To think teachers are quite well paid?

[Newyearnewnameforme]

Not intended goadily but my salary is more than most of my graduate friends.

Obviously, it isn’t Rockefeller standards but AIBU to think it’s actually OK?

An executive head teacher in London earns 250k. Their role is valuable and they should be paid accordingly.

These people are business executives. Not sure why they are still called Headteachers in some schools. They have very little to do with classroom teachers or the children.

@malylis I can absolutely tell you that Irish teachers start at 38k and work 5hrs 40 mins a day (40mins for breaks...which we take!!) and the school is closed by 4. Everyone is gone by 3.30/4 even the head teacher!! And 95% of the time we don’t take work home.

Irish teachers... so not UK teachers then?

Not an accurate comment to make then when discussing UK

You woke up this morning and decided to post this? You're quite the piece of work aren't you, OP.
Hiding this now.

Oh and when you teach the first two infant classes (age 4+) they leave an hour earlier at 1.40 this gives the teacher an extra hour every day to sort resources etc.

Parttimers - yes but don’t you have to pay like a million pounds a year in rent ? I met a lot of Irish teachers in Australia who had no plans to return

@malylis my point being the U.K. system is a joke and most of the demands on the teachers are unnecessary...our children are perfectly educated Despite the shorter day and different approach. Maybe it’s the fact that our teachers are allowed to be teachers!!

To add to the PGCE requirements dropping, the skills tests for numeracy and literacy have been scrapped as of this year. There are arguments for/against them, but it still means there are less hoops for aspiring teachers to jump through.

Last year the requirement to have school experience was quietly dropped.

The uni where I did my PGCE had their highest drop-out rate ever last year- possibly because they are being encouraged to recruit unsuitable students.

TBF the 45k in 5 years isn't impossible- I know of people who have made HoD in Science in that time. Usually they get bumped up to M6, and obviously given a TLR- I think this just highlights the shortage of experienced teachers in some professions in some areas.

@Inliverpool1 rents are high yes but there’s no council tax...no water rates to pay. Child benefits is 140 per child per month. Mortgages are more affordable. I’ll put it to you this way...I’m mid thirties and we have paid off our mortgage.

Sorry instead of professions, that should say subject areas!

Last year the requirement to have school experience was quietly dropped

That is so bloody short sighted!

They are clearly more concerned about trying to get the recruitment stats up than making sure people even make it through the training!

Well I was a deputy head (primary) with an 80% teaching timetable and earning less than that. Some primary HTs at the lower end of the scale earn not much more than that so I’m not sure how that tallies with your idea that moving on up gets you earning far more. 🤷🏼‍♀️

The amount of people on here who aren’t teachers who think they have even a notion of the idea of what working in a school is like

Apologies, I've started the new year with my first ever deleted comment. Not sure why. I continue to be genuinely surprised that anyone would wake up n New Years Day and want to discuss teachers pay. ( and that is as a HT myself)

I’m in two minds about dropping the requirement for school experience because I didn’t have any. Well, I had one day in a secondary school that I cobbled together before the interview.

The PGCE co-ordinator held the interviews in a school and we had to sit in a lesson for an hour and talk to some kids as part of it. They said that this led to people dropping out before the interview because they didn’t want to go to a school(!), and they could also filter out the people who had no ability to talk to kids.

I don’t know if when PGCE co-ordinators were told to drop the experience requirement whether they then introduced something like this? There did seem to be an increasingly ridiculous expectation that you’d worked for a year as a TA or something before starting.

Oh and it wasn’t the pay that made me want to leave but rather the workload. Being a teaching DT meant having to cope with all the demands of teaching my class alongside the ridiculous amount of paperwork and expectations of being a DH. Most grit their teeth for 5-10yrs to grab a headship. Personally, I’d lost the passion for a job I once loved and happened to be bloody good at.

Primary school teachers and Sen secondary teachers do not earn that amount outside London unless they move into senior leadership roles. The top level without that is just below 40,000. In Sen you get an extra point but it's not much.

If I'm honest, I think it's well paid to a point. Many other professions such as lecturing or architecture doesn't earn as much as teachers certainly in the first 10 years.

However the conditions and workload are not always worth the money. I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth on only 2 days simply because I love the role.

I teach, I don’t plead poverty but also I don’t feel that it’s particularly well paid. Today I am preparing for just the first few weeks, resources, planning, ensuring every need to catered for with the continuous provision activities, making sure the send children/pupil premium and forces children are clearly marked on my planning. It’s not a case of just using the previous years planning as cohorts are forever changing. I also need to ensure the school website and social media is up to date and plan and resource interventions, ensuring that all entry data and exit data is clear.
This isn’t a moan, not at all, I enjoy my job and to an extent I had an idea of what would come with it. But, it’s intense, it takes over every moment of your life. You care for those children and you think about them constantly, I don’t feel as if I ever switch off. I may be told I’m not doing it properly but it’s the only way I feel I can do it. I’ve been teaching 10 years now and it’s got so much harder, not easier. So yeah, the pay is okay but all the other bits I do within my job I could probably do as standalone jobs and get paid the same!

Anyone earning above about 36k is managed out as being too expensive in several of the schools I've been to.

Yes increasingly a thing and also as so many leave in the first 5 years. Endless supply of hopeful nqts. Teaching is a mess.

@fedup21I agree it's all very short sighted.

I did my PGCE last year. IMO, the uni overrecruited in sciences at least. There were definitely some people on the course at the start who never stood a chance of finishing it (this sounds harsh, but I am talking people fresh out of uni with minimal presentation skills and in some cases interpersonal skills). Because they'd over-recruited, they were also placing people in schools with insane commutes, which IMO was a contributory factor in some people dropping out.

My uni tutor did sort of acknowledge this towards the end of the year and admitted their PGCE drop out rate had been very high.

Interestingly, I'm friends with someone who graduated from the same PGCE a year ahead of me- their drop out rate during the PGCE wasn't as high, but she said about 20% of the people from her course who started their NQT year left their jobs before the end of the year.

The problem is, recruitment targets can't just be set at replacement level- they also want to combat the general shortage of science teachers in the area. I know last year by around May, there were people applying to jobs where they were the only one or one of two at interview.

Also, as others have said, your pay is no longer portable. In certain areas there is no scope to move ‘up’. People stay where they are. No chance of TLR as funds won’t allow but you end up saying yes to everything just to prove you are worthy of moving up the pay scale!

@PartTimers it is pretty unusual to have paid off your mortgage in Ireland by mid-thirties, my friends in Ireland who are teaching are struggling to get a first time mortgage (for several economic reasons, not just due to salary though).
Everything you say about Irish teaching is true as far as I'm aware though. It seems much better in terms of work life balance. My friends found training hard but are much happier than any teachers I know here.

@noblegiraffe The year before I applied, the expectation (according to UCAS) was two weeks of experience in a UK state school. You could be given an offer conditional on you completing more school experience between the offer and September.

I do agree that there were problems with this. It can be difficult to get experience in schools, especially secondary, and it's also more difficult for career changers who might have to use annual leave to do this.

However, during the 3 PGCE interviews I went to, we had no contact with actual children and certainly didn't go into an actual school. And I do think there were a few people on the course at the beginning, who if they'd had to do their "mini-teach" with actual children would never have got on the course.

Schools Direct and SCITT routes I think are more likely to interview at an actual school.

Anecdotally, I think there is a lot of pressure on unis to recruit, but I think it's counterproductive. I think if my uni had recruited say 10% less people at the start of the year, but given everyone they did recruit proper support and reasonable placements, then the drop out rate would have actually been lower.

My friend (partner in big law firm, has worked bloody hard and I have no issues with her salary or lifestyle) just wrote in her annual Christmas card that she was owed sabbatical leave and so took 6 months off travelling. Rewards like that in teaching would go a long way. Obviously she earns enough to take this unpaid, I am guessing!

@IrishMamaMia I know it’s not the done thing but I know plenty of ppl my age who have built and bought house very cheaply and then paid off mortgages early. My dh is well paid too so obvs I didn’t do it on my own. But I work with single teachers who have bought their own home and don’t struggle to live as such. I know two secondary school teachers who own a 350k home and have 3 children. Seems teachers here can ACTUALLY live!! Also helped by the fact that my generation got free university education...so no (or very little) university loans!!