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.

So if you were a teacher in a private school you would be earning a lot more or a nurse in a private hospital?

Yes. My DH is a teacher in a private school and although I have been a teacher for longer (in the state sector) and should be on a higher pay scale than him, he earns £11,000 a year more than me because he has never experienced a pay freeze. To watch him overtake me so quickly when the pay freeze started, was an eye opener.

I worked in museums and art galleries and we frequently had people with PhDs applying for £17-19k jobs. It’s a desirable and competitive area where your academic credentials need to be top notch. I’ve left heritage as I was earning £32k and unable to move higher as those posts are all held by people who will be there until they retire!

I do sometimes wish I’d trained in an area like teaching, accountancy or HR where there is a clear and well paid career path.

@HaroldsSocalledBluetits what guaranteed time off are you talking about? I’m not aware of this as a thing

It isn’t that much money though.

I work admin in the NHS, I fanny around with spreadsheets all day and earn more than some of the teachers on here

In the case of healthcare, I think it’s because poeple don’t feel they’re rewarded for the responsibility they take.
For example, air traffic controllers sit at computer screens directing flow of air traffic. Import coordinators sit at computer screens directing the flow of boxes of, for example, M&S clothes . I think air traffic controllers should be paid a lot more, as the pressure is far greater.

My nephew was earning more after two years in engineering management than my DB does as a teacher approaching retirement. Both are highly skilled, dedicated professionals who go over and above in their jobs but one is paid significantly more than the other. My DD is a SN teacher in a school for children with profound additional needs. If she wasn’t married to someone with a job that earned more than she does the only way she could live in London would be in a shared house. Both DD and DSIL are in demanding jobs but only one regularly returns home in bruises and bites and deals with meltdowns so violent that the emergency services are involved. DDs salary doesn’t reflect the care, commitment and conditions she works in imo.

Yes, air traffic controllers are a whole different ball game. Absolutely fascinating area of work which I could never do no matter how much you paid me. The amount of stress . Great example Minty, it’s the high stakes that make the difference.

Don't wish you had joined HR, MrsAmaretto salaries are stagnant, or in real terms have gone backwards.

I started in a trainee position in 2000 on £17000. That's worth £28000 today .Qualified roles in my part of the country (NW) are paying c. £30000 , unqualified much less.

So for qualifications and experience I have an effective increase of 2k over 19 years.

So if you were a teacher in a private school you would be earning a lot more

Not in my school. However the working conditions are better generally and the pay off is a 50% reduction on fees for my own children.

It is low pay. However the people entering these professions do so knowing roughly what the pay level is.
My MIL was a teacher and she constantly complains than DH and I started on a higher salary than she got when she retired (we work/worker in banking). However in the next breath she tells us that teaching was her vocation and she couldn’t possibly imagine doing anything as dull and ‘useless’ as the roles we do/did. I tell her how lucky she was to have a vocation.
I wouldn’t have trained to be a teacher as a) I’d have been rubbish at it and b) the pay is low.

I also think one issue is that we have no negotiating power with our salary.

Last year my manager decided that we didn't have enough mentors on our ward and put it in my appraisal that I had to return to uni to complete the mentor training. This took 4 months and a lot of my personal time. I now officially mentor student nurses (obviously did stuff with them before too) which adds to my workload. Since I'm now more qualified and have extra duties you'd think I should be able to negotiate a raise in my salary to reflect this but I can't. We are expected to become better and better, which is fine, and take on more responsibility yet are stuck in the agenda for change pay structure. The only way to get more pay is to apply for band 6 posts which in mental health are very often on the management path rather than clinical and are getting fewer and fewer.

@Mintychoc1 air traffic controllers are already well paid. They are often on £50k and can easily be on £100k

Oh wow well I am please air traffic controllers are paid appropriately.

I think it's the starting salaries for teachers that's low. It's £23k ish which for the responsibility they have is quite shocking.

Traditionally, teaching and nursing aren't professions, they're vocations. Professions were law and medicine.
School teachers, midwives, and nurses were all women that had time to fulfill those roles in their community, usually they'd had a little education, and in the case of midwives, attended a few births. They didn't require qualifications until relatively recently.

And they were mainly done by women (men were sometimes school masters, true, but most men involved in education were monks, vicars, scholars etc).

But that's the same if not more than other public sector professional starting wages. A surveyor starting out can be as low as £19k, solicitors are lucky to make £21k and their job includes prosecuting and defending in court which is stressful and holds a lot of responsibility. Social workers also are on around £21k and they need professional qualifications and have direct responsibility for vulnerable groups.

@Decormad38 You do now. You only needed five O Levels when I left school!

I'd say that the workload was far more of an issue than the pay for teaching and nursing jobs.

I do think teachers also compare their salaries to finance/IT style jobs but their working hours to admin/retail jobs. They seem totally unaware that lots of people work all evening as a norm or that if those same people even if they are silly money contractors wouldn’t be getting those salaries if they had as many weeks at home for Easter/summer/Christmas. It’s not a high flying career with humongous salary, but it’s certainly not peanuts.

And lots of jobs require further qualifications, engineers, accountants, architects, pilots, lotto drivers.....all of who. Cause Merry havoc if they don’t do their jobs adequately and “effect lives”.

I've been teaching 14 years and earn 38k. Back in the day, as a newly qualified teacher, I earned around 20k. It's an ok wage but we get paid for around 6.25 hours a day (1265 hours per year) when the reality is so different. In term time I work an average of 70 hours a week. In holidays it's nearer to 30 hours per week. It's the hours I feel are crazy, not the pay.

Teaching/nursing isn't inherently badly paid. But it is badly paid for the hours/responsibility respectively.

I was training as an accountant at the same time as I had friends training as teachers. We probably worked similar hours and in the first year were paid similarly (low to mid twenties). But in my second year my salary jumped by 4.5k, and theirs went up almost nothing. In the third year my salary went up about 6k - theirs again, almost nothing. By the start of our fourth years in our careers, my salary was 175% of theirs. My job is also less stressful, and less valuable to society.

None of us are on bad wages (and I now work in the public sector so it's not even simply a public Vs private sector issue) but these are people with the same degree grade as me, from the same university, also with post graduate qualifications, working comparable hours, but without comparable pay. Overall, that's going to lead to a teacher shortage (it already has) and means that we need to increase teacher pay so that it's competitive for the responsibility and hours required. I'm sure the same applies to nursing, I just haven't watched friends track through nursing alongside me in the same way.

It’s a tough one, a lot of people (my dad was always of this view 🙄) think that teachers work 9-3 and have 12 weeks full of doing nothing. Both my mum and I have worked in education (not as teachers) and see what does actually happen (the pastoral care, targets, prep, coming in for at least half of those holidays, parents evening, open evenings, taster days); there were some staff in my place of work who would be off the minute the clock said 3:20 (sixth form setting), there were others who made their lessons as fascinating as possible, gave up their own time for rehearsals, performances, trips (not the ‘jolly’ everyone’s seems to think given the vast amount of admin work involved for even a day trip) and ran extra lessons in he Easter holidays for students who were struggling.

I think the problem is (IMO) it was a job you never used to need a degree for and wages reflected that as it was never a ‘graduate’ job. Most of the teachers when I was at primary and secondary school went to teacher training college, most are retired now but only in the last few years. The starting salary is pretty low compared to other graduate jobs (my ex’s sister started on £40k+ as a corporate lawyer over 20 years ago), however it’s one of the few posts that will accept you with less than a 2:1 as a graduate. A girl who lived across the road from me some years ago said she went into teaching as it was the only ‘professional’ (her words) job she could get with a 2:2.

The grass is always greener.

Public sector workers think that everyone in private sector is raking it in and leaving at 5pm every night.

classonline.org.uk/news/press/workers-realities-press-release

Because you can’t afford to raise a family on thatsothout government assistance. That’s my bench mark anyway. If you can afford two kids in private day school plus private health insurance you are well paid. If you can’t then you’re not. I’m not saying you’re poor if you can’t afford these things but not being g poor isn’t the same as being well paid.

They’re low paid when compared with other professions with similar educational and training demands and responsibilities.

This. If you need entry-level qualifications and then a 3 year degree/1 year post grad and then a year qualifying-that should be compared with others of similar levels of qualification.

Is £17k much above minimum wage? That’s not really fair to object to teachers and nurses (with their 4 years of training and study) earning more than someone just above minimum wage-of course they should!