Things like this just make me want to throw in the towel now

[letseatgrandma]

A comment from the Guardan Education article link about the inet findings of the workload survey ublished last week

Teachers, not least in the way they are represented by the NUT, appear to think they should be unique in not being subject to scrutiny. In most jobs (including mine), one is judged on one's performance every single day. Whereas teachers throw their hands up in horror at the occasional Ofsted inspection? Do they feel they should graudate, be handed £30,000 per year for a 39 week year and then be left to their own devices for several decades without any scrutiny at all? The idea that the government should cave to every NUT demand based on a sever conducted by teachers themselves (many of whom will have never seen the world of work outside of education and therefore have nothing to base things on) is absurd. Ask ANY profession if they're overworked, of course they'll say yes. Incredible as well that NUT speak of 'more sackings' when teaching is famously the job with the fewest sackings of any in the country!

I want to cry reading that :(

[letseatgrandma]

Argh--my 'p' isn't working properly!

I can spell inept and published, really...

[PinkPeanuts]

It's so very depressing :(
I desperately want to leave but it's all I've ever known, I don't know what else I would do career wise :(

[rollonthesummer]

Me neither. I've wanted to teach since I was about 6. :(

[daisyeatyourpeas]

I am the same as you rollonthesummer, always wanted to reach since I started school. Been a teacher now for near on 20 years. What has changed is the paperwork for paperwork sake , stupid new initiatives dreamed up in a room by people who have never set foot in a classroom. What hasn't changed is a child's face when they discover something for the first time, that moment when the light bulb turns on for them. We go on strike for a day and we are public enemy number one. Imagine if we worked to rule for a week!!!!

[ThingummyJigg]

Blimey. What clueless bitter ignorant stupid arsehole came out with that pile of shuddering wank?

I'm not overworked in my profession/job, not everyone thinks they are.

Not a teacher though, and the teachers I do know work very hard day and night and most of the school holidays, plus they go above and beyond for the children, and for very little reward other than the love of what they do.

Also I think quite a lot of them have at some point been subject to some level of abuse from stupid arsehole parents tbh. Mainly from those few individuals with the attitude of the sulky eejit who wrote that in the Guardian.

[DoctorDonnaNoble]

And they certainly don't start on anywhere near £30k!

[holmessweetholmes]

Ffs, what ignorant bile. There will always be people who talk about teachers like this, unfortunately.

I just hope that the more teachers who are able to vote with their feet by quitting the horrible system it has become, the more likely that the public and the government will begin to realise that something radical needs to change.

[daisyeatyourpeas]

30k!!!!@ ummm let me see if I didn't have a tlr and be on ups3 which I had to fight for I wouldn't be on 30k. Unfortunately alot of teachers like me are in a position now why we either have to shut up and put up or leave. I will not earn any more unless I go for a promotion and that which would mean time out of the classroom and away from children. It is the children who keep me going in. Only a very very small amount if teachers answered the questionnaire to generate the data behind the evidence behind the idiot who wrote the statement in the OP. Why? Maybe because we were to busy doing stupid senseless paperwork for paperwork sense or perhaps trying to get some sleep before another long day!!!!! Oh sorry we only work 9 to 3.15 silly me

[rollonthesummer]

£22,023 is the first step on the pay scale.

It annoys me as well when politicians say things like 'only 2% of teachers bothered to fill in the workload survey so teachers can't be that stressed' yet when only 10% of the population turn out to vote in an election-that's just dandy!

[rollonthesummer]

It also annoys me that teachers are expected to be Outstanding every second of every day, yet our country is governed by corrupt and inept tosspots of the highest degree!

[Fairyliz]

TMS point 5 is £29829, so if you start on point 1 at age 22 you will generally be on point 5 at age 26. I know its hard work being a teacher as I work as a business manager in a primary school, but its really not a bad salary.
For comparision I have 'O' levels, A levels a degree and am a part qualified accountant with 35 years office experience for that I earn £22,000 per annum about the same as an NQT.

[Caorunn]

But lots of those comments are true. Not badly paid; no real performance based incentives. Pay increments based on length of service.

Would I want to do it? No. Why? Because I earn more and enjoy what I do but I am only ever as good as my last delivery. I work, at times in the year, 60+ hours per week. Early starts, late nights and constant pressure. No lunch breaks, struggle to balance work & family.

I genuinely see nothing spectacularly hard or special about a teachers role within a professionally qualified context. For context an average solicitors salary c. 10 years PQ is between £35 and £40k.

[rollonthesummer]

Teachers' pay increments aren't subject to length of service any more.

Plenty of my colleagues didn't move up at all this year-you could just be stuck on m2 if SMT continually set you impossible targets.

[balia]

Actually teaching salaries are 20% below the average graduate salary in the first year. After 5 years, they have a salary lead of about 46% over the starting salary. The average graduate after 5 years has a salary lead of just under 75%. Going up the pay scale is performance related from the first year. There is also no automatic pay portability, so if a teacher changes jobs there is no guarantee that the salary will be the same.

I am only ever as good as my last delivery. I work, at times in the year, 60+ hours per week. Early starts, late nights and constant pressure. No lunch breaks, struggle to balance work & family Sounds exactly like my working life, and I am a teacher.

Numbers of people training to be secondary school teachers has gone done year on year every year since 2009.

I am interested in your figures, Caorun about average solicitor salaries; in 2014 the median law firm graduate salary was £39,000.

[Ridingthestorm]

I am lost for words. Our working lives aren't going to improve anytime soon are they?
Roll on Friday - 40 weeks of maternity leave for me and HOPING my head teacher doesn't hate me enough to say no to part time hours. Plan B is to complete my 13 weeks and leave.

[TheRealYellowWiggle]

Have you ever noticed how relatively carefree teacher seem on Inservice days? That's what working in a normal job (solicitor/accountant/office environment type) would be like, only every day. I have had both types of job and only one required a constant performance and a sense that the "real work" of the day had to be done at the end of the day, ie the paperwork.

[redcaryellowcar]

I'm a qualified teacher, but currently a sahm I'm terrified that I might need to go back to teaching as it sounds so fraught with criticism at the moment! I have teacher friends who I can only see in half term holidays as they work such long hours AND weekends that they can't see me in a normal week. There aren't many jobs like that that pay 30k??

[MsAdorabelleDearheartVonLipwig]

Can I just say that as a parent I think our teachers do a wonderful job. We do appreciate you, you know. If that's any consolation.

[holmessweetholmes]

Caorunn - I agree that it's not badly paid. That's partly why it is so hard to get out - after 20 years' teaching I'd find it very difficult to get a job with similar working hours which would pay me as well.

However, the rest of what you said... well of course you don't see it unless you've been a teacher. Why do you think everyone is scrambling to get out of teaching if the pay is great and it's not stressful etc? If you think teachers are deluded about their job being hard, try talking to someone who has worked in teaching and in industry. Or to partners of teachers.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

I'm with MsAdorabelle - two of my dses have finished their schooling, and the third does his Advanced Highers this year and heads off to university. All three of them have done well at school, and got unconditional offers for university, and it is their teachers who are responsible for that. They are bright boys, and fairly hard working, but I am under no illusions that they could have achieved a tenth of what they have, without the hard work and dedication of their teachers.

My father was a teacher, and he loved the job. He was head of department, and made the deliberate choice to take the lowest ability sets, because he loved the challenge of teaching something to a pupil who didn't enjoy maths, didn't want to be there, and was really struggling to understand - and the look on that pupil's face when they did understand - that was the best bit.

I don't know if he would enjoy teaching now. So I have the greatest respect for the people who carry on teaching despite all the things that make the job so much harder than it was in dad's day.

[BlackeyedSusan]

ffs. 39 week year? I left far too long ago to raise a family and it was not a 39 week year then.. from what I can gather, it has got a lot worse.

[Caorunn]

www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Solicitor/Salary

This is one source re: solicitor salaries. A private practice / high street solicitor is not generally very highly paid. The vast majority of qualified legal staff fall into this category.

I didn't say it wasn't stressful - I am very sure it is - but more so than many other professions? I am not convinced.

And what are the criteria for performance based increments?

[Caorunn]

www.prospects.ac.uk/solicitor_salary.htm

and here is what people entering the profession are advised.

[rollonthesummer]

I didn't say it wasn't stressful - I am very sure it is - but more so than many other professions? I am not convinced.

Do teachers ever say their job is more stressful that many other professions?


We have been objecting to the fact that workload has increased monumentally in the last couple of years with no added benefit to anyone.

[holmessweetholmes]

Exactly, rollon. I don't really understand why non - teachers presume to make pronouncements about what teaching is like as a job. I don't go around doing that about other jobs . Because I don't know, because I haven't experienced them.

But if I were to read that , for example... I dunno, dentists were leaving dentistry in their thousands, I would think 'Hmm... something must be seriously wrong in dentistry atm if they are all quitting. I wouldn't think 'Oh those lazy, workshy dentists! All they have to do is poke around in people's mouths all day. My job's much harder than that'.

Because it's not about how teaching compares with other jobs. It's about how it compares with teaching 5, 10, 20 years ago; why teaching is so much harder and less rewarding than it used to be. And why all the research, improvements and changes only ever seem to make things worse.

If teaching is well - paid and no more stressful than any other job, we'd have to be bloody idiots to be quitting in droves, wouldn't we? Especially considering the long holidays and child - friendly working hours.