to ask why, if you think a job is so cushy, you don't actually do it?

[Serendippy]

Genuine question, although guaranteed to rile a number of you

This comes mostly from the comments about teachers/childminders. Funnily enough, I have never once heard anyone say, 'God, I paid my callout plumber a fortune, I wish I had his job'. Is this because most of us do not have any idea about plumbing? But it seems that most think they know about educating a child, so why not do it? Especially now you are given money to train asa teacher and if you already have a degree, it only takes a 9 month course to qualify? I appreciate that if you have no qualifications in place already, becoming a teacher would involve a long time on no income training, but if you would only have to do 9 months and then get loadsa money for sitting kids in front of DVDs, leaving work at 3 and swanning off on holiday for 13 weeks a year, why don't you? Same goes for childminding, if it is so easy to mind other people's children and at the same time you would save on childcare for your own, why don't you do it?

Right, who wants to throw the first punch?

Pah.

I teach English in a sixth form college with a generally quite deprived intake. 80% of my classes are exam classes.

I would say that the day-to-day classroom management is easier than in a school (where I trained), but the marking load is absolutely ridiculous at certain times.

A level essays take an absolute age to mark.

I do enjoy my job an awful lot most of the time, but it can be tough. And because the stakes are, in some ways, higher at A level, you need to give almost unlimited extra time to students who are struggling/lazy/ill/traumatised.

This is my first 'career' job, and I've worked in retail/cleaning/childcare before. The job is much, much, more stressful than any of those (mainly due to scrutiny and constant changing of boundaries), but also a thousand times more interesting and fulfilling. Teachers are virtually never bored.

Any time I feel exhausted (often) or stressed (usually) or inadequate (most of the time), I remind myself of that.

To be fair, teachers moan in response to people always having a go at them. As they do to bankers. Although some bankers have their bonuses to keep them warm at night!.
Other professions seem to be universally respected so therefore don't moan as much, for example nurses

been headbutted and bitten badly enough that it is swollen, bruised & grazed.

Tsk. Those meetings can be quite brutal, I've heard.:)

I get a bit fed up when teachers, especially primary, are described as being "thick", or "poorly educated with low class degrees".

Not all of us. I am a primary teacher, and my degree was awarded by Worcester College, Oxford. My partner is a primary school teacher, and HIS degree was awarded by the University of Birmingham (First class).

We were thick enough to understand contraception badly when I was in my final year though!

windward - yes.

and as you are citing your dh's career i will cite mine, as obviously that is the same thing as first hand experience

he has a high pressure job for a private co in a specialised area. the kind where he's on call 24/7. he and all his colleagues earnt significantly in excess of my teaching salary - up to 4 times, in fact, without being CEOs. not just in one company, but in the 5 that he's worked in over the last 20 years.

my qualifications and his are pretty comparable.

during term time i worked longer hours than him. i have taught pupils with knives & guns on them in class, I have taken pupils to hospital, watched them be arrested, sent them home knowing that they will be sleeping rough that night (and that is safer for them than going 'home') and seen them go off for the summer break, not knowing if we'll ever see them again. it is stressful working in those conditions.

my bil has a phd from oxford, so you'd expect him to do well. his salary outstrips my dh's by many times. now, my qualifications don't match up to his, but plenty of science teachers DO have highly regarded phds.

so, yes, compared to the private sector, teachers don't earn as much as they could do with similar qualifications. and yes, teaching can be highly stressful.

but let's not just rely on personal anecdotes. as i said earlier, teachers have some of the highest incidences of illness, stress & divorce of ANY workers within the UK.they also have a v high % who smoke.

either they are a bunch of wusses who slack off on the sick & can't be bothered to sustain a marriage - or they really do have a stressful job.

While I don't think teaching is "cushy", I do think the holidays are very cushy, and the pay is good for the job. Also agree with earlier posters who have said that the entry requirements are quite low for a professional career. I know many teachers (inc close family and friends), and most of them went into teaching because they were attracted by the hours/holidays, and/or because thy didn't know what else to do. Most of them don't moan to me - on the contrary 4 of them have told me they think they are well reimbursed!

However I do know one teacher who continually moans about the money and the prep hours required - but she went into teaching late in life, having only ever worked in hourly-paid lowly jobs before, has the bare minimum of qualifications, went into teaching for the short hours/holidays, and is convinced that all other professional careers pay bankers' salaries - so clearly has no concept of the long hours/demands of a professional career (and would never have qualified for one outside teaching), and is completely unrealistic regarding others' salaries.

I believe it all comes down to your expectations and reasons for entering teaching.

Good teachers go into it because they have a passion for sharing knowledge and a love of children and want to help them achieve their full potential!

Cushy?? Me dad is a retired physics teacher and I can assure you it is anything but. That career robbed me of a father during my formative years. You can't just leave the school at 3.30 and forget about it , marking, planning etc take up hours many evenings and weekends. And stress? OMG, don't get me started on the "marvellous" school holidays we endured as kids. At least 2 weeks of the summer hols to tie up lose ends and wind down, then2 weeks planning for the new year whilst the stress levels rose back up.

Yeah, cushy.

Sorry, not enough time to go in to detail but I wanted to pick this up:

'i have taught pupils with knives & guns on them in class,'

Is complete horseshit. I work in a profession with a very keen interest in firearms and can state as absolute fact that the number of firearms incidents in secondary teaching institutions in the UK in the last few years is zero. Even in the most deprived of inner city schools, if you have encountered a school kid with a firearm then you are incredibly incredibly unfortunate. It's hardly representative of teaching in the uk.

This 'daily mail'-esque hyperbole is exactly what gives teaching a bad name and is making it hard for me to take anything you say seriously.

Oh LooktoWindward, how little you know. I've had knives pulled on me by students. (amazing how a withering stare can disarm them though). Kinves in class are actually fairly common ans are nun-chuckers (sp?) knuckle dusters and a variety of pointy hurty things.

A few of my students are currently residing at Her Majesty's Pleasure for ABH and firearms offences. At least one of those was arrested with the firearm within a few minutes of leaving the college premises.

But then I worked in colleges not, strictly speaking "secondary institutions" and my data set goes back further than just the last few years.

If it helps, the blood stains from where one student stabbed another in the (as Forrest Gump would say) 'buttock' is still there in the coridoor outside my old office.

Going back a bit but of course an Oxbridge graduate can be a good teacher. I'd strongly argue that there's no reason why they're likely to be any better than any other university graduate. Once you've hit a basic level of intellegence/ education it is really about teaching ability ie soft skills.

Please do not read this as saying all teachers are thick. I know plenty of very bright teachers. All people seem to have been saying on this thread is that the entry requirements are low for a professional. If you choose to enter with more than the minimum that's you choice.

No one's contradicted my point about being able to become a teacher with a 2.2. Assuming on that basis I'm correct, you really have to understand how unlikely it is now to get any serious graduate job with a 2.2 straight out of education.

Slug winward was talking about firearms only. It would appear you encountered one (and not directly) in all your time teaching at a very rough school. Whilst her language was inflamatory she does seem to have made a fair point.

Not that your working conditions are in anyway acceptable of course.

Taught in France, that was cushy - teachers there just teach, do not get embroiled in pastral/disciplary etc other than simple classron management issues - would never teach in UK as teachers are not repected, in great part because the Teachers' Unions leaders act like the TU leader in I'm All Right Jack, and teachers are expected to be wholly responsible for every facet of a child's life.

I'm a police officer and crime stats are my bread and butter. My work helps to create the home office published crime stats.

The UK simply does not have a problem with firearms in an education setting. It just doesn't exist. The incidence of firearms incidents involving an education environment in this country in living memory is nil - or as close to be statistically zero. If you have any data to the contrary I'd be delighted to see it.

Knives I grant you are in circulation (though I was referring above to firearms) but again the incidence of crimes involving bladed items in education environments in the UK in the last decade is very very low and the incidence of violence against teachers is very very very low.

The idea that teachers face a daily barrage of knives and guns (or indeed violence) is laughable. A teacher is at more risk of being stabbed in a random mugging than they are in the classroom.

Tell me, how many teachers have been killed by students (I can only think of one and that does and continues to make headlines) or even injured? How many teachers have contracted hep b or HIV because of their job?

If you want to make a case about class room discipline then do so but please stop this gross exaggeration. All it does is reinforce the "whinging teacher" stereotype.

The UK education system is not a crime ridden environment where staff and pupils have to run a daily gauntlet of physical violence. It's irresponsible to claim it is.

Dh was form tutor to a 14 yr old boy who was often armed with a knife. In an out-of school fight another 14 yr old kid said 'Go on then' and he did and is doing a recommended 12 yr term for murder. The last boy to try an attack dh and went on he rampage round school, was murdered in a gang feud. Yesterday my father's school (which has its own policeman) has to keep all the older ones in at lunchtime as it was reported three men were looking for a student and they were arrested by the police outside the gates, all carrying knives. If you serve a challenging area then school is often a refuge from what's outside but sometime it impinges.

TheLogLady - no night shifts?
When I was a class teacher I was one of a team of staff that took all the 10 & 11 year-olds away on a week's outdoor activity programme. No extra overtime pay and no time off at all for 24/7 responsibility for other people's dc's doing "dangerous" activities like rock-climbing, canoeing etc.

The "funniest?" moment was when there was a wasp in the girls' dorm at 10.30pm. They were all busy diving round the room and egging each other on to higher feats of melodramatic squealing. I knew that absolutely no-one would get any sleep until that wasp was dead or outside, so...
there's me in my pjs pursuing the wasp round a large dorm with a dustpan and brush calmly trying to hit it! I managed it too - it was kind of a life or death situation. I soooo needed my sleep.

windward - the school i taught in was before 'the last few years' with the knives etc.

there were 2 separate incidents in my classroom when i was teaching, when pupils were pulled out of class & had knives in their bags. one wanted to 'get someone after school' another just wanted to show off his collection of fighting knives. those 2 times were pupils i was teaching, with the knives in a bag by their side during my lesson. neither time were they reported. the pupils were given a fixed-term exclusion then allowed back into school.

another time one of the pupils in my form group was using an air rifle on his way home from school - he'd been carrying it around with him all day, so he & his mates could 'mess about' with it after school. they were aiming at the younger kids & having a laugh.

again, that never made any stats that you would see, police were not involved. these 3 occasions took place over a period of 5 years, and were ones where they were pupils i had had in my classroom that day. other staff could tell other stories from that same 5 year period, including one serious arson attack (police were involved). oh, and my car was hit & kicked by pupils who recognised me when i was taking another pupil to hospital. these schools can and do exist. the entire school system isn't 'crime ridden', but in some schools it is just expected that teachers will work within these conditions.

even in 'good' schools, a certain tolerance for verbal abuse, and attempts at bullying etc are expected. in fact, teachers are seen as 'weak' if they can't manage and control these situations. I don't think there are many other careers where such pressures are seen as 'just part of the job'.

so, you see, a lot goes on in schools that 'official authorities' never know about.

i know that my experience was kind of 'specialized' - i taught in a very 'special' kind of school, although not a pupil referral unit. however, those situation can & do exist, you can't just dismiss them because you have not personally encountered them.

the point i'm making, is that when comparing salaries, people look at the holidays, the security (which ARE valuable, in monetary terms), but don't actually look at the responsibility. I was happy with my pay, and went into teaching knowing what it was. BUT I still think that being responsible for the learning of hundreds of pupils, leading a dept with 15 staff, the hours & pressure etc, do NOT compare well with similar responsibilities in private industry.

my pay when i started teaching (1995) didn't even compare well with other graduates i knew working in universities, so again, public employees. teachers' pay did slowly increase during my first ten years, but i could never compare with friends of the same age, who were doing research & a bit of 'lecturing' within local universities. their teaching hours were significantly less stressful & their qualifications pretty similar to many teachers.

I'm afraid much of what's been written here does reinforce the whingeing teacher sterotype.

doing one week involving night work is not the same as a job when they can demanded all, or most of the time.

Doing extra un-paid hours is normal in salaried work.

Working in holiays and weekends without pay is also fairly normal.

some teachers - no question - have challenging roles. I think that goes double for newer teachers, and those working in deprived areas.

"even in 'good' schools, a certain tolerance for verbal abuse, and attempts at bullying etc are expected. in fact, teachers are seen as 'weak' if they can't manage and control these situations. I don't think there are many other careers where such pressures are seen as 'just part of the job'."

erm..policework, nursing, railway work, buses, retail front end, professional driving, bins, barman, bouncer...

not an exhaustive list by any means.

EdgarAP
Not whingeing, merely responding the thecrap comments about teachers having it easy etc. Agreed that one week is not the same as regular night shifts but it is an example of where the job departs from the perception of short hours and no evening work.
Tbh, I think one of the hardest things about teaching is that you have 30 "little individuals" (as Joyce Grenfell would have called them) all demanding either overtly or in rather more subtle ways that you make them the sole focus of your attention. Managing that and giving each child a fair share of your time is pretty exhausting.
Why are you NOT a teacher EdgarAP? I'd be interested to know.

oops crap not crap

No one's contradicted my point about being able to become a teacher with a 2.2. Assuming on that basis I'm correct, you really have to understand how unlikely it is now to get any serious graduate job with a 2.2 straight out of education.

indede not - and i think any plan to demand teachers have 2:1s would be pushing potential good candidates out without good reason.

Dsis was rated '1' in her last obs, and has a 3rd... >proud sister<

that said, the PGCE course I'm applying for demands you have a masters if you have a 2:2 - but it is oversubscribed.

You don't get into the serious graduate job of teaching with a 2:2 ( Unless it is in Education) you have to do a PGCE first (and pass it with very demanding content and teaching practices)

I think teaching is bloody stressful depending on where you do it. DH teaches in a girls school and really likes it, rarely brings marking home and has excellent hours. My sis teaches in a city academy and it sounds hellish. Depends on the school, subject, colleagues etc and whether you're suited to the job in the first place - I know I'm not!