The work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, recently suggested that unemployed people over 50 should consider delivering takeaways.
But the army of missing workers Stride was seeking are looking to do something more productive with their time: this year, the over-55s accounted for the biggest rise in new trainee teachers in England, with a 75% increase in applications.
The impact is already evident: greying ex-bankers, news presenters, scientists and former healthcare workers are appearing in school staff rooms – all empty nesters, “unretirees”, those who have been made redundant or who have had a life-changing experience.
“This is a really interesting trend and we’re just at the beginning of the change,” said Lucy Kellaway, who quit “the world’s nicest job as a journalist on the Financial Times to train as a maths teacher in an inner-London school” in 2017 when she was 58.
Kellaway is co-founder of Now Teach, a charity whose direct targeting of older people has seen their numbers rise 13% year on year, compared with a 1% rise across all age groups.
“There’s no reason this shouldn’t happen with other careers, but at the moment, it’s just teaching that is standing up and yelling, ‘come on: you’re over 50 – come and do this!’” said Kellaway.
