AFTER six years working as a design engineer for a fabrication company, Jeff Allan had a mortgage, a comfortable lifestyle and a salary of £34,000 a year. Last year he decided to give it all up and train to become a teacher.

When he starts work in the classroom in September he will earn around £17,000, rising to almost £27,000 after eight years' service. And despite a drop in salary which would make many people think twice, the 28-year-old would-be maths teacher has no regrets.

"I was really dissatisfied with the career and I was finding that, although I was making a lot of money, I didn't have that much spare time," he says. "I wanted to have a job that I enjoyed and the part of engineering I enjoyed most was putting my ideas across. I more or less drifted into engineering when I left university and teaching was something I fancied doing all the time."

Jeff, from Dipton near Stanley, qualified for a tax-free £6,000 bursary to take the one-year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) course at Sunderland University.

"That meant I could just about afford it. I think I would have done it anyway but it would have been a lot more difficult," he says. "My lifestyle has changed a little bit - before I just bought things I liked and I had some savings. But teaching is quite a well-paid career, I will be able to have a good life, although maybe not start saving."

The bursary is part of the Government's strategy to attract more people into teaching, in the face of fears of a looming shortage in some subjects, particularly maths, science, technology and modern languages.

And it has been accompanied by adverts to promote teaching, with the slogan 'Those who can, teach,' reversing a phrase which has dogged the profession. While teaching is held in high esteem in the rest of Europe and in North America, in the UK it has been sullied with a reputation as a refuge for those who cannot do anything else.

Christine Farnsworth, principal lecturer in Sunderland University's education department and leader of the secondary programme, says there has always been a range of people applying to become teachers, including those looking for a career change.

"We see very committed people," she says. "They may have already had a job but they say they want something more satisfying and rewarding. The training salary is generating more interest from well-qualified graduates who are possibly in well-qualified jobs who are thinking about a career change."

But there is still no doubt that leaving a secure job to go into teaching is seen as a strange career move.

"My sanity has been questioned constantly over the last 18 months," says Chris Norton, who started teacher training following a break to have her second child in 1995. She had been a staff trainer for BT, earning around £20,000 a year, but is now in the final year of a two-year BA course at Sunderland, learning how to teach business studies.

"People want to know why you would leave somewhere where you have established yourself and go into what seems like a minefield," she adds.

"But when I left to have my second child, I decided there and then that at the earliest opportunity I would go into teaching. From my point of view, it is a greater challenge."

Chris, from Washington, was only able to enter teacher training thanks to funds built up while she was working, but for her the salary was not a disincentive.

"The potential to earn is still there but the starting salary should be more in line with the average that graduates are commanding in other areas," she says. "But I can't honestly see how a bundle of financial incentives really do make someone want to become a teacher."

Ruth Smith took a more direct route into teaching, leaving school at 18, working at a supermarket check-out for a year before taking a three-year degree course in English education, which includes qualified teacher status, at Sunderland. Now 21, Ruth, from Morpeth, finishes the course this summer.

"I knew I wanted to teach when I left school," she says. "I had a really good A-level English teacher and she made me love the subject so much.

"My dad worked down the pit for a lot of years and was in the merchant navy and he put himself through university and became a teacher. I have seen him teach and I see how much he loves it. From when I was really little I said I wanted to be a teacher to be like my dad."

Along with low pay, talk of teacher shortages usually throws up two other factors said to be deterring people from entering the profession. One is the stress of teaching, caused partly by an ever-increasing workload and constant demands to meet targets, and the other is the deteriorating behaviour of the pupils, highlighted by Chief Inspector of Schools Mike Tomlinson in his first annual report yesterday.

These, however, do not seem to be particular concerns for trainee teachers.

"I have had pressure in every job I have done," says Chris. "I have managed people in call centres who are under unbelievable pressure, and I don't think teaching is that bad."

Jeff agrees. "As a professional you are going to get pressure - there are a lot more stressful professions than teaching. A lot of people think teenagers behave exactly the same when they're waiting outside the chip shop as when they go to school. The vast majority of teenagers behave themselves. All you need to do is talk to them and show them some respect and that is what you get back."

Ruth admits that most of her friends assume she had wanted to teach primary children, considered to be better behaved, but she has no qualms about standing in front of a class of teenagers.

"When I first started teaching practice I set down clear rules. They know what they're going to get punished for and they know what they can and can't do," she says.

And even though Jeff has yet to start full-time teaching, the rewards so far are enough to convince him that giving up that £34,000 a year job was the right move.

"The reason you are in teaching is to help these kids and it is magic the first time it happens," he says. "When you are in front of a class and you set them exercises, every now and then you hear 'Oh, yeah' and that is when it clicks. That is really rewarding."

l Secondary schools in England could be up to 20,000 teachers short in five years' time, according to research backed by the National Union of Teachers.