."

Brendan used to be an analyst with City firm Goldman Sachs.

Today he's a science teacher at Deptford Green Comprehensive in New Cross, London.

"I used to have pounds 1,000 dinners, entertaining groups of world bankers, while we sewed up investments worth billions of dollars," he says. "But what was I doing? Just adding a few more zeros to their fortunes."

A campaign to lure recruits such as Brendan - lawyers and acountants, media types and professionals - is showing dramatic results, the Government insists. Applications from mature entrants to join training schemes are up by 12 per cent.

More than 20,000 started at post-graduate level last year, many of whom had forsaken careers that had money and glamour.

"I'm happier than ever in my bike clips," says Brendan, whose wife Deborah, a civil servant, is expecting their first child.

"There are only so many corporate gin-and-tonics that you can drink, before you start to question why you're doing it. I work as hard as I ever did. But the rewards are not simply in cash any more."

Another City exile, 29-year-old Lucie Harris, is about to start her third year teaching chemistry at Gosford Hill school, in Oxfordshire. The days of investment banking are over. She's in a lab coat, warning a class of 30 to be careful with their bunsen burners nowadays and earning about pounds 25,000. "I had a degree in chemistry but I went into the City for the reasons many people do - I thought it would be a glamorous way to earn lots of money," Lucie says.

"I was never on a huge salary, but no doubt I could be expecting six figures by now.

"Which is a lot more than I get as a teacher, that's for sure.

"Coming from an environment where money was no object, and an expense account was virtually limitless, the biggest shock has been finding how short cash can be.

"We had to give up time in our summer holidays to redecorate the science block, simply because there was no money for it.

"But that's the culture. If you want something done, you have to do it yourself. Perhaps in my previous world, I was spoiled".

Meanwhile, the science teacher at Conyers school, in Yarm, near Middlesbrough, used to be a familiar face to business executives around the world.

Michael Parrott, 39, was a globetrotting executive with ICI for six years - he roamed across 30 countries, from the goldmines of Brazil to the factories of Tehran, but a year ago he began teaching.

"It was first-class travel, first- class hotels, first-class restaurants," Michael says. "But I would be away for a couple of weeks, then home for a few days, then I would be off again.

"I have two young children and I was missing them. Daddy was becoming a voice on the phone."

Teaching hours, he says, suited his family life - not to mention the six weeks holidays in Summer and the long breaks at Easter and Christmas.

"I have books to mark and lessons to prepare in an evening and at weekends, but at least I'm home to put the kids to bed," says Michael, whose basic salary is around pounds 17,000.

"I earn less than half of what I did before. Luckily that blow was cushioned because my wife, a GP, was able to increase her earnings."

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