Aussie teacher quits profession and moves home after 8 years in the UK after ‘physical abuse’ and burnout

An Aussie teacher living in the United Kingdom has quit the profession and is moving back home for heartbreaking reasons.

Alice Scholz recently went viral for her fly-on-the-wall reels on the reality of what its like to live in a UK high street, revealing everything from wild nights out, arrests and surprise snowfall, but behind the hilarious montage is the sad reality that Ms Scholz is moving back to Australia after the UK teaching system broke her.

Since quitting teaching, Ms Scholz has been documenting her journey online as she prepares to return to Australia. Despite spending more than $32,000 on UK visas and embracing the country’s history and travel opportunities, she explained that the teaching environment ultimately drove her decision to leave.

“Up until recently I was a teacher and I went into education at 21-years-old because I knew it’s what I wanted to do. I love working with children, I know I can make a difference,” she said.

“I literally gave this profession everything, I gave it my time, my energy, and my mental health, and for the longest time I kind of convinced myself that the struggle was because I just wasn’t trying hard enough.”

The 31-year-old, who’s been living in Windsor, explained that there were many reasons why she turned her back on teaching, but a huge factor was the verbal and physical abuse she was experiencing.

“I left for many reasons, one of them was because it was turning me into someone that I wasn’t. It was the constant stress, it was the lack of support and it was the abuse. I, like many other teachers, experienced verbal abuse from parents and from students. And like many other teachers as well, I experienced physical abuse,” she said.

Ms Scholz told The Daily Mirror that she had experienced multiple distressing incidents in the classroom.

“I’ve been punched, scratched, and left bruised by students. More recently, while supporting a child who was trying to hurt his peers, I followed his recommended calming strategy by getting down to his level and gently holding his hands, at which point he grabbed my breast so hard it caused bruising,” she said.

“In one incident, a father much larger than me stood over me, pointed in my face, and shouted that I wasn’t working hard enough because his child had a plastic block thrown at her. In another case, a father was furious that I had to report their child hitting a peer.

“He swore in my face, insulted other pupils in the class standing behind me, and then both parents spent the next month holding smartphones up, recording me at pick-up time.”

Ms Scholz began the first two and half years of her career teaching in Australia before moving to UK and spending more than seven years teaching overseas.

“I’ve taught in both Australia and the UK and the differences were pretty clear. Australia had a much better work-life balance and better pay, and although I haven’t taught there for about seven and a half years, when I did, there was far less pressure to constantly prove yourself as a teacher,” she said.

“While I’ve had plenty of moments I’ve really loved working in the UK, the system itself has been exhausting and ultimately led me to burnout, so overall I preferred the Australian system.”