[2025] EWHC 2997 (Fam)

The wife has child benefit of about £2,250. She, in Mr Lewis’s note, accepts that she will be able to adjust to the breakdown of the marriage such that she does not require maintenance in 13 years. That is timed to when the youngest child will finish university, should he go to university, on a ‘straight through’ basis.

Having listened to her evidence I remain of the view that her position that she would take a part-time course to train to be a primary school teacher, before becoming a teaching assistant in 2028, earning, she said, some £13,000 to £15,000 is not a reasonable course. If the wife is training to be a teacher it would be reasonable to expect her to be a teacher. If she is to be a teaching assistant she can do that now rather than wait till 2028.

Further, when she was cross examined, she acknowledged that there were ways that she could train to be a teacher while working as an unqualified teacher.

The starting salary for a teacher, is I am told by Mr Boydell, gross £43,500. He found tables demonstrating that an unqualified teacher (as the wife would be if she were training on the job) would receive, at the bottom of the pay range, £26,800. And, for completeness, he produced a document showing that a teaching assistant would receive £24,400 (albeit in Cambridgeshire).

The wife responded in her evidence to the pay-scale argument by saying that the reality was different, and in reality she would be paid less. Mr Boydell’s response, which was not challenged, is that the salaries are fixed in the state sector.

I have to consider this issue in the round. The wife is primary carer for 3 children. Two of them are still at primary school. The wife is likely to achieve a degree without honours. I consider that her English is strong now, but might need some improvement. I find that a reasonable trajectory for her career would be a year as a teaching assistant, two years as an unqualified teacher, while training on the job, and then a job as a teacher. I do not think that I can assume that she will be full time, for the first three years of this plan, in part because of her children (the youngest of whom is 8), in part because of the need to train on top of being teacher. I therefore assess her at a little less than 2/3 of the figures advanced by Mr Boydell. That will be in round terms £16,000 gross for the first three years (about £14,500 net), and then the £43,500 gross (about £30,000 net).