Teachers pay

[Folloe]

I have what might be a stupid question. If teachers aren’t paid for their holidays but have a yearly salary does that mean:

teachers salary: 40k for working 39 weeks of the week

Is then equivalent to a job that’s 48 weeks of the year (4 weeks for holidays) would be 49.2k

Im not against teachers striking and asking for pay rise to come from the government rather than the school pot. This isn’t a teacher bashing thread.

Private schools are losing staff to the public sector though which has a generous pension scheme (if in fact that’s true at all). The fact that the public sector pay is better than elite private schools shows us something is not right.

if the public sector reforms the pension, staff won’t have the same option of working in the private sector. There are far fewer jobs and higher expectations.

Public sector pensions are extremely expensive and once you take these into account public sector workers are paid a premium of about 10% and often get easier working conditions. I’ve worked in both - public sector is about half the work of not less.

Being a teacher is half the work of what job? Tell me. Which job does a 20 hour day?

Neighbours a teacher. Very organised, secondary school, top of pay point with extra responsibility points. She says that she knows her subject so doesn't put in the hours that newly qualified do since subject is similar year on year.

I guess some work less and some work more hours. She loves it. I also have 4 cousins who all taught, retired now and financially did them very well. They also loved the holidays. Yes some teachers love it. Some don't.

Private schools are losing staff to the public sector though which has a generous pension scheme (if in fact that’s true at all).

That the private schools are going on strike and losing staff due to leaving the TPS? Google it...

If they start messing with state sector teacher pensions, then teachers will quit. Teachers are quitting now even with the pension.

Yeah I’ve got teachers in my family. None work particularly long hours and all have generous holidays. It’s only on mn are teachers uniquely hard working.

It’s only on mn are teachers uniquely hard working.

And yet in real life we can't get people to do the job.

If you think teachers in the real world are having a cushy life and it's only on MN that anyone complains, why aren't people queuing up to be teachers? Why can't we recruit? Why are there so many vacancies?

This is really clear (and worrying).. Thank you.

Which industries do you know of at the moment that aren’t struggling to recruit? It’s certainly not exclusive to teachers!

Like it or not, the pension and the time off are massive perks that in reality add 20 percent or more to the salary.

Read the post by @Whatames a few above yours, I found it set out the issues really clearly.

Well clearly not since the majority of parents seem ok with it. I don’t hear of parents protesting outside schools at the poor standards. I seem to remember parents upset with schools in the day (80)s/90’s) but less so now.

Like it or not, the pension and the time off are massive perks that in reality add 20 percent or more to the salary.

Nobody would do it if it wasn't for this. The students wouldn't cope with so much school either. If it was to go to that of a normal' job. It's exhausting dealing with 30 different people on a different level to sitting at desk.
I have done both jobs. Dealing with 30 teenagers is a whole heap of exhausting.

And despite the perks, we can't get people to do it.

I'm guessing you don't have children in education if you don't think them not having a teacher is worrying and something that needs action taking.

Or perhaps you don't need to worry about the state of the economy if the education system slowly falls over.

And despite the perks, we can't get people to do it.

Nor stay doing it once they've experienced these amazing perks for a few years. After a gruelling year of training + 2 ECT years to get qualified... they quit.

Parents generally don't give a shit as long as they don't have to parent/teach their kids themselves.

I started teaching in the 00's. Almost all parents came to parents evening/read with their child (I consider that the bare minimum of school interaction for your child).

Less than half do now.

Apostrophe!

I work in a good school in an appealing location.
We've advertised 5 posts this year.
Job 1 - 2 applicants
Job 2 - none
Job 3 - none
Job 4 - 1
Job 5 - 1

We used to get tens of applicants per post.

As a country, we're not recruiting enough good trainees. Not enough of them finish training. Not enough of those ever teach. Not enough of them get to year 5.

I love my job but many new entrants don't. And that's a big problem - if you're not getting paid enough for all the crap you have to deal with, you leave.

I should also point out that we have classes taught daily by unqualified non specialists. GCSE classes.

It's not good enough.

Technically, teachers aren't paid for school holidays. Of course, they're entitled to statutory holiday pay for 5.7 weeks per year, just like every worker in UK. So technically, there's about 6 weeks unpaid 'holidays'

Except the teachers contract is not that straight forward. They're not paid for days worked. They're paid for 2 elements - directed and undirected time. Directed time is 1265 hours per year over 195 days where the headteacher can direct a teacher to work. So that will include actually being in a classroom. Or attending a parents evening. Or doing a break duty. Basically when the 'head' tells a teacher to be somewhere.

If you divide 1265 by 260 days, incidentally, which is the number of working days another worker with statutory holiday entitlement works each year, it's almost 5 hours per day. Only teachers do them over 195 days so that's about 6.5 hours per day.

Teachers also have to work 'undirected time' which is limitless, and is any task which the teacher MUST do to fulfil their professional duties, but the head can't tell them when or where to do them. Like marking work, phoning a parent, having a meeting with a child's social worker, planning lessons, making resources, putting up display work, organising a trip, going in on results day, running revision sessions, re-writing schemes of work, supervising detentions, running an extra curricular club, writing reports. The head can't tell a teacher where to mark the books, or when, but it does have to be done, I used to do it after putting my kids to bed.

I'd say on average, there's about 4/5 hours of undirected tasks each day. Lots of teachers do more, and I'm sure there's plenty of anecdotes of "family members" who are teachers that do much less.

So a working day for a teacher is approx 10/11 hours average, I'd say. There's been quite a bit of research into working hours if you're interested.

So I'd view the situation with teachers salaries more like where you're consolidating full time hours into less days. Like doing your full time job in 4 days a week.

But teachers only get statutory holiday pay and do not get paid for the other 6 weeks when schools are shut*.

*they're not shut for 6 weeks - they're open for transition weeks, residential trips, revision conferences, results days, tidying the classroom at end of year, setting up a classroom at start of year, moving classrooms etc

Great post, thankyou

Used against them for what?

Well if you want to derail a thread about teacher working conditions, throw in something about how teacher holiday pay is worked out and that's the thread gone. In general.

We are off for 13 weeks. We get paid for 40 days of that. The rest of the holiday are unpaid. Our salary is paid equally across 12 months.

@stargirl1701 We've established that but there are still people quibbling.

Whether or not teachers go into school during the holidays or of they work at home on planning and so forth is a moot point. The fact is that those of us who are working 60 hour weeks for 39 weeks of the year are in fact, across the year putting in similar hours to someone in a "real world" job with standard holidays.

But, as noblegiraffe (and others) put it, people don't want to do the job and frankly, who can blame them?

This is exactly the issue. Whether people think the pay/holidays/pension are too much / fair/ too little is really irrelevant... No one wants teaching jobs - our application rates for jobs have been exactly as you describe. The pay and conditions must improve to attract and retain teachers (and TAs) or the quality of education for children will decline dramatically.

I am an ex teacher. I left the profession after 12 years.

I completely agree with the poster above, having watched the profession spiral downwards, half the teachers are not qualified to teach. There are TAs being made subject leaders, young graduates with first degrees thrown into the classroom with no idea how to teach, schools are employing teachers with less experience because they cannot afford ‘good quality’ teachers,

I have my own children, and I supplement their education with tutors and my time as I believe schools are not adequately able to provide outstanding or even good education anymore.

It is incredibly worrying and sad.

I left due to the pressure and the amount of undirected time I was spending in my profession, that was leading to a terrible quality of life.