To ask for a list of jobs that mean that teachers have never had it so good and should stop complaining?

[chicaguapa]

I thought I'd try and equal the number of threads about the Philpots with ones about teaching?

Why oh why does everyone have to have an opinion on teaching? Why is it ok to say 'well if you don't like it, get another job?' Don't people want teachers to teach their children or is everyone planning on home edding?

One argument is that there are other jobs out there that are just as shit. Maybe we could just list the jobs that have all of the following:

A similar level of unrelenting pressure
National expectation & judgement of results
Responsibility for future success of the next generation
Constant derision from service users ie parents/ public
Systematic devaluing of the profession by their employer ie government
Similar annual hours
Same post-graduate qualification level
Same salary

Then all the teachers can say yes, they are shit jobs too. And all the other people can be pleased that the teachers have acknowledged they don't have the only shit job in the world and theirs is just one of them.

Jobs have to fit all of the above criteria or they don't count.

[scottishmummy]

Oh stop with all the teachery woe is me,not all teachers have pg.BEd is undergrad
Teachers do like to fuckin moan about their 60hr week,pressure,targets
Yadda yadda the t&c are great.they're not hard done to at all.or esp well qualified

[chicaguapa]

Is this a kinda top trumps game?

No. It wasn't me that turned it into that.

I don't work for the public sector, but I have a union which fought and threatened strikes when the company I work for tried to change the pension scheme. A defined benefit pension scheme that is still open to new entrants.

[FreyaSnow]

I think teachers do work longer hours than contact time, but most people in a professional job work longer hours than 9-5. Most people have to do extra work outside of the hours actually in their place of employment - paper work, reports, constantly updating their knowledge and gaining new qualifications.

The fact that teachers need a degree and sometimes a postgraduate certificate is neither here nor there. Lots of graduates have to work in non graduate professions, and some professions are made up of almost all graduates but don't pay accordingly.

[Shelly32]

Totempole Our schemes of work change on a pretty much yearly basis. Maybe that's just my school though. Now the gov has changed the GCSE specs and all is up in the air for next year now.

[Shelly32]

Scottishmummy the Ts&Cs WERE great. Now many schools are academies and those are no longer subject to the LEA. Let's not even go into pensions. And as for working to rule- most teachers won't work to rule. The unnecessary admin mentioned earlier is neceassry to track progress and build on weak areas. You go into teaching wanting to help yound people. Working to rule only harms the students and no decent teacher wants that.

[mercibucket]

social worker sounds a v hard, under valued and stressful job, with no govt support

[Squarepebbles]

"Let's not go into pensions" but dp would have to pay 3/4 of his salary a month to get the same.

[chicaguapa]

Didn't the teaching unions tell teachers to work to rule last year and it was physically impossible to do the job well in the contracted times? I guess it's like asking nurses to go home at the end of their shift no matter what and leave patients uncared for or for a social worker to leave a house visit because their time is up. You don't do the job to work to the clock.

[chicaguapa]

squarepebbles Your DH would have to pay 75% of his salary to get a pension equivalent to 1/60 of his salary for every year he's done his job? Where have you got those figures? Your DH has no way of knowing what any pension fund value would buy him at age 65 (unless he's in his 60s and then he'd have a fair idea).

[Shelly32]

Chicaguapa They still are asking teachers to work to rule but like you said, it is impossible. I only work part time due to wanting a bit more work/life balance but still find on my days off I'm hoping my girls will want a nap so I can cram in some work. Most of the weekend and every evening after the girls are asleep is taken up with work too. It's not 'Oh woe is me ' as I love my job but it is very, very demanding energy, emotion and time wise. I always feel I'm not doing enough and I always feel that there is more to do. There is no cut off point.

[goingwildforcrayons]

There are two main reasons why teachers are overworked, firstly the lazy and crp ones who mean that all the others have to work harder dealing with all the problems. Secondly, the amount of faff they have to do, just to teach a lesson, the planning, prep, assessment, recording of data, differentiation,different initiatives, not to mention having to act almost as counsellors, social workers, adoptive parents etc,, such as teaching children how to eat at a table with knife and fork (I kid you not and this was secondary school).

Trust me I have seen some blody amazing teachers who are inspiring, caring and talented professionals. I have also seen some who definitely should not be in the profession. The performance management systems in many schools isn't robust enough to deal with poor performance.

One teacher was moaning to my DH that she wasn't on good money (£38k). He is support staff. When he told her his heart bled for her, she asked him what his salary was. When he told her he earned 40% of what she did, she said she shouldn't really be complaining then should she? .

I am with the teachers though on how Gove is a cretin. Just as Osbourne is doing with benefit claimaints, Gove is using rhetoric, making it sound like teachers and their pay/pensions caused the recession and using the same kind of phrases everytime teachers threaten to/strike e.g. "teachers will be inconveniencing working parents". Very cleverly turning public support against teachers, mentioning the good money that they are on (they are) and making it sound like teachers are going on strike for more money, even better gold plated pensions and reduced hours. The Unions are not doing enough explaining to parents why they are protesting and considering striking.

[poppypebble]

Teaching isn't the worst job in the world, but it isn't a doss either. This term is the most stressful in terms of exam preparation and I will be at school 7am to 6pm Mon-Fri for the next 7 weeks, and that will be teaching - revision classes before and after school. Then I'll come home and do my prep and marking. I'll be crying at 5:30 when the alarm goes off, but that's the job I signed up for.

The job I wouldn't like to do is being a Vet. I couldn't stand seeing animals suffering.

[Cabrinha]

Can I ask about the post grad qualification please?
I thought a PGCE was so called because you had to be post graduate to take this course - but it isn't actually a higher level qualification. It's equivalent in level to a first degree - but is a conversion course. You need to be a graduate to prove a standard, because the PGCE isn't a full length degree. I have a graduate diploma in law - same principle - it's not a higher level, it's a conversion. Postgrad quals to me are MSc, DPhil etc.

[chicaguapa]

goingwild I completely agree with everything you've written.

I don't think the NUT helps by providing sound bites for people & media to pick up on and use against them. I do think they don't really understand the real world and what they're up against. Along with the bureaucracy, their biggest enemy is parents and public, yet they do so little to get them onside.

Most of the public don't even realise that the NUT isn't the voice of teaching and/ or teachers. They are not the only teaching union and the others don't always necessarily agree with what the NUT are standing for.

[fuzzysnout]

Totempole It is pretty much impossible to reuse the majority of lessons you have planned as you are very unlikely to teach the same ability level from one year to the next. The syllabus pretty much changes from year to year, so combined with school policy changes and adapting to fit groups you might reuse activities, but it is rare the whole lesson can simply be reused. Inevitably resources also need to be updated, improved or replaced each time, so it's not quite as simple as planning lessons once every three years.

[Shelly32]

kim147 Totally! The lack of control you refer to and the ever changing goalposts make the job demoralising!

[youarewinning]

If you do a BA(ed) you still need QTS (qualified teacher status) gained by doing 4 year degree BA(ed) with QTS or BA(ed) then PCGE, GTP (or the new eqivilent)

I'm currently doing my degree through OU to become a teacher!

[chicaguapa]

I thought a PGCE was so called because you had to be post graduate to take this course - but it isn't actually a higher level qualification

No, you have to be a graduate to take it. But once you have it, you're not qualified to Master's level. You're in between. You now finish the PGCE with some credits towards the Master's in Education, depending on how well you did on the written bits in the PGCE, which you can add to during your teaching career to get the full Master's.

[chicaguapa]

Totempole I think you'd be pretty pissed off if your DC's teachers trotted out the same lesson time after time and didn't take into account your DC's abilities, needs etc. I think every parent expects a tailored lesson for their DC to make sure they make academic progress.

Once upon a time, teachers taught to the middle of the class and those at the top didn't fulfil their potential and those at the bottom stayed there. So then teachers had to teach to the top and bottom, but the middle got left out. Now they have to teach to everyone, and each lesson contains something for every child to make demonstrable progress. Until you have those children in that next class, you don't know how to do that. So each one has to be tailored for that class from one week to the next.

[FreyaSnow]

Youarewinning, you can get QTS by doing a three year BA Ed. They are not all four year degrees.

Lots of professions require a particular vocational degree - opticians for example.

[juniper9]

I think teachers get a reputation for moaning so much because the media and public, on the whole, are very dismissive of the workload.

My dad used to tell me mum (a teacher) that it was just glorified babysitting, and she only went to work for the social side. My sister and brother both tell me, frequently, that I work 9-3:30

My DP is a doctor and works fewer hours than me. Yes, he does on-calls but usually he watches iPlayer or sleeps all night. He bought me a book about time management, but I haven't had time to read it (be dum bum cheerrrr)

I am off next academic year on maternity leave, but I genuinely do not know how I will be able to do my job once I have a baby. At the moment, I do work long hours and the 'to-do' list is never done.

Gove is intent on eroding all of the positives out of the job; calling us lazy and scroungers. The head of OFSTED said teachers should be happy to work such long hours as we enjoy our jobs. Big sigh.

[heggiehog]

As a primary teacher I get annoyed with people thinking that I only work 9-3 (I work on average 12-14 hours a day), but whenever I try to respond to what they are saying I get accused of being a moaning teacher.

No...just trying to put people straight. Can't win.

Love my job though and there are much worse out there.

[heggiehog]

To the people saying PGCE isn't a postgraduate qualification, yes it is, though I suppose it depends on the quality of the university you attend.

PGCE students that I have encountered in my area have to write around 20,000 words of Masters-level essays on top of working 50+ hours a week on placement.

[chicaguapa]

Maybe you should start a petition a la IDS saying that Gove should spend some time in a school teaching English (his degree subject) and see if he still thinks teachers are lazy and scroungers.

What I see happening is:

something comes out in the media via Gove or the unions,
people start moaning about teachers and how they have an easy job, holidays etc,
then the teachers say "eh hold on. We don't have an easy job, and the holidays aren't holidays in the truest sense",
then everyone else wades in saying the teachers are moaning again

I think it's clear from this thread at least that there are other jobs out there that are comparable in shitness and others that are worse, like opening tin cans or whatever it was that was supposed to trump teaching.

The difference is, I think, that when the story came out about courses to teach nurses to care, people didn't come on mumsnet and start threads saying how shit nurses are and that if they can't do their job properly they should leave. I think most people recognised bollocks when they saw it and know that nurses do an incredibly hard job and it was another load of rubbish from the government trying to devalue the profession.

Similarly with social workers, when they were demonised over the baby P scandal, no one said social workers were crap. And whilst in that particular case, those actual SWs failed him, people still recognised what a bloody difficult and largely unrewarding job social work is. I think they deserve a medal.