Do you think teachers are paid too little?

Some is certainly down to SEN but an increasing amount is down to lazy parenting. I’ve met countless year 7s in my time who can’t use a knife and fork or tie a shoelace. It makes me so sad for them!

This. My dad once told me that his rule of thumb was always that he wanted to be earning as many thousands as his age. He was born in a slum in Newcastle in 1956.

I was born in 1987, earn in the 90th percentile apparently, and am still not many thousands ahead of my age. As a rule of thumb for "doing ok", my dad's numbers from 30 years ago still work in modern society, on the surface. And that's ridiculous.

It doesn't really matter what people think though does it? If the pay isn't enough to attract teachers and keep them then it's not enough.

Though I agree that the problem is the workload rather than the pay for many teachers.

I don’t think teachers are poorly paid. Plus they get long holidays, at the same time as any DCs they have, so don’t have to worry so much about paying for childcare.

As an ex nurses, I think they are also fairly well paid. I found that I regularly took home around £2.5k per month (well over £3k gross), before I had to medically retire 7 years ago!

Both careers also have pretty good maternity, pension and sickness policies too. It’s those that work in the private sector in shops, factories, restaurants, care homes etc. that I feel sorry for. They pretty often only get minimum wage, with basic sickness, pension and maternity benefits. They are the ones who get left behind, struggling to survive, as the cost of living goes up way more than any wage rises they get.

I think they should be paid more and that it should be funded by the government not out of the schools budgets. This takes away from the kids- resources and equipment. The government should fully fund education including the teachers increase in pay.

I agree. They should be sent back home to their parents and told not to return until they're toilet trained. But how many teachers would be prepared to stick their head above the parapet and actually say that?

Teachers and nurses are underpaid. Comparisons are difficult to make though because of the holidays. I also feel TAs get a really raw deal, often they have specialisms in SENCO and so on but in some local authorities they aren’t paid over the summer. I do realise teachers do a lot of lesson prep, marking and outside school hours work, of course which takes up some of the summer hols. University teachers pay is quite rubbish too, we get fed up of people telling us we get mega long holidays. No we don’t, that’s our research period and we have leave entitlements like anyone in a regular job

They're not paid enough imo

Yes the starting salary is £28k which is sounds fairly decent. However when I left uni, 20 years ago, some of my friends went into teaching because the starting salary for teaching was...£28k. Which shows how much its reduced in real terms.

But objectively, there is a marketplace for jobs and there arent enough people applying for teacher training at the moment. Less than half the places are being filled. So in general, people dont think its paid enough for them to bother going for it as a career...therefore it isnt paid enough, irrespective of whether you or I think it's a decent salary

If people want to match private you could do similar on pensions and other if it’s not that welcome anyway

That's awful! Related to huge increase in SEN?

Depends where you live. What might be a great wage in Middlesbrough will not be in Surrey. I think regional weighted pay would be a good idea for some public sector jobs for this reason.

And pensions are increasingly irrelevant to teachers who know they cannot possibly meet the mental and physical demands of the job until anywhere near retirement age.

Many private pensions are now better than the new state pensions. Local authority pensions are payable at state retirement age.

I have a good degree and a Masters and post graduate qualifications.
I have been teaching for 15 years and have some leadership responsibilities.
I get paid 35k.
If you think that's ok you are nuts.
My 24 year old out earns me.
There will literally be no teachers shortly,
The attitude of some people on here is another reason there is a crisis.

Does this include similar pensions?

Not sure how much you’d save and be able to afford if it matched other private elements

I am a teacher and whilst the salary as a headline figure is good when measured against hours worked and workload/pressure it is not a good wage. So for the work I do, no I do not think I am paid enough. However, this has long been the case and hasn’t overly bothered me as I enjoyed my job.
I will say this though, I am currently working on my exit strategy from the career and the salary isn’t even in my top 5 reasons why! And the reason I am on here and not teaching/marking etc is because I am on maternity leave before someone comes for me!

I don't think they are underpaid. I also don't think their importance of a primary school teacher is comparable to a nurse as PP said

And who will ensure teach those future nurses the building blocks of their education? Who will ensure nurses, doctors, solicitors, etc can read and write? Understand what numbers are and how they work and relate to one another? Who will begin to address the core skills needed to learn science, humanities and the arts?

If primary school teaching is so lacking in importance, clearly those key skills and building blocks are also not important.

Good luck with getting future nurses and doctors without the primary school teachers!

As to whether teachers, TAs and schools in general should receive better pay conditions and funding - well, depends how much you value education.

If the job was 9-3 only 39 weeks of the year with impeccable behaviour and realistic expectations (as many of the general public seem to believe) then it would 100% be enough pay. However, for what they deal with in terms of bureaucracy, behaviour, constant policy changes, expected to work all the hours under the sun, getting abuse from parents etc etc - no it is not. Put simply, the pay doesn’t match the expectations and responsibility and many other professions simply wouldn’t stand for it. That’s before you even consider the decrease in real terms since 2009. And for what it’s worth, I would definitely agree nurses, paramedics and junior doctors should be paid significantly more for the fact that they regularly saving lives and dealing with incredible stress - let’s not pit groups against each other!

Academies can pay what they like. That’s one of the “freedoms”.

Mostly they pay to scale.

The benchmark shouldn't be whether you can manage to live on a teacher's salary! The question is whether it pays well enough to attract enough good teachers and retain them. In many subjects and parts of the country, I don't think it does. There is a signficiant shortage in many subjects. Smart graduates have many more attractive opportunities. It shouldn't just be a job for the small number who are willing to do it despite the poor pay and conditions, or for those who can't find anything else.

Public sector pay should be based on private sector pay.

This might actually solve the problem tbh. If teachers' pay and school funding had kept pace with wage inflation over the last 10 years or so we wouldn't be seeing strikes now.

Annabel : That would vary widely depending on their individual qualifications, personality, interests, location, long-term life goals - I can think of many and I'm sure you could too.

Have you named any yet?
And clarified why they won't be attracted to teaching too?

To be honest I would be surprised where a teacher would find time for even 1 extra job. Most of the complaints that I read from teachers are the long hours and what's expected of them outside actual classroom teaching

The BBC interviewed a primary teacher yesterday who'd had 14 kids start not toilet trained last September. Over the months, she and her TA had managed to toilet train all but 5.

That should not be in the job description!

Some of these comments have actually made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of them.

Could most of you more sensible and balanced posters imagine having the arrogance to tell a nurse, solicitor etc that you know the ins and outs of their job because you once went to the hospital or to court?

As the one about primary school teachers having it easy 😂good one!!

Some of these are just so blatant. Try toning it down a bit so you can be taken seriously. Then we might believe you.