The day I arrive to see Nick Seaward, Chartered FCSI banker turned teacher, I’ve heard on the Today programme that UK children lag far behind their Chinese contemporaries. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said even the children of British doctors and lawyers were more than a year behind the sons and daughters of factory workers across the globe.

It’s gloomy news for a sunny day. But when I find Seaward in his classroom at Kemnal Technology College in Sidcup, he is not remotely surprised. He is passionate about his new career – but it’s not been an easy switch.

“Do you feel that you achieved what you set out to achieve in teaching?” I ask him.

“No,” he answers. “There are two reasons for that. Firstly, the workload, particularly in the first three years, is so crippling that it tends to knock most of the idealism out of you, because you are so desperately trying to keep your head above water.

“And you don’t really have time – or, to be frank, the energy – to implement some of the more interesting ideas that you might have been dreaming of. I don’t think anybody prepares trainee teachers for this incredible assault of the workload that’s going to hit them.”

When he started giving his first lessons, he found that, on average, his ratio of preparation time to delivery was about six hours to one hour delivery. “And that’s fine when you are on a restricted timetable as a trainee teacher, where you start off doing three lessons a week, but very rapidly that number of lessons builds up.”

Bankers who face 5am starts and think teachers have an easy life should take note: “As a newly qualified teacher, you are teaching roughly 21 hours a week; you can see that there is a massive workload.”

From training to teaching

There are two other reasons why teaching has not fulfilled his expectations and hopes as perhaps it might have done. “The level of attainment and prior achievement of the students that I am teaching is much lower than I anticipated, he says. And the third reason after the workload and the low attainment is that the behaviour of the students is such that even in the sixth form, you are spending a considerable proportion of your time in managing behaviour in the classroom.”

The roots of his teaching career lay in his time at Kleinwort Benson. He initially ran the Asian sales desk, but requested a move over to the European side at the turn of the millennium and was made head of the equities liaison team, which operated, he says, as a kind of bridge between the research and the sales departments.

Each year, he took on one or two graduate trainees. “A number of the people who I trained up were quite complimentary about the training that I’d given them – and that made me think that perhaps I could develop that side a bit further.”

When Dresdner Kleinwort was sold to Commerzbank in late 2008, Seaward, then Chairman of the CISI editorial panel, took redundancy and within two weeks of leaving the bank, began a teacher training course.

“It was really because I had done the training at Kleinworts that I thought I could become a teacher, but I discovered they are very different animals,” he says. “Training is really, I suppose, about imparting knowledge and technique, whereas that’s almost the greatest insult that you can ever throw at a teacher these days.”

With school pupils, “You are supposed to be ‘guiding young people on a voyage of discovery’. Probably the worst critique you could receive in a lesson observation is that it was mere transmission of knowledge. That is like a dagger to the heart of any modern-day teacher.”

Seaward is modest about his achievements. Few teachers, however, make the impact that Seaward has on the financial syllabus itself.

“Some years ago, when I was on the Board of the CISI, Managing Director Ruth Martin mentioned a plan to adapt one of the suite of professional exams for use in schools and, although in those days I had no intention of becoming a teacher, I thought that was an extremely good idea.
The worst critique you could receive in a lesson observation is that it was mere transmission of knowledge

“Wearing my Board director’s hat, I gave her as much encouragement as I could, because that was the way forward for the CISI.

“It seemed natural, if you were offering a suite of professional qualifications, to move further down to the early part of education and start off with qualifications to be done in schools.”

That first qualification, the Certificate for the Introduction to Securities and Investments, was an AS-level equivalent and an industry qualification in its own right.

“And then, when I did become a teacher, I found myself in the business and economics department of my first school and I persuaded them to take on the Cert.ISI because I was familiar with the qualification from my time at the CISI.”

It was the first time the course had been taught. Elements of the syllabus had been adopted by a number of public schools as an add-on, “something to do in the summer after the main exams season was over”. But this was the first time the full qualification had been introduced.

New syllabus

Inevitably, Seaward ended up piloting its teaching and devised all the lessons and teaching resources. “And in doing so, it became very clear to me that it was not suitable in its current form for schools. It was basically aimed at high-achieving schools with an awful lot of teaching time available to them.”

Like the private schools? “Like the private schools. So I revamped the order in which it was being taught, because it didn’t strike me at the time as being terribly logical.” Seaward then pointed out to Ruth Martin and the educational development team that “if you want to get into the educational sector, you cannot just offer a single year of sixth-form study – you have to offer both years. No state school is going to take on a stand-alone AS-level.”

It seems Seaward has a habit of making work for himself. The CISI asked him to devise the syllabus for the second year. He did so, and put together an advisory panel from people he had trained with and met in the course of his MA in Business Education. That became the Diploma in Finance, Risk and Investment – the Dip.FRI. And, of course, once that was written, a textbook was needed: Seaward wrote it. So, then, Seaward is inventive, inspired and hardworking. He is also clearly unafraid of controversy.

In a previous job as educator, he became a whistleblower. He had what he identifies, with understatement, as “a very unpleasant incident”. He will not be drawn on the details: “I felt it was incompatible with my status as a teacher; I think that is the best way of putting it.”

It did, however, lead him to make a report to the Department for Education under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, “which led to my MP, Tessa Jowell, asking a number of questions in the House about why the Department for Education had not acted on my report.” Has it done so since? “No, not to my knowledge.”

UCAS points

However, the incident did give him time to write the textbook. “The new qualification is currently being piloted, I believe, by a school in Liverpool this year for the first time and I will be delivering the second part to Year 13 at this school next year.”

CV snapshot

2013 – Develops a new GCSE-equivalent finance qualification for CISI

2011 – Creates a new A-level-equivalent finance qualification for CISI; completes MA in Business Education, IOE London

2010 – Qualifies as a secondary school teacher of business, economics and enterprise, IOE London

2006 – Appointed to Board of CISI

1994 – Joins Kleinwort Benson, London, becoming Head of Asia ex-Japan equity sales

1982 – Moves to South East Asia, becoming editor of Maritime China, then business correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review

1977 – Graduates from the University of Kent, with a degree in History

He was then asked by the CISI to handle the application for UCAS points to be awarded for the new A-level, and to prepare the submission to the Department for Education for both the AS- and the A-level to be included in the performance league table for schools, “without which, no state school would have taken them on.”

This represented another triumph: an original 3,000 qualifications were cut to just 87 – but both the CISI AS-level and A-level made the cut.

Seaward wasn’t finished, however. He then rewrote the CISI’s GCSE qualification, now the Fundamentals of Business and Finance, which is also included in the school league tables.

But when I put it to him that he has had a real influence on what’s being taught in schools in the financial arena, he gives a characteristically modest reply: “I wouldn’t put it as far as that. It’s very early days yet in the take-up rate.”

“Do you feel it’s been worth the amazing switch you’ve made from one industry to another?” I ask.

“Yes, because it’s given me first-hand experience and insight into the world of secondary education, without which I would not have been able to devise those various qualifications. You needed someone who had a foot in both camps. I hope I don’t sound self-aggrandising in that way.”

I think we can agree that this is not the case. Seaward is clearly accustomed, though, to being brought down to earth, at least by his family. He lives ten miles away from work and gets to school on an old motorbike – a 1983 BMW R65.

“My wife allowed me to buy a motorbike again only after the children had left school.” (Which, he says, accounts for the crumpled state of his suits.) So they wouldn’t want one too? “No. Because I had finished paying the school fees. I was surplus to requirements.”