AIBU to be confused about how teachers' salaries are paid?

Or you could argue that's a part-time salary for a job that's full-time-and-a-half when you factor in all the unpaid hours teachers do.

These threads tend to always go the same way. A thread starts with an ‘innocent’ question about teachers’ pay or conditions with lots of reasonable replies and then when it’s pointed out that teachers work over the 1265/195, you get non-teachers saying something along the lines of, ‘well, everyone does, teachers just think they work harder than everyone else’ when nobody has said that.

I think teaching is also one of those jobs which people often comment on, eg saying they are lazy, workshy, only work 9-3, always trying to close the schools, don’t understand the real world, just want to fine parents for having holidays etc etc, which is grating and leads to teachers defending themselves. They then get accused of moaning!

I think if your profession was continually bitched about by the press, across social media, even by your own government, you’d probably try to defend it as well.

I’ve pretty much given up defending it now as I have left completely. Even those amazing holidays weren’t enough to keep me in the job.

Your last point is exactly it, @Passingthrough123 People are SO insistent that teaching is not hard, and the workload is not huge, and the holidays make up for everything. The evidence to the contrary is that many teachers are leaving. When people’s kids are taught by multiple supply and non-specialist cover teachers over the course of a year, because schools can’t recruit (this is happening right now), then they will have something really genuine to get in a stew about. What then? Will they still be bleating about ‘other jobs are worse’ or ‘the holidays’? What does the endless slagging of teachers prove or achieve? Nothing. In fact it drives more teachers away.

Let's pretend that teachers only work the hours they are paid for (1265).

The average classroom teacher earns £40k.

That's £31ph.

Over 37 hrs a week, 52 weeks a year, that's £60k.

Is £60k a great salary for the mid-level of a career that requires 4 years of university level education?

Without the holidays I think there might be very few of us left in the profession though. Never being able to choose a day's holiday comes with its own consequences. I'm not complaining: I have willingly chosen it. I do earn the least of all my friends but I live my job and not all of them do.

Right, so you have no idea what extra work they do outside of the classroom.

I think OP has her answer.

This thread (as usual) will be completely derailed with how easy teachers have it rather than an answer to the question.

What, you see them all evening every evening and all weekend? You need to get out a bit!

I've always thought this, the 'we aren't paid for the school holidays' line doesnt stack up so well alongside 'teaching salaries are poor' because if those salaries are for only 195 days per year then actually they are pretty good salaries as most full time jobs people have to work more like over 250 days a year (taking off holiday entitlements.

If teaching salaries are for a part time job of only 0.8 fte (which is what 195/250ish roughly equates to) then they are pretty decent

I can see them decorating their front rooms and woodworking in their garage with the door open directly opposite us. They have only been there a few months.

Only if your view of full time is based on a very standard 52 weeks type of job and not in annualised hours type of work which is common in many industries. Lots of people do things like work on an oil rig or a boat and do stuff like 4 weeks on 4 weeks off but there not the idea they are part time. Its not pro rata because its not part time - they just squash there hours up. Teaching is like that in a way. They have a very unusual contract structure.

Also I often think the argument around holidays is akin to arguing whether a standard 9-5 week day person is paid for the weekends or not. The monthly pay goes over the weekends. Often 8 days worth. Are they paid over the weekends or for the weekends.

What a shame that you think you’re paid well for what you are expected to do,

Teachers are contracted to work 1265 hours over 195 days. So a teacher on £35k a year is being paid £27.66 an hour. If you then include 6 weeks holiday pay that would bring the rate down to £24 an hour. Most teachers on average work an additional 10 hours per week over their contracted hours plus at least 1 day per week in the school holidays. So now we’re talking around £20 per hour pay.
the average hourly rate for a cleaner in my area is £20 an hour,

Unless you live in their house with them and can confirm they don't mark books late into evening or plan lessons all weekend, how can you possibly say that they don't do that kind of overtime?

Not every teacher puts this in. The couple of teachers across the road certainly don’t. My children, who are not teachers, put in at least that much unpaid overtime.

Agree with every word of this! I've never seen a bunch of professionals who are slagged off as much as teachers since my DP retrained to become one after a career doing something else. It's been mind-boggling to witness.

And yes, the cons of being a teacher are constantly overlooked. My DP has missed so many school events for our DC because he's teaching other people's kids. He even missed a huge play performance because his school had parents' evening scheduled for the same day and that had to take precedent. He cannot take calls during the work day so it's left to me to sort out most of our life admin. He couldn't even take the call when his brother was rushed to hospital seriously ill. He works evenings and weekends on marking and lesson planning and he never has a single day off to himself because our DC is always at home during the holidays too. Every appointment for doctor/dentist etc has to be scheduled outside of his directed hours. He regularly wakes up on a Saturday morning to ranting emails from parents who think nothing of encroaching the slither of personal time he still has.

But hey, the holidays! 🙄

I am desperate for him to leave and return to his old profession, but he actually likes the teaching bit. He likes seeing kids make progress in their learning and achieving and exceeding their goals. If all the other shit went away – especially the entitled parents – he'd teach for life. Instead, he won't, and instead future parents can reflect on why past parents chose to slag off teachers instead of supporting them when their kids are admitted into 40+ classes because there aren't enough teachers to go round.

Clarity 😊

The OP is asking if it is correct that some of the 13 weeks are unpaid holidays for teachers and yes they are.

It is not comparable to other professions and the average 'time off'. Completely different scenario. Otherwise no one would be interested in debating over it.

I think what many people fail to understand about teaching, or really stop to consider, is that there is a world of difference between a day in day an office, and a day in a classroom.

Teachers are often in school 7.30 am until 5.30 pm.

There is NEVER a quiet day. NEVER. Every single day is steeling yourself for a sensory overload, and physical and mental demands that are pulling you in all directions, all of the time. There is no day of the week less intense than another. There is no season of the year easier than another. It’s like performing on stage, all eyes on you, every single day.

35 children all demanding your attention all day long. And a government continually shouting jump higher, jump higher. Think about that. It’s brutal on the body and mind. The pay is atrocious for the resilience needed to be a teacher.

Put it a different way.
Teachers are given bread for every day that they work, plus the same amount of holiday as everyone else.
But so that we don't starve during the school closure times (holidays), that bread is eked out over the full year.

Do you put in 780-1,000 extra hours of unpaid overtime across the year? If so, then yes, your work situation is exactly like a teacher's.

So really this is exactly like everyone else. We could all argue that we only get paid for the days we work.

People really love to slag off teachers don’t they 😆

All jobs have pros and cons. For me the pros the kids, it’s hugely rewarding, the holidays are great, the pay is decent (imo) regardless of whether we’re quibbling over whether or not we’re paid for holidays. The cons are it is entirely inflexible (for appointments, your own kids’ assemblies, days off for long weekends etc), you can’t work from home, the workload is huge, and the mental and emotional load and scrutiny are exhausting.

The difference is, people seem to massively resent teachers for the pros we enjoy, and the cons we find difficult. ‘But the holidays!’ is the eternal comeback. ‘But other jobs have those cons too!’ is another. We could quite validly come back with ‘But the flexibility!’ ‘But you work from home!’ to counteract other people’s work whinges. However, we’d be shot down in the endless race to the bottom, where people are determined to prove we are not doing our very best to educate and care for their children in quite challenging circumstances, but are in fact workshy whiners who don’t know we’re born . Because people resent teachers and I can’t actually understand why. Oh yes, But The Holidays. Well, come join us. There’s a retention crisis after all.

Edited to add: @ToffeeCrabApple I didn’t actually mean to quote your post there, my post isn’t aimed directly at you!

I don't get the point they're making there with the strike scenario. Are they claiming that, if they don't turn up to school on any day that they aren't required to be there anyway, that makes it unpaid?

If that's the case, surely they aren't paid for half-terms, Easter, weekends etc.? It's the same for any of us: if you have a 'traditional' Monday-Friday job, you don't have to justify it to your employer when you don't turn up on a Saturday. You can 'go on strike' or do whatever you want on that day, and your employer is totally fine with that, so you haven't broken any agreed terms at all. Equally, using the same argument as the one of those teachers, you aren't paid for the weekend either.

I'm amazed that some teachers choose to bemoan the pay aspect of their jobs as their battleground, rather than focusing on the conditions, which are indeed frequently horrendous. As has been said on this thread, it isn't the pay that makes most teachers want to leave!

Quite
but this thread is about teachers pay
of course there are a lot of underpaid jobs out there