Peter Saacke, a long-serving fund manager at Artemis who managed £30bn worth of assets over 25 years in the City, retired at the end of June 2024 to retrain as a maths teacher. He trained with the help of the charity Now Teach and has just finished his first year in a permanent role at a central London boys school, where he teaches mostly A-level students.
A different kind of pressure
Saacke said the first thing that hit him in the classroom was the noise, so much so that he took to lying down in a dark room for 30 minutes after school every day. He said it was a different kind of stress to fund management, where he was always watching for the metaphorical bus that could run his portfolio over. In the classroom, he said, he was instead being eyed, sized up and challenged by up to 30 teenagers, not all of them on their best behaviour.
Saacke said he went from being highly experienced to a novice almost overnight, but that he was excited, and that the long hours reminded him of the start of his finance career. He said he was particularly motivated by the national shortage of maths teachers and by poor numeracy and financial literacy skills. He also pointed to demand in economics, noting that hiring targets for Business Studies teachers were missed by 70 per cent last year, and said schools are keen to recruit people with relevant backgrounds.
Saacke said financial education is an area close to his heart, where finance professionals can make a valuable contribution by connecting personal and macro finance for students. He said maths textbooks often present unrealistic versions of 'real life' problems, whereas his background lets him bring in genuine examples, including correlation versus causation, spurious correlations and realistic investment scenarios. He has been asked to develop a course on financial literacy at his school.
Skills from the boardroom to the classroom
Saacke said many skills transfer from finance to teaching, starting with being organised and used to working under pressure. He said years of dealing with clients, colleagues and external contacts have helped him make split-second decisions when handling parents and colleagues, including diffusing situations and avoiding confrontation.
Saacke said it has become known among students that he had a previous career, and that a number of them stop him in the corridor to ask for advice on what to study or the merits of different degrees. He said years of conducting hiring interviews have also helped him prepare students for Oxbridge interviews. He said he tries to remove self-imposed barriers that stop students believing they can pursue certain jobs, universities or careers, saying he knows from experience that such limits are often not real.
Why he made the switch
Saacke recalled colleagues nearing retirement in the City who spoke of wanting to give something back to society, often through volunteering or charity work. In his own case, that meant working with the Access Project, which helps disadvantaged teenagers gain places at top universities, an experience he said reminded him how much he enjoyed teaching.
Saacke noted that only one in three career changers who apply to become teachers make it onto a training course, compared with more than half of young prospects. He said the charity Now Teach helped him through the process and is currently seeking support for a campaign to place 600 STEM-focused career changers into schools in disadvantaged areas. He said anyone considering the same transition should give Now Teach a call.
Saacke said much has changed since his time in the City, but that some habits remain: he is still in bed by 10pm on a school night, up at 6am, and at school by 7.30am after checking on world politics and markets. He said the teaching pension is generous, with a 28.6 per cent employer contribution and a guaranteed lifetime income, on top of long summer holidays. Saacke said he has not regretted his decision to change careers for a single day.
