To feel upset how unpopular teachers are.

[Jellymuffin]

Great news about public sector pay rises - yay! Que countless comments along the lines of 'not all public sector deserve a pay rise, only, nurses, paramedics, police and firefighters'. Everyone except teachers then? Should have expected it really .

KatherinaMinola

I do do (sort of) agree with your points but you can pay as much as you like but unless there is a big change in the working conditions and treatment of teachers very few will stay.

Ok Katherina, do you disagree with my point that most teachers would take a workload cut over a pay rise? The teacher salary may not be adequate for the job they do, but it isn't a pittance. I think that the issue of remuneration has paled into insignificance compared with the other problems with the job. As to whether a higher salary would result in better teachers... no, I don't think it would. It might attract more to enter the profession (and perhaps not for the right reasons), but I don't think it would persuade them to stay in the current climate, once they realise what the job is like.

I think the other conditions would follow the pay, partly because leadership, support, resources etc would be better and partly because teaching would then attract a group of people who would not put up with the present treatment and conditions. The present conditions are partly a result of downgrading the job (and, in a vicious spiral, wearing down the staff so that they have no strength left to resist).

The governmental pressure and additional paperwork are partly a result of downgrading the profession. Teachers' pay is cut, fewer well-qualified people go into teaching, teaching suffers, schools suffer, government throws paperwork at the problem.

But it isn't either/or. You can improve pay and conditions in tandem. Personally I think the answer is to pay talented people very well and then (essentially) leave them to it (with the obvious checks and balances).

Re yr 11 (and yr 13 if you teach 6th form); I teach yr7-13 so you would think that I have gained time during the day for planning etc however anyone with gained time are used for year 6 transition days.

I still have year 7-10 and yr 12 to plan, teach, mark, write reports for and as I am involved in vocational subjects I have moderation visits to prepare for. I have not had any time for my family for the last 6 weeks and will have another couple of weekends and late nights until the end of term.

I do this despite being paid less (whilst being higher qualified) than DH

In every school I've worked in those of us with gained time do the lions share of the preparation for the following year so that the whole team benefits. (Think new schemes of work, homeworks, folders, class records, organising bulk copying etc).

My gained time list is equal or bigger than the equivalent time of teaching ks3. I don't mind but it's certainly not a case that I sit drinking tea.

Teachers are unpopular as they are always moaning (I was a teacher & saw it daily). It drags everyone down. f you don't like teaching, get out. Your life-your choices.

I've known several terrible teachers historically and my experience with those does seem to stick more in my mind than teachers I've had little conflict with.

Most teachers I know little about, wouldn't be able to point them out in the street even as I only meet them on parents evenings. I have no real opinion of them and that only changes when I have an issue with one of my children.

They do their job, and my children plod along nicely. They moan just like every other person does about their own job and theres always room for improvement no matter how good someone is.

I think sometimes people forget theyre not the only person finding life a bit difficult and can end up being quite vocal about their opinions and sometimes there's a whole group of people who want to be vocal about a common situation. That can be upsetting if your own situation is actually worse.

I've been teaching for 20 years and I'm leaving this summer. Nothing to do with pay, nothing to do with being unpopular. The thing that's pushed me to go is that since my school became an academy, and part of a massive MAT, it's been chaos. We converted Easter 2014. Since then, we have had no permanent Head, and a total of 7 temporary heads. There have been two rounds of redundancies, the curriculum has shrunk and in Sept 2017 we had our smallest yr 7 cohort ever. We're in special measures and the DFE warned the MAT that they needed to sort it out or the school would be taken from them. That was nearly a year ago and we're still in the same position. The MAT doesn't want us but would be liable for the debt their mismanagement has caused so they're hanging on and refusing to cooperate. And at the bottom of this pile of shit are 500 kids who only get one chance at education but neither the massive MAT nor the DfE give enough of a fuck to realise that. This is why I'm leaving. I bloody love teaching but the system is broken and I can no longer be a part of it.

I think that what people forget, or perhaps don't realise, is that if something were done about the stuff teachers complain about, this would benefit your children, not just teachers. Most teachers go into teaching because they want to teach. They enjoy working with young people and they love their subject. They really really want your children to do well (not least because their pay and job may depend on it, but mostly because that is the whole point of what they do). It is deeply frustrating to be prevented from helping the kids by the current nature of what teachers have to do. That's what's really driving teachers out of teaching, and it's what is also making them worse at being what teachers ought to be. But there's no explaining that to non-teachers, it seems, so things will continue to get worse.

EvilTwins we are on the parental and student side of the same situation.

We have seen some excellent young teachers come in but far far too many poor short term contract more senior teachers who through mismanagement blight everybody's lives. One temporary head after another promising the world but only succeeding in changing the colour of the school tie.

Chronic under-investment and mismanagement in education leads to a 'dont care' attitude from all sides. Good teachers leave and are replaced with a series of short term duds. Frustration from all sides leads to discipline breaking down not just amongst students but amongst staff and parents as well.

The school continues to spiral downwards. I cant see what the bottom is. I thought we were at rock bottom but no, we continue downwards.

We have just one more year to go. I just hope the school manages to hold it together for that year so that DD can get the A levels she wants, needs and deserves.

Most jobs are hard, some teachers aren't great, others are shit, it's a job they choose to do and get paid to do it.

I have respect for most professionals, but I don't hold them to a higher value than others.

They deserve the pittance of a pay rise.

Most of the people I trained with and a lot of friends I've worked with have left the teaching profession. Not in search of higher wages, but for a better work life balance.

Teachers work incredibly long hours during term time. I can regularly do 70-80 hours a week some weeks. The amount of hours is an issue, but the unrealistic expectations when at work is the major problem for me. The expectation to take a teenager with no ability in your subject and turn them into Einstein within a short space of time, accounting for your actions at every stage. Some of my students barely communicate, won't put pen to paper and don't listen to a word I say. They have no encouragement from home and don't give two hoots about school. This is apparently my fault, because in 3 hours a week I am supposed to inspire them to love my subject and want to learn! I am meant to undo 15 years of negativity in a short space of time and get them to pass exams in a subject they will probably never use again.

Those teacher training TV adverts are so incredibly realistic. Inspiring teachers stood in front of a class of 15 children, all listening and engaged in the lesson! Yeh right! More like 32 teenagers all shouting over a fight that started at break, trying to play on their phones and listen to music on headphones. Getting them to write the date and title is a huge effort never mind then learn something!

*Unrealistic

"RiverTam

Education, along with housing, is the most important determiner (is that a word??) in how well a child does in their life."
And their health

Parents should want teachers to complain about the state of the education system, in the hope that it might improve. Just as we should want nurses and other health care professionals to complain about what's going wrong in the NHS. Oddly, when the latter happens, people seem to believe them. Rather than assuming they are work-shy whingers.

No everyone what's social workers.Teachers have it fairly easy in terms of public opinion by comparison.And they get paid more with longer holidays.
It's not a race to the bottom mind...

OP, why do you take this as specifically about teachers? Does that mean you hate all public sector workers who are not nurses, police, firefighters, paramedics or teachers? Should we all feel your hate?

Or are we so insignificant you can't even believe in your existence?

I do not think teacher pay should be increased but I do think working conditions and expectations of our teachers are ridiculous and need sorting out.

ShatnersWig
I think the pay scales should remain the same but that should move closer in line with inflation rather than 1%.

In real terms despite moving up the pay scale my cost of living has gone up enough that I'm essentially no better off year to year.
If I was at the top of my band then my cost of living would go up year on year but with no progression up the spine I'd be really getting pay cuts year to year.

I was reading another thread about jobs that have perks. It seems that there are a variety of perks in some jobs/ professions, like flexible working, private medical insurance, holiday was mentioned, travel vouchers and cost reductions, jewellery, bonuses and plenty more probably since I looked st the thread.

This isn't about pay, although everyone would always like more pay than they have. It's about the demoralising, relentless grinding down that comes from ever increasing workload, observation, changing goalposts and so on and so on.

I find it difficult to see how any teacher could fit everything in working from 8-4.30. I used to be in school at 7.15 and usually left about 5.30/6.00ish. I hoped then to have only a couple of hours to work in the evening. If teachers were able to plan and deliver lessons, mark books and demonstrate progress, that would be fine.

The whole system is broken, as I have been saying for ages.

I'm a nurse on the top of my pay band and would love to earn even a starting teachers wage.Yes teaching is stressful but my job's not a walk in the park,add in unpaid extra hours,shifts and child care.
Perhaps it's our own fault as we don't strike and according to mumsnet and the media we are all uncaring bitches.Besides being so useless we evacuate hospitals,run to our local hospital to help in a crisis etc.
But mostly given my time over I would have gone into teaching like the rest of my family.

Maisy Millions of us can say we're no better off year by year though because we've had no increases in wages or salary in the private sector too, though. I don't begrudge teachers, the good ones work their socks off, but I know a deputy head of a primary school with 150 pupils who earns £47k and a head who earns £62k. I work the same hours as the deputy head, have more responsibility, have the same issues regarding safeguarding, am responsible for everything that happens where I work, including health and safety and earn £21k. I earned that last year too. And the year before.

Which is why I say I don't believe in teacher's salaries being increased but I do feel their lives could and should be made a lot easier. Nurses and firefighters pay is quite frankly disgusting for what we expect and put them through.

In a meeting of headteachers last week we all bemoaned the system. We shared our frustrations over the very broken and fractured system that we are trying so hard to make work. We are hugely concerned about our pupils; that they don't matter. We shared worries about the curriculum, the pressures on children in a test based system. We are sad at the lack of creativity and motivation to learn. We are incensed by the academy programme that ' cherry picks' from our groups of schools, leaving small rural schools to close. We know we can't make our budgets worksite funding cuts. We volunteered to leave our jobs to allow some of our small schools to reduce their costs by sharing a headteacher. Some of us don't want to carry on in an education system that we just don't believe in.
Not once in all of that did we talk about our pay or lack of a pay rise.

Yes, it really isn't about the pay. I've chosen to be a cover supervisor rather than a teacher. The pay is worse, but the stress is minimal.

srawberrygate since there is a documented retention crisis in teaching which is proven to be about stress and workload, I suggest your DH could earn considerably more if he would teach this wisdom about how to plan and mark lessons for a full timetable within the school day without taking anything home. It's exactly what education needs and he should share his secret forthwith.