Should I continue my current teaching assistant position or switch to a call centre job for more money in the short term?
So to keep things brief, I am currently working at a sixth form college as a learning support assistant four days a week. My hours are 8:30am till 16:00pm with a 90 minute commute each way. I am however considering switching to a 10 hour, 4 days a week call centre job in order to make more money in the short term.
Now, I enjoy my current job, my colleagues are friendly, I have a good relationship with most students and it's pretty easy for the most part. Also, it is important to mention that this role is a teaching agency role so I am not hired by my school directly, this means I will not have the privilege of holiday pay (so no wages for may half term and the summer break). At the moment my weekly rate is around £350 after tax with around £40 taken off to pay for my commute (I get two buses to work each way), so realistically around £310 per week. I have been working a range of supply based agency jobs for about 5 months now as I am set to begin my formal teacher training in September, so that's the relevance of this job. Now, I want to have as much money saved before my teacher training as I can and I now worry that this current job experience has diminishing returns.
I have been offered a role with a call centre (helping with broadband, upselling etc). This would be a four day work week (10 hours every day) and I will be paid £12.71 per hour with the possibility of commission on top of that. The positives of this job are that the commute is half as long, I will be paid more money per week and more in the longer term as I will be able to earn money during the holidays, which I would not in my current role (this around 5 weeks extra pay I will be getting). Now I understand how soul destroying call centre work can be and I am prepared for this as I will only be working there for three and a bit months and then I will leave before my teacher training begins.
So this is a pretty basic toss up but I wanted to see what advice and opinions were out there
Posted Apr 28, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC