Traders to teachers

UNITED STATES: The US state of New Jersey has a new plan for dealing with the lack of maths teachers at the state’s high schools. Traders to Teachers will train out-of-work bankers, stock brokers and other finance experts from nearby Wall Street to teach mathematics.

The three-month programme includes free mathematics classes at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Participants then have to take a qualifying exam. University officials say interest in the programme has been much higher than expected.

Many of the trainees are in their late 40s and early 50s and see teaching as a stable employment alternative, although on average they will be earning less than half their former salaries.

"It was time to re-evaluate what I wanted to do," says former financial anaylst Kathy Marshall.

The trainees include professionals such as Kathy Marshall, who has 20 years' experience working in financial markets, with a speciality in helping entrepreneurs find funding. But in the past year, as fewer people started businesses, her work as a financial analyst fell to nearly nothing. “It was time to re-evaluate what I wanted to do,” Marshall told The New York Times.

Most of the teacher trainees do not believe the economy will recover fast enough to allow them to return to their financial careers within the next few years. James W. Hughes at Rutgers University says of the Traders to Teachers programme: “It may produce highly skilled, talented teachers who ordinarily wouldn’t have gone into the profession.”