Do you think teachers are paid too little?

Then the parents need to come into school to change their kids nappies every day until they get them toilet trained. I was a secondary teacher but if primary teacher I'd refuse as not in the job description. I'd be on the phone to get the parents to come in and do it.

I’ve been teaching for 15 years in SE England. We can only afford for me to be a teacher because DH has a much better paying job with much better prospects. That’s the reality.

Based on double my salary, we wouldn’t be able to own a home. We would manage renting, but life wouldn’t be comfortable.

@noblegiraffe I know the lockdown increased the number of kids with MH problems. I think most occupations have fallen behind in terms of pay rises. I know there are a lot of shortage areas at Secondary. I still now, 4 1/2 years after leaving teaching, get pleading emails asking if I want to come back to teach and examine again. I have had 4 such emails this last year alone from teaching agencies. AQA are even worse, emails, letters and phone calls. I tell them I have done my share.

There should be more difference of pay between different teachers. A graduate with a 2:1 degree in Maths from a prestigious university could get a lot more money and opportunities in other profession that a graduate with a 2:2 in a less academically rigorous subject from a low ranked Uni

The pension and the long holidays are big pluses. Otherwise I'm not sure if they are underpaid or not. It's not a job I could do.

When I was at school the class size limit was 28. We all thought class sizes would get smaller as the years went on.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, when I started school in the mid-Fifties, most of us had at least the basics of reading and writing.

I am STEM and known many people leave my company in favour of teaching due to the high wage and great pension (also had a couple leave to the NHS for the same reason)

Not to mention, indifferent or antagonists managements, which cannot or will not recognise and address problems in schools, class sizes approaching forty.,etc

Besides being indifferently paid, teaching has become an absolutely shit job! Burgeoning workloads, unrealistic expectations, 100+ hour weeks, atrocious behaviour, underfunded or lack of resources, I could go on.

They are because they're choosing to leave. If they were being paid enough they'd stay. I want my children and all children to have a good education, which means the country investing in that education. If we value education we should be paying teachers enough that they stay and teach.

No. I don't .

Not when you factor in pensions, time off and progression pay increases.

And yes these do count when it comes to pay. Compensation should be looked at as a whole.

Most people’s pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, not just teachers.

It was 20 years ago that it wasn’t worth me financially doing a PGCE, so irrelevant of inflation if it wasn’t a good financial decision that long ago it’s been the case for a very very long time.

I was better off doing an admin job back then, and I imagine a lot of people still are.

I felt sorry for you until I read your derogatory comments about primary teachers. As an ex- primary teacher, I can safely say that you have absolutely no clue whatsoever as to what primary teaching entails.

The issue in teaching is retention. That is not so much about wages but about workloads and demands.

Numerous roles across all kinds of industries - health, pharma, biotech, finance. IT, diagnostics, communications, engineering, construction to name a very few.

A few reasons - flexibility in location/hours/days worked, scope of opportunities for travel/secondment/consultancy, speed of career advancement, scope of global opportunities...the list really is endless

Those on NMW usually have poor terms and conditions though. Statutory minimum pension, statutory sick pay, etc.

Crobbycraft
Astonishing really then that so many of them seem to find the time to be commenting on MN threads in the middle of the day...

They are most likely part-time, retired or ex-teachers of course - silly!

There are very many ex-teachers and that's part of the problem.

The trouble is NMW tends to go up by a higher percentage than teachers/nurses pay so the gap closes. On NMW for 40 hrs a week someone will be on just under £22k a year, they could have left school at 16 and have no qualifications, the teacher/nurse will have left school at 18 and then done 3 or 4 years at uni so far they have lost up to 6 years earnings. Then they have student debt to pay and they are on £6k a year more but take off tax, NI, student loan repayments and they aren't really on more than anyone in a NMW job. Why bother?

Pay in most jobs can rise or fall in real terms. No-one has the god-given right to always expect their pay to stay the same.

Reminds me of reception teacher thanking me for making sure DS could dress himself, tie his shoe laces and use a knife and fork before he started school. She said she was fed up of kids starting school knowing their phonics and numbers which she wanted to teach them but she was having to teach them how to dress themselves etc. She took early retirement just after that and it was such a loss as she was a brilliant, if fed up, teacher.

Heaven knows what she'd have thought of 11 year olds being the same.

Whilst I agree that others have it worse, your comments about holidays and childcare aren’t necessarily true.
I work 3-4 days of every 5 day holiday we get marking assessments, mock exams and catching up with necessary work I haven’t had time to do in term time. So for me, we don’t feel the holidays are worth it any more as they don’t make up for the weekend day I work every week during term time. Also, now I have 2 children who are not yet school age, if I want to actually get any marking done properly I have to send them to nursery at a cost of £120 for two children during a week I actually don’t get paid for! That is very frustrating and whilst it’s my choice to do that, I wouldn’t be able to get my work done without doing so.

I don't think teachers pay reflects their responsibility and education in comparison to other graduate jobs.
However like PP have mentioned all salaries have stagnated and nurses, doctors railworkers council workers ans lots more are not necessarily paid their worth either.
It's also very dependant on age, location etc. I can see how a newly qualified teacher trying to buy a home run a car maybe start a family would struggle on £28k in some/most areas of the country and this goes for many other professions as well. But I also am aware that there are some teachers, nurses doctors etc who will have been working longer and moved up payscales who are paid very well (though could still have more) and the general public not earning those sums wouldn't have much sympathy.

I think not only is pay bad at the moment it's also conditions - lots of services have been running with tight budgets and had poor decisions made about how those services are run (for me allowing unqualified teachers into classrooms masquerading as teachers- parents often unaware) that has really devalued these services and made the job harder overall for the people working in them.

So ten years ago they should have known that in real terms their income was going to fall year on year. I think that's psychics not teachers.

That's utter bullshit!!!

I started teaching in 2011 - on about £21k.