Why do people think some professional jobs like teachers/ midwives aren't paid well?

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I read a lot on here about people moaning about teacher/ nurse/ midwife wages etc. I thought in the NHS you start off on around 25k which I think is a decent wage. I've seen on MN alot of nurses and midwives earning £30/40k upwards.

I genuinely am wondering why people think that's low pay? What would they want as a reasonable salary? Am I not understanding something. This is a genuine question and I am in no way being goady.

I earn very low @17k so perhaps my perception is slightly skewed.

@archivebuildingsite I meant allowing the cost of mortgage payments to be offset against rental income for tax purposes made buy to let’s a no brainer and contributed to increase in house prices.

archivebuildingsite the reason prices are higher in major cities is because there is more demand. Helping well-off FTB to push the prices up does not mean someone can buy a bigger house, it means small flats become ever more expensive.

Notinmyduty ah yes, I did misunderstand, I agree!

CountFosco that's not the full picture though is it? Within commuter distance of London there are a much higher number of people earning 3 or 4 or 5 or of course far larger multiple times more than a teacher or nurse, and in naice northern towns there are not nearly so many. Therefore teachers and nurses are poor within commuting distance of London, and comfortably off in naice northern towns, despite doing the same job.

We need more houses and we need to make the incentives for buying more than one house less favourable. Giving people a leg up - with generous saving schemes, reducing stamp duty, increased wages is not solving the problem it just increases the prices of the available property but no Gov wants to be in charge of stagnant house prices...so they keep supporting the current system.

And if they are capable of doing the same job and want a bigger house they can move to this area since the bulk of the UK industry is here.

I do always think London is quite lucky to be able to retain the services of so many nurses, teachers and social workers (I know not enough, but still thousands) when they could move up here or to other cheaper areas of the UK, where their salaries would stretch much further.

Therefore teachers and nurses are poor within commuting distance of London, and comfortably off in naice northern towns, despite doing the same job.

But that is true for all jobs, not just teachers and nurses. My BIL is a partner in an architects practice in London (the kind of practice that wins prizes for the public buildings they design), he earns way more than DH and I (and we both have good jobs, hence the nice house in a nice location in a nice town) and when he came to our house he said our kitchen was bigger than his flat (his flat is worth more than our house of course). At least a teacher or a nurse has the option of moving north to buy more space, there are lots of very well paid professionals with careers that are concentrated in the south who don't have the option.

Of course the real solution is not to keep pumping public money into London but to encourage investment in the rest of the country.

We moved - out of the UK completely as it happened - to be able to afford dc2.

Around 50% of people seem to be of the opinion that moving away from family is reprehensible and selfish though. Of course there is also the fact that not all nurses and teachers are single without a spouse's job and children settled in school themselves to consider.

Although it's what we did, the "get on your bike" message is usually roundly flamed, from what I remember... Certainly plenty of people can't resist the sucked lemons look if they find out you live a long way from frail elderly parents.

If all the nurses and teachers did move up north and abroad, what would happen? Of course it won't actually happen because people have ties, but if it did the housing market wouldn't self correct, they'd either be lured back with competitive real world salaries or replaced by new graduates or untrained teachers or overseas qualified teachers with rapid churn, in which case the rich would move children to private schools who could afford to pay higher wages and the middle income and poor unable to leave the south east would really have spiralling problems!

But for people to spend 15 or 20 year of their working life being told that they will have X pension when they retire, only to then be told 'we've changed our minds, you are now getting Y' is very unfair indeed, but it has happened to loads of public sector employees, who had accepted lower paying jobs in the belief that they had effectively deferred some of their salary until their retirement years.

Equally unfair that workers in some private firms have lost their pensions when either the employer has pilfered the money or the pension firm has gone bust. I lost over half my lifetime accumulated pension fund when Equitable Life collapsed.

But that is true for all jobs, not just teachers and nurses.

No it isn't - lots of profession jobs have relatively poor pay outside the major cities - there are qualified accountants and lawyers in Northern towns who aren't even higher rate taxpayers, and on similar kinds of pay to nurses, teachers, etc.

Equally unfair that workers in some private firms have lost their pensions when either the employer has pilfered the money or the pension firm has gone bust. I lost over half my lifetime accumulated pension fund when Equitable Life collapsed.

I agree that that is horribly unfair too.

But I don't think it is quite the same. Companies plundering their pension schemes is out and out theft, and firms going bust is a risk that every one of us takes when we pay into a private pension, or invest in anything, or buy sometimes from a business in advance of receiving the goods. That's not to say that it's not devastating to those who lose money, it definitely is.

But its not the same as the government dangling the carrot in front of workers saying 'yes, we realise that you are earning a lower salary than people of similar qualifications and experience, but that's because in the future you will be paid X pension' and then many years later saying 'oh, well, actually, we've known for a long time that that wasn't viable, so no, you can't have that pension after all'. They should not have been promising pensions that they already knew were not going to happen.

No it isn't - lots of profession jobs have relatively poor pay outside the major cities - there are qualified accountants and lawyers in Northern towns who aren't even higher rate taxpayers, and on similar kinds of pay to nurses, teachers, etc.

That is absolutely true, though you'll see from my posts upthread that not everyone wants to hear it, but I think it's worth pointing out that the money does go a lot further outside the south east.

I'm in the north west and 30kish isn't actually a bad salary here. It's not riches but it's fine, especially if you have a partner, and would be what a lot of white collar people in my cohort (30s) are on. My friends and relatives who are legal aid and high street solicitors, teachers, social workers etc have been able to buy property in northern England and also in Wales and NI. I even know someone working for CAB who did it, and their pay really is shit. The only people I know earning that type of wage who've done it in London, even with the weighting, are those with better paid partners who are shouldering more of the financial burden.

But its not the same as the government dangling the carrot in front of workers saying 'yes, we realise that you are earning a lower salary than people of similar qualifications and experience,

Except of course that public sector workers don't actually earn significantly less than private sector workers (as can be seen from the ONS figures) and even with the pension reductions are still going to have far bigger pensions than if they were in the private sector (on this mythical sky high salary). When I started working for my company almost 20 years ago I was predicted a pension of 66% of my final salary. I now expect to get 10% of my final salary if I'm lucky because of the changes they have made to the pension scheme. DH will have a bigger pension from his last public sector job where he stayed for 10 years (vs 30+ years service for me). He works in an industry that is very well paid, he has colleagues who have taken paycuts to access the public sector pension scheme.

Well I left a good private sector job with a final salary scheme and trained to be a midwife on less money but at least the pension was as good as my previous job. Except by the time I qualified it was no longer a final salary scheme in the nhs. So less pay, worse pension and shit conditions.

I've gone back to the private sector now. 10k pay rise and a better pension.

Fair enough re the 5 weeks scubadive, but it's still daft to think your parents experiences decades ago when you were a child are relevant to a discussion about teaching now.

But she isn't JUST basing it on her parents' experience, is she? She has children who go to school, too, don't cha know?

yet in my experience books are very rarely marked.

Well, this is very variable. I am a supply teacher so I work in all sorts of schools. I know some schools who rely predominately on verbal feedback and peer and self assessment, for very good theoretical reasons.

I have also worked in schools who insisted that every piece of work a child did needed to be marked wish 2 stars and a wish on the day it was done. This was sometimes 6 or 7 pieces of work (yes, the spelling test needed to be marked too) for 34 children. Before I could go home. So marking all break/lunchtime and for 2 or so hours after school (if I was really quick). And yes, I didn't need to do the planning as a supply teacher, but the regular teachers had to do that too, as well as transferring the findings of their assessments onto SIMS etc regularly.

As someone who has completely lost two pensions that I spent years paying my own money that I earnt into, I can categorically agree that public sector employees getting a bit less on retirement is very different to this.

Where is this school where books don’t have to be marked every single day? I would like to work there.... where do I send my CV?!
This is on par with unicorns... of course work needs to be marked, weekly book looks (not as cute as the name suggests), learning walks and full lesson observations demand all books are marked- that’s 62 pages at least per lesson, five lessons a day plus times table tests, spellings and homework books (which have to be marked even if they haven’t been handed in for 3 wks- where’s that magic wand again? How do I select the ‘remote marking’ setting?).

At least a teacher or a nurse has the option of moving north to buy more space, there are lots of very well paid professionals with careers that are concentrated in the south who don't have the option

It's one of the few big bonuses of teaching I think. That they can choose to live and work anywhere bar London.

I have one DC aged 23 who is in the first year of teaching. He is planning to buy a house this year. Several of his friends and fellow teachers have bought their own properties under the age of 25. That's because they live in an area of the country that has very cheap housing (as do I).

But then if everyone did that, there would be no teachers, nurses , or other keyworkers left in London!

@OhMyDarling I haven’t read the full thread and seen the “books don’t need to be marked comment” but I did add that here in Ireland our marking is not like in the U.K. we tick the pages and that’s about it for 90% if work done. We only do in depth marking on some work (that doesn’t even occur weekly!) we don’t take marking home either, I do mine within the school day (during or straight after the children have gone home (at 2.40) or in DEAR time.

Piggywaspushed It's true, but I find it hard to see why teachers would choose to live in London when they could have a better standard of living almost anywhere else.

Because they might come from there, have family ties, or ,even , be lured by excellent schools and opportunities. They might be married to someone who neds to live or work in London. I am all for social mobility, but not everyone can just upsticks.

I live about 50 miles from London. Houses are pretty pricey. I can't just move somewhere cheaper. It's not that simple to uproot your whole family.

The biggest recruitment holes in teaching aren't in London, as it goes.