Tomas arrived in cohort eleven with a map of nine options and a quiet certainty that teaching wasn't on it. Twelve years in a classroom, two of them exhausting, and a growing sense that staying would mean he had failed to be brave.

His evidence journal disagreed. The absorption signal pointed almost entirely at the two hours a week he spent designing curriculum. The repeat-request signal was overwhelming: colleagues in three schools kept asking him to rebuild their units. The money signal, the one he expected to be damning, turned out to be fine — the problem wasn't the salary, it was the commute and the year-eight timetable.

The option that was already there

By week four, seven options were dead. The two finalists were a corporate learning-design role and a version of his current job with a different remit at a different school. He ran both trials in week five: a shadow day at a training company, and a frank conversation with a head of department he'd never approached.

The shadow day was fine. Pleasant. Not the point. The conversation ended with an offer to build the school's curriculum programme, three days of teaching instead of five.

Why staying is the harder decision

Leaving is legible. It comes with an announcement, a leaving card, a story people can repeat. Choosing what you already have looks from the outside like nothing happened, which means you get none of the social credit and all of the doubt.

Tomas's decision letter is one of the few we've kept a copy of, with permission. The last line reads: I am not staying because I was afraid to go. I am staying because the evidence said so, and now I have it in writing.