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?

@JinglingHellsBells he is at home, doing whatever he wants....Merchant Navy.

We don’t have a high staff turnover (only because of promotion/moving within the trust).

And many of the ones running in are fairly young with no children. They just happen to work in departments where they have lots of extra support and can get away with it. HoD, seconds and thirds, and regional Director’s. Much of the responsibility is taken away. Now if they were teaching Geography for instance - wouldn’t get away with it as almost no extra support.

Also lots of our staff are married to other teachers? I thought that was the norm.

Lots of the teachers had TLRs. It would be unusual for a teacher who had taught for a couple of years to be on less than £40k.

And how did the school afford this?

As for the long hours, it’s not always true. There are teachers in at 6.30am everyday

Our school wouldn’t even be OPEN and 6.30!!! Doesn’t open until 8!!

And yet ours never closes Lipper! Well - not strictly true as there are two weeks in Summer and two weeks at Christmas but apart from that it is always open.

And by 8am some clubs are already meeting.

We don’t have a high staff turnover (only because of promotion/moving within the trust).

Not physically possible on the timescales you mention. If staff are happy in their promoted roles and do them well and are paid so amazingly high as you state, why are there so many openings for all of your staff to progress every year or so, if most are not leaving and going elsewhere to enable those job openings? I’m sorry but you don’t fool us.

@Lipperfromchipper
Site staff are in from 5.45am-6am (shifts). Kitchen staff start from 6.30am if they are full time. Students can have breakfast from 8am.
I know the kitchen start getting food deliveries at 7am.

@Ihatesundays we have no kitchen or kitchen staff, no morning clubs either.

@ChloeDecker it’s a trust that’s expanding rapidly, including new schools. Many of the schools have gone from struggling for numbers to being full to capacity (much of this is due to a surge in birth numbers in late 2000s locally).
I have an ex colleague in local further Ed who are waiting for those numbers to hit in next 6-10 years.

Some of the schools we’ve taken on have very different staff structures to us. You do lose staff when you take over a school.

The good pay doesn’t include support staff though. They have massive turnover because they pay less than everyone else locally.

Being promoted so young isn’t necessarily a sign of a school recruiting the cheapest person. I know exactly why I got the job I did. Everyone else in my department was older, more experienced and already had either an SLT or TLR post. Basically, it was a very experienced department and nobody else wanted the job and there was no option to recruit someone externally as the school was phasing out the small one-person A Level subject that I’d been in charge of since my NQT year so we had enough staff to cover the full timetable. The situation when they recruited my replacement was very similar with only one person really there to do the job and not enough timetable reduction to justify bringing in someone external. I personally found the HOD aspects of the job far easier to get the hang of quickly than the plate-spinning of 30 kids in a room at once.
It wasn’t hard and the last HOD was there to help if needed. I suppose if at that stage in your career you’re managing a department of five other people who are all less experienced than you with a whole load of NQT paperwork to potentially manage it’s different to a department with 2 AHTs, a very experienced TLR holder and 2 very experienced part timers.
I wasn’t expecting a promotion at that stage. I didn’t apply for the role and was then called in and asked if I’d do it as they were stuck. I said I’d try it for a year but wanted to be able to step back to classroom teacher without a fuss if it didn’t work out. It was far less stressful than I expected and not wildly harder than running a one-person subject. We still have an old fashioned staff room with allocated desks with a lot of HODs in and the other HODs are a real support network when you’re new to the role. It’s unusual for people to get promoted so quickly at our school because there’s such low turnover but occasionally timing means that someone does and it’s generally been fine.

I think there is a lot of misunderstandings about what life is like for people not in teaching and the pressures ( impression being everyone else works 9-5)
Now, my DCs and their friends who are earning good salaries are also working 12 hr days and the ones in banking often work from 8am - 10pm. It really does depend on your industry and employer though. Our youngest employee is 26 years old - he gets about £75k a year, he has to work hard and the client projects do need to be finished on time - so sometimes there's lots of overtime and travel is required but he is encouraged to take time off in lieu - working 14 hr days is not good for their health - I know, dh is in a bit of a state if he has worked quite a few of these in a row at the end of a project and any company that encourages this type of working is being incredibly irresponsible. We treat our staff well - they are talented and hard working and we are not their only employment option - we know plenty of employers would snap them up in a heartbeat.

Ok, so you have a unique new MAT then which should have been clear in your long post about how good your staff have it, Ihatesundays, so it’s disingenuous to not admit that this will not be able to continue forever, once the posts are filled (and if it’s a great MAT to work for, the staff should stay in those posts for a sustained amount of time and if they are not, working in HR, you should want to find out why.)

And you need to seriously stop being so judgemental and nosey about staff personal lives-you CANNOT know what is going on in their lives to the level you claim you do.

You do lose staff when you take over a school.

Who told you that? If the management of the takeover is done well, you shouldn’t.

And you need to seriously stop being so judgemental and nosey about staff personal lives-you CANNOT know what is going on in their lives to the level you claim you do

Yes I thought exactly the same! I hope the office staff where I teach are not as...umm, involved!

@TheWaiting I wasn't the recruiting manager, I was working for them. If someone had a relevant post grad they would be considered (same as any other career changer) but if not they would be considered for an entry level admin post, these jobs are often filled with graduates who didn't get on to graduate schemes but who will expect to move up within a couple of years having gained industry experience etc. The jobs they would progress to are still paying less than many of the teacher salaries I have seen discussed here.

It’s not judgemental and nosey to know some staff work fewer hours than others.
Some work a huge amount of hours and some don’t. I sit in the staff meetings and these things are noted.

Also lots of support staff work massive hours, at home too, and don’t have the pleasure of a teaching salary.

It is judgemental and nosey because you do not know what people do at home! And it is none of your business.

As for you being in staff meetings and 'these things being noted'...I call bullshit, sorry.

Whatever. Does your school not notice when staff come and go (ours swipe in and out).
If they were support staff they would be disciplined by the way. So they do take notice of the swipes.

Bored now. Forgot everyone’s experience on MN can’t be slightly different to anyone else’s.
My friend works in a secondary down the road. It’s quite different there - is that allowed?

We do not swipe in and out no!

@spanieleyes and @marchborn

I think one of the biggest missing things is: 13. there is a big teacher shortage and many leave within 5-6 years.

More relevant than 10 and 12 because as PP have said - if people leave and realise they had it better as a teacher - why not re-join? Who care if other jobs have just as long hours etc? Market decides and I’m guessing the cost-benefit of teaching compared to other options (Whether that is retiring, another industry, sahp, career break) is Unfavourable and causing the shortage. The interesting thing is what will motivate talented people to choose and stay in teaching.

Any school that measures teacher working hours by how long they are on site and bring this up in staff meetings is a shitty school to work for.

Yep.
And Ofsted should be noting this as part of the new focus on wellbeing.

Presenteeism in teaching is a problem.

Absolutely agree. Not sure it actually happened though...

I’ve done teachers pay for years (in the North). Apart from the NQT most of the teaching staff were on much higher scales. Lots of the teachers had TLRs. It would be unusual for a teacher who had taught for a couple of years to be on less than £40k.

Things must be very different in secondary and in the north then as this is widely different from my experiences in primaries in the south!

Things have changed massively since I started teaching (22 years) when many staff were aged 40+ and on good money yet NQTs were few and far between. I’m only just on £40k now.