Out of complete nosinesses, how much do teachers get paid?

[tikkakormaandsomerice]

So primary teachers
Secondary school teachers

What would they roughly get paid?

My sister in-law is a secondary English teacher in London, and deputy head of English and gets paid a whopping 45k!

In what reality is £45k in London a 'whopping' salary (especially for a deputy head of a department, but even without that!)?!?!

Really? I thought you had to take on a whole school thing for UPS? 🤔

I’ll look into this, thank you!

UPR, sorry! I’m sure it used to be UPS. 🙄😂

It's sarcasm, surely.

Agree with the pp that's heads, particularly of academies, say this but it's not true. I'm a normal classroom teacher on UPS3. When did it change to UPR?! Not heard that before.

Upper pay range I think or upper pay spine. Interchangeable afaik!

You also don’t need to be on M6 or each point above for two years before moving up contrary to popular belief. We challenged this in my school and got it changed. You should be considered every year for progression.

I believe they do get extremely good pensions which the Gov (taxpayers) pays up to 25% of in to.

They would get a relatively good pension if a third of them didn’t quit before they’d even worked 5 years.

The proportion of teachers over 50 is dropping so the pension isn’t enough to keep even older teachers in the job.

Or if they could afford to pay in to it in the first place. My OH can't afford it.

Different type of pension. The government/my employer has currently paid £0 into my pension or the pension of any currently working teachers. There is no pot of money as in private pensions. Anything being paid by the government is currently paying the pensions of retired teachers (as are the contributions of every currently working teacher paying into the scheme).

@Iamnotthe1 I don't understand. Are you saying the Government aren't contributing to a pension of a government employed teacher in the UK?

It's a defined benefit system not a contribution based system.

In a defined benefit system, there is no pot of money that either you nor your employer pays into. I am charged a contribution percentage based on how much I earn and that money is used to pay the pensions of currently retired teachers. If there is any shortfall on a national level, the government make up the difference (which they label as their contribution but it often doesn't end up being as much as that).

I accrue a pension promise that, for every year I pay my contributions like this, I will get back 1/57th of my career average salary. The government hasn't paid anything into that yet: they are just promising to pay it in 30-odd years if the contributions from working teachers in the 2050s don't cover it.

So whether the government say they contribute 5%, 25% or 95%, it doesn't actually change my pension nor the pension of any teacher. It's entirely theoretical and, really, a paper exercise.

@Iamnotthe1 I don't think you know what a defined pension scheme is. So many would cut off their right arm for this. https://www.nerdwallet.com/uk/pensions/teacher-pension-scheme/

Oh it's a great pension, clearly. But people aren't cutting off their right arm for it. Teacher recruitment and retention is in dire straits. Alongside the rest of the package, it doesn't add up to enough to make it worth it for enough people.

I know exactly what it is, thank you. I'm also correct that the employer contribution rates have no effect on the final pension, there's no pot of money, it's predicated on a promise and it's the accural rate that matters.

If in 10 years time, it was decided that every school was in an academy trust and every teacher was an employee of the trust not the state, they could do away with the tps completely. Yes, there'd be some hustle and bustle and some shitty agreement woupd have to be made but it wouldn't be the promised pension. Vague promises of future payments do not fill me with confidence, given how the state pension is going.

And the PP is right: it's not enough to entice people to enter teaching nor keep them in it.

So many would cut off their right arm for this.

They're not even signing up to train to teach for this. And for serious shortage subjects that also comes with a tax free bursary of £27k.

Why do you think that is?

And I have not known a teacher recently able to keep up the physical demands of teaching until current retirement age - over a decade plus, I have only seen 1 class teacher make it to over 60, let alone 67. Increasingly, teachers over 50 are rare in the workplace.

Balancing a ‘good’ pension with significant early redemption penalties vs a theoretically ‘less good’ one where the employee can physically work to retirement age may give very different result to comparing the two schemes in paper.

Well within boundaries of absolute imagination then so many things could change but to be offered a final salary pension is enormous. I don't think enough people realise what it actually is worth. In one area of the UK teachers pensions went up by over 11% this year.

We're not offered a final salary pension. That went years ago.

Teachers pensions have not been final salary for many years. It’s defined benefit, yes, but career average not final salary.

Note to self to keep an eye out for all the teachers with only a left arm next week, having chewed the other one off to enter the profession.

An ex colleague of mine died on his first day of retirement. Worked all his life, finally retired, then had a heart attack within the first 6 hours. Yes he had the TPS, but worked himself into the ground and never actually had the chance to reap its benefits.

It's sarcasm, surely

I REALLY hope so! You never know on mumsnet though... some people really do think teachers are really well paid!

@Arapawa sorry, who has s final salary pension?