To be a bit confused and a bit annoyed that I earn less

[MrsKravitz]

As a senior lecturer at a University than an A level teacher.
Seriously considering changing.

Some pay scales here

www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2218

Once the lecture is written that can be it for a few years. The laws of Physics/Chemistry haven't changed so teaching that can be consistent. I can only comment on what I've seen in 20 years working for 2 Uni's in different areas. It's not as easy as it once was but there seems to be a lot of 'meetings', 'research' and 'working from home' particularly in school hols.

How could you give the same lecture to different classes though? You'd have to change it every time the exam syllabus changed and every time you had more students having done one syllabus than the other, surely? Maybe that is my subject.

Again, if you don't mind me repeating myself, working from home isn't likely to be a euphemism for doing nothing - you'd soon see people getting sacked if it were.

I love the way those are in inverted commas. I don't care what you think you see. The reality is that if you do not produce research outputs, you will LOSE YOUR JOB, and as someone pointed out there are no fairies available to do it for you. Yes it is possible to work from home, that is indeed a perk. But make no mistake if you don't do the work, you are stuffed. I don't know a single academic for whom evening and weekend work are not completely standard. Incidentally, the laws of physics and chemistry don't change, but new research comes out all the time. I used to update my lectures yearly.

Working from home is not allowed at our place. I worked from home more when I was in industry than I do now (unless you count the sitting up at 3am correcting a PhD thesis so the postgrad can have feedback quickly as "working from home". My colleagues and I seem to do that an awful lot). In addition to teaching, we are also expected to:

develop our own research groups,
generate a minimum of £100k research funding per year (each grant takes around a month full time to write and has about a 10% chance of being funded)
take on a certain number of international PhD students each year (do you realise it is not easy to get someone through a PhD if they barely speak English?),
carry out peer-reviews of papers, books, research grants,
editoral board memberships,
funding body advisory boards,
publish a minimum of 4 peer-reviewed papers per year in "good" journals,
give conference lectures,
physically carry out research (which includes developing collaborative links within and outside the university),
carry out admin tasks such as serving on various university committees, coordinating modules, leading teaching groups etc etc etc,
exam/coursework marking,
being part of the exam board,
external examining for other universities at both undergrad and postgrad level
personal tutoring for undergraduate students

These are all fairly minimal tasks required to be considered to be doing your job reasonably. They are not even exceptional responsibilities.

There are be a ton more things I could add to that list.

Oh, btw, Pedallleur, the salary scales you linked to are for FE lecturers, not HE ones. The scales are very different. The correct link is www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2210 lecturers (old universities) and lecturers/senior lecturers (post-92) are on points 31-43 of the single pay spine. Senior lecturers/readers (old universities) and principal lecturers/readers (post-92) are on points 44 upwards. However, if as a lecturer (old university), you reach the top of your pay scale i.e. £43,840, you don't automatically then go up to the next point on the pay-scale (only if you are deemed to be doing exceptionally well - these days that is little short of winning major awards for your work).

So because I 'only' teach to A -Level and only have an MA I am not working as hard as you and don't deserve the wage I get?

You think that we don't have to engage in research, tutor,exam/coursework mark, fundraise, work through evenings and weekends, spend hours preparing one lesson/workshop?

Did anyone say that? As I recall, both myself and others have said we'd rather stick pins in our eyes than teach under-18's. However, a few people seem to think that university lecturers are over-paid for little work. I was simply pointing out just some of the work which is typically required of an average academic. We are not all slackers who "work from home" an awful lot and take long holidays, we actually do earn our keep and then some. That does not say that teachers don't do the same!

Weimy it isn't about how hard you or we work. In a fair world, care assistants and nurses would earn most of all as their tasks are so hard and so worthwhile. But as I said before, in the current scale of salaries, yes jobs that require years of extra study and are very hard to get into do command more money as a rule. After an ma you are looking at slogging at a phd for four years, then another four years of postdoctoral work at a minimum before getting a lectureship, of which there may be only three or four advertised in an entire year. The research you produce, if you are really good, may change the face of the discipline altogether.
I'm not knocking secondary teaching- in fact I am seriously considering a pgce myself - but I think that there are reasons why being a university lecturer might reasonably command a higher salary.

I was reacting to the op's initial statement, a lesson in being emotionally incontinent and posting before you have read the whole thread.

But isn't that one of the reasons it can stay so low though, because there are more people chasing the positions than there are positions to fill? Lots of frustrated academics out there (and on PGCE courses IME). And if they can fill the positions at current salaries...

I have a higher TLR (get paid more for my management responsibility) than I would in other local schools - because my school is tough and it was an incentive for good people to apply. The nice school on the other side of town would get lots of applicants advertising a lower TLR.

I get that, but my husband has no qualifications whatsoever and earns more than I do.

TBH it was more that I perceived the op was putting A level teachers down, and there are some who only have the level of knowledge to teach to the exam, but there are others who are specialists in their subjects who engage in research and have proffessional experience in their subject.

I get that that is not what was meant but that was just my initial reaction.

sp professional. Bugger.

weimy don't worry - there have been a couple of really rude posts about teachers that would have me posting in a fury too. I think teachers do an amazing job, but as others have said, I think academia seems to be one of those areas where people have a funny idea that everyone is rich and lazy - like when people say 'ooh, teachers are lucky they only work until school lets out at 3.30' you must want to rant in th esame way.

I know very few lecturers who use content over and over again. Thats pretty rare. The expectations of tertiary (and masters) students are pretty high and they complain if you appear to have used old materials or are not up to date.

Yes I agree with the above LRD. I "get" that my friend is probably a freak wrt pay . I think the thread has moved on to correcting some of the misconceptions about lecturers and what we do/how much we are renumerated.

basingstoke I wish we had a scheme where we were paid for higher duties. I am programme leader (equiv head of subject) for an undergrad programme and a postgrad one. Buck stops at me for both these - one being a very very pricey masters course with highly qualified demanding professionals as students (payng £700 per module) I wrote and validated the postgrad programme, which is well know internationally. I run the widening access scheme for our centre/dept. We are responsible for marketing our programmes and developing new ones to take to market as well. Bums on seats = jobs. If we dont fill those places, we lose staff. This is on top of my regular duties as a senior lecturer and researcher.
The TLR scheme sounds good.

'Once the lecture is written that can be it for a few years'

Ha ha ha - you really do not have a clue do you. In fact comically so.

If I taught a lecture I had prepared 5 or even 3 years ago it would be out of date.

Anyway, all admin staff do is sit there at their desks, type up the occasional letter and put some figures into excel. I see a lot of long coffee breaks and tend to take their full lunch hour. How hard can that be?

No? Not true? I of course DO NOT believe that, I am stereotyping and making inferences from what I see but have not experienced and can not understand....

I have never done the same lecture twice

Are you stuck in the same position too where you seem to get given new modules every year? I have been teaching for 8 years now and never done the same module twice. Even basic stuff like research methods needs updating and examples changing.

Another who has never given exactly the same lecture twice. Material needs to be refined/revised/up-dated. I teach on a professional course, where our students need to finish meeting the strict criteria to register for their profession. Students also come in to us completely unprepared for university level study and we are now having to look at how to make up the short-fall in their knowledge. We also get students coming in expecting to be coached in how to pass the exams rather than wanting to actually learn, as I heard one teacher describe it they come in with a "tricks for ticks" mentality.

unseen - I despise that attitude. 'Why are we learning this if its not on the exam'...or worse - complaints that we covered things that were not on the exam...from parents.

Whatever happened to love of study, wanting to gain knowledge, be an expert in your field.

I dread to think what will happen with the tuitiion fee rise...

Yes, we get a lot of "is this going to be on the exam?" type questions. We are also obliged to have the students formally evaluate our teaching on an annual basis. This evaluation is fed directly into our performance reviews. Hence there is a lot of motivation to make sure you don't loose favour with the students . Obviously this is in direct conflict with being able to discipline students where necessary etc etc etc

Precisely

Although I can be a bit harsh - they complained once that there were things taught not on the exam so I gave them a difficult multiple choice exam paper covering every topic we did

I want to say here, mine were absolutely fantastic about trying to be interested in the subject itself. I had one lad who clearly hated the course and wanted to talk a lot about how bad the books we were reading were and how stupid people back then must have been - but he actually came to me and admitted he'd chosen a course he knew might not be easy for him because he wanted to try and now he was frustrated trying to cope with it. I thought that was really impressive - both that he thought it over like that and that he thought to come and tell me, as he said because he could tell I was enthusiastic and he felt bad.

Mrs Kravitz- leaving aside the issues of teachers and lecturers having to justify their workloads, I think your friend is not a typical example. I think you said earlier that your friend is in a private school, and 48K seems very high even in a private school unless she has extra responsibilities. In a state school , you'd need to be UPS with TLRs to get close to 48K.

Based on having 3 years teaching experience, the salary is £25,168 , so that's what you could expect were you to resume secondary teaching (though I don't know whether you could include your lecturing years too?). It's very very unusual to teach only A-level in a school though, you'd probably have to teach the full range.