Teacher pay

I think the poster is looking at take home pay so is therefore paid less per hour than her sister maybe?

If you include public sector pensions their compensation is pretty good, one problem is that the only weighting is around London, somewhere like Sunderland it's such a good wage but somewhere close to London it's pretty awful. The system needs an overhaul which may be unpalatable.

Because we’d like to keep up with rising costs so we can pay our mortgages, buy food etc. If pay goes up in line with inflation we won’t be better off just no worse off than the previous year. I’m not sure why we can’t have better working conditions as well? Why one or the other?

I'm a teacher and have never done this. I am aware some do, though. Working this much is clearly not sustainable. You need to find ways to get all planning and marking done in less time. There are ways of cutting this, for example, pupil marking, teacher marking and oral feedback in class, a day using worksheets that aren't marked. Focus on reading, writing and numeracy and having more "down time " lessons the rest of the time.

Also nowadays, teachers don't just teach. When I started in 1982 that is exactly what we did. No interference from parents or unworkable curriculum.

Now pupils come to school in nappies, have poor social skills, can't listen etc. We even had to be responsible for teeth cleaning.

Every time something happens in society, schools are expected to address and solve it with no extra staffing or funding.

So a secondary school English teacher in his or her first year might have a couple of Y8 middle sets, Y10 bottom set, Y11 top set, a Y12 or 13 class (A level), a Y7 top set, a Y9 middle set. In addition the teacher might get roped in to teach one or two lessons in another subject not their specialism. RE for example. A physics teacher might be asked to take on a maths class. Most humanities teachers I know have been asked to teach Y7 English at some point.

These classes from the teacher's first year will have different lessons from the completely different group of years and sets they will have in the their second year of teaching. And probably their third year. After about 5 years you will have a lot of lessons that you can recycle but you still need to plan for the progress of each individual class. Ability ranges vary from year to year. A GCSE class that only has kids aiming at A or A star equivalents will be different from a top set that has kids whose work goes down as far as a D for example. So you have change how you approach topics.

Behaviour and personalities also impact how you can teach a topic. Some classes might be well behaved and can manage group work or lots of discussion. Others might have challenging behaviour that would mean you have to really keep a lid on how often you let them interact with each other (or you!).

I had two well behaved Y9 top sets one year with similar ability ranges (according to scores). I thought great I can repeat lots of things across the groups. But no: one class was really chatty (in a good way), great at debates, happy to stand up and do talks, always wanting to read their work out, or read aloud. Many of them had handwritting that was terrible and they were really sloppy about handing work in and they did the bare minimum on paper. The other was the quietest class I have ever taught. If you spoke to any of them they looked at their desks, went red and mumbled, they hated anything where they had to speak to each other or me. Their written work was out of this world, way ahead. They wrote loads - the marking work load was huge! I had to teach these classes completely differently. this makes teaching interesting but damn hard work.

And finally probably during that 5 years where you have built a bank of lessons you will either change school (different exam boards, different expectations) or the government will revise the curriculum and everything you've taught has to change significantly.

So basically your planning changes fairly significantly all the time. I quit after a few years. I watched OH wreck his health doing 20+ years.

It can depend on what you teach, the subject I taught a lot of the marking came in waves in Ks3 and was constant in KS4 and a lot of the practical prep can only be done in a workshop. A lot of the theory prep was done outside of school due to how the school was run, and limited PPA time.

In English the work was pretty much constant all the time. Maths was variable but the homework was self marking.

Drama, PE and Music had a lot of time outside of school time due to matches, performances and general practice, with the preparation for lessons depending on the exam board.

And yes you do have some teachers that seem to be able to get by on winging it and very little marking.

I'm sorry but no idea what you mean by 'dial it in'?

I’m sorry but I am friends with at least two teachers who can dial it in as they’ve been teaching for 20 years. I’m sure they’re very good, but they no way do this. I support much more money for teachers btw.

@MyRootinTootinBaby definitely not, I would have to retrain as can’t teach in secondary. I couldn’t do this teaching in a secondary school without being too outing. Also, my students are generally a dream, they want to study and I don’t generally have disruptive behaviour or anything like that.

Do the teachers you know work at Hogwarts?

If not could you please tell me where they work? I’d like to move to their schools.

Surely you’d be able to transfer over to a similar subject, schools desperately want teaching staff so I’d imagine you’d be snapped up. I’d be tempted with the pay difference.

@MyRootinTootinBabymy subject is not taught in secondary. And I teach 18+
I really love my job, been doing it for almost 30 years here and abroad and I’m very happy but I don’t know how the pay discrepancy is still so vast.

and computer sciences.

I used to say Design and technology teachers as well. but the knowledge base seems to have really dropped.

Absolutely!

Sorry - the first part of my post was to @Holdonforsummer re her sister getting so much more 'holiday' - I was explaining that 7 weeks of this was unpaid.

I then went on to say to you, we get paid for 32.5 hrs per week. I didn't make it very clear in the way I wrote it. 😀

It certainly sounds like its less than NMW.

I did know that seven weeks were unpaid but was using an example that the other poster should understand. If you worked my example on 32.5 hrs I think the result would take people's breath away.

Want a teacher for your kids ? You’re going to need to pay them better. Especially Science, maths and MFL. They can earn so much more elsewhere doing a much much easier job than wrangling 30+ teenagers.

I agree with you about fully funded pay increases; that really is at the heart of the matter.

However, pay portability for experienced and senior teachers is gone -when I took on a new role after 25 years in the profession some years ago, I found myself on the same spine point I was on after my 6th year of teaching, the remuneration not having increased a great deal. It was that or nothing. In real terms, using the Bank of England inflation calculator, the difference is quite galling, but that's just how it is now.

So experienced colleagues are now more employable as we compete with younger colleagues for the same salaries (it really did use to be the case that years under your belt rendered you prohibitively expensive to hire), we just can't expect our pay to reflect our experience and skills.

The aggressive and sarcastic tone is how you are reading it.

Its all on you.

@FabledStory new TPS is rubbish. Nothing like the old version. And lots of academies and private schools opting out of it.

Are you serious?

No - I teach Year 6 in a deprived area! I love my school; some weeks are tougher than others and I am snowed under at the end of term, but our head and SLT are very anti taking work home. We are allowed to take our PPA at home and cab block it to get a day working from home a fortnight if we like.

I’m not saying I don’t bring work home, but I don’t routinely work in the evenings. I do work through my lunch hour but I think a lot of jobs are similar?

Teachers get the same paid holidays in the UK as everyone else - 5.6 weeks per year. The rest is unpaid. Your salary is divided into 12 so that you don't struggle in August, but essentially the 'summer holidays' are unpaid leave.

@TheignT teachers are paid for 32.5 hours a week it says on my payslip. Effectively, we are paid 6.5 hours a day for 192 days of the year - so we are paid from 8.30am to 4pm with an unpaid hour for lunch (roughly, obviously times may vary per school as to when they require you there).

Those who say if you worked out our 'hourly' rate it is probably less than NMW are correct. It's pretty common to work 50 - 60 hours a week (so double what we are paid for) in term time and still do work in the holidays - much of which is again unpaid leave.

One one the biggest benefits of teaching is the incredible pension.

It's almost 30% cost to the employer on top of wages. This makes up the gap in perceived 'low' pay to my mind, and I therefore don't think teachers should get more (or rather, compared with other jobs I think it's about right, but low/middle earners ALL struggle with their incomes and I'd love a way for everyone to feel better off).

But of course, it's a delayed benefit, so teachers do not see this reward while enduring very difficult working conditions.

If they work half of the holidays they actually only have 6.5 weeks, half a week more than you to cover those 39 weeks, so what is that, about half an hour a week. Gosh they are doing well.