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?

Newyearnewnameforme
But. Mine. Wasn’t.

It may not have meant to be, but it lacked clarity and any information that backed up your statement.

I am also happy with my pay, but the next stage of progression is not where I want to go.

As for those that are coming up behind me, it could take 18 years to progress through the 6 MPS grades due to how the LA and schools have set up the pay variation on the pay scale. All based on PRP.

If an advanced practitioner nurse came on here with a post saying, ‘AIBU to think nurses are quite well paid’ saying that nurse salaries are brilliant because they earned £50k, that would be very similar.

I think it’s disingenuous and goady.

32 percent is the current 5 tear average, however to get a better picture you should use the 10 year which is nearly 40 percent.

Your insistence about the teachers shifting into private schools not being recorded is what I think you imagine is a clever point, it isn't, because a)They employ a proportion of l number of teachers only a tiny percentage of those leaving can be moving to the private sector.
b) We are discussing state sector teaching pay and the issues in the state sector. You are moving the goal posts.

38k for classroom teachers being the average salary is skewed by those with TLRs. Am average class room teacher does not earn this.

I am reasonably sure that OP's issue with some of the posters on here (shan't say who) dates back to another thread where she posted under a different name and didn't like what she heard there either. I don't think OP feels solidarity with other teachers, especially those who have not fairly actively (some might say aggressively) sought out rapid promotion or have chosen to stay/ ended up having to remain as classroom teachers or in one school. OP may well be a headteacher in the making and good luck to her. But gaining promotion and improving one's pay is not as easy as she believes. It's an interesting discussion to be had.

I still find one of your opening post about how you aren't clever enough to work in the city depressing and demeaning to many highly intelligent education professionals who chose teaching rather than falling into it. But I know that I am an idealist.

Shall I just say again that my DH works in a private school and earns less than me??

Good post foxy. I'd be willing to bet most parents want the best teachers in the classroom, not promoted out of it. That is also a problem in teaching in the UK.

I do wonder about this quoted 45 per cent of teachers leaving the profession and how that equates to other things, such as....I'm sure lots of people leave other roles /professions all the time, as part of natural movement, ie people deciding their chosen career isn't for them, or they go into the private sector for various reasons. Is the quoted 45per cent number who leave teaching, any higher than people leaving other professions? And how do the statisticians capture that number?

Also at what point are they leaving? Early on in their career, or are a lot of that 45 percent people leaving when they get near to retirement? Would be interesting to know the true facts.

What's the average UK postgraduate salary? Teachers have to have a postgraduate qualification obviously. Any salary comparison should be with the postgraduate average. Unfortunately a quick Google only turns up a recruitment agency figure on this www.totaljobs.com/salary-checker/average-postgraduate-salary but it would put average teacher pay below the postgraduate average, but the OP's pay above the postgraduate average.

Stupid op. Goady and daft.

I actually don't think that you'd find such high attrition rates in other professions. The reason its reported so much is that teaching has a high rate of people leaving.

If you've managed to make it through the PGCE and then quit this is a bit surprising and no despite what dweebs like Gove claim the PGCE is not easy and has a high drop out rate.

tabby, I think people worry so much about people leaving teaching, though (as with doctors, police, social work and nursing) because of the impact on the population as a whole.

There is also the notion that teaching is a vocation and a job for life (which many actually sneer at, claiming we are only in to for the pension) and that attitude has had a seismic shift.

The numbers leaving teaching after only a few years are definitely on the rise.

WaterSheep thank you

The OP's posts mark her out as a pretty stereotypical ambitious careerist school manager (or would be SLT member) of the type in my post. Among the criteria being contempt for classroom teachers, inability to see and understand the complex picture and tunnel vision.

You speak a lot of sense foxy. Those ideas would have made an interesting thread.
I still find one of your opening post about how you aren't clever enough to work in the city depressing and demeaning to many highly intelligent education professionals who chose teaching rather than falling into it. But I know that I am an idealist
We need to keep some idealism. I hate the ideas that intelligent people don't teach.

Some of us really enjoy building relationships, forming a school community, developing our teaching and actually teaching. For leaders, the intelligence comes from assessing situations, making changes, evaluating changes and developing change over time to benefit students, rather than the increasingly popular approach of school-hopping every 2 years with a bag of initiatives that are about self-promotion rather than students. I tend to find there's a lot of intelligent people who take this approach (and amusingly quite a lot of less intelligent and less skilled classroom practitioners who are quick to get an office and lecture others about how their latest 7 pen marking policy or programme of optionally compulsory intervention that's pushed on classroom staff will ensure everyone gets 7-9 at GCSE).

www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/nfer-blogs/latest-teacher-retention-statistics-paint-a-bleak-picture-for-teacher-supply-in-england/

I loved the post about not being clever enough to work in the city.

Nothing special about any of the city workers I know, most of them couldn't hack the pace in teaching though.

It's just more contempt and downplaying what is needed to be a good teacher.

Not much intelligence is required to be a body in a room, and not much intelligence is required to make it up the greasy pole in some schools where ambitious types need to think of poorly designed initiatives, pass the work onto classroom teachers, pass the buck if unsuccessful and take the praise if there's a tiny positive ready to chase the next rung (even if it isn't sustained)

But to be a great teacher and walk the walk day in day out, to have the critical thinking to see through the bullshit from the emperors with no clothes, and focus on long term professional development for the benefit of students absolutely requires intelligence.

Any sensible person knows that the thread title and later (purposely later, but quickly revealed) OP's salary were designed to be inflammatory. It's all about the presentation of the information as any good propagandist knows.

I agree there are some senior teachers who spent little time in the classroom but who were quickly promoted (often in very poorly performing schools which had lots of cash thrown at them for new initiatives and posts) and who to be honest, have barely been teachers - they are more like managers from outside of the industry, who have little understanding of actual classroom teaching, nor respect for it. They can see those who remain in the classroom as lacking ambition or drive and conclude they lack ability or insight into education. Occasionally those people find themselves back in the classroom and find they discover a new respect for the teacher with a full teaching and marking load, but quickly remember that one of the benefits of management was avoiding that.

Some senior management will argue black is white as a way to justify new initiatives, in the way Op has over and over again said she isn't being goady - even when the staff body tell senior management their new idea is daft or won't work, the senior management refuse to listen even though 100 voices tell them the same - perhaps in their hearts they know really (most likely) but they just can't and won't back down. A tiny minority genuinely believe they are right and everyone else is totally wrong. Some love a bit of a fight and to impose a new idea - who knows which category Op is in - is she a team player working with the staff for the good of the children, or is she looking for ways to get on in her career, regardless of impact on staff and children?

@LolaSmiles @malylis i know it’s Ireland but teachers are highly regarded and you need a high level of points to do a primary school teaching course.
You must:
Pass the following Leaving cert subjects (exams at age 18, so a level equivalent in timescale), Maths, English, Irish (Irish must be higher level) and a foreign language, and then make up the extra points with at least another 2 subjects. When I went to university the maximum attained points was 600, primary school teaching was 495!!

To get into

I retired from teaching a couple of years ago. I was on £40k after 40 years, as a classroom teacher on UPS3 with SEN allowance.
I was reasonably happy with that, but also well aware that my friends with similar education levels were earning more.

The job suited me, I was in a school that was pleasant and rewarding to work in, and as I love to travel, and have family in far flung places, yes the holidays (their predictability for planning, as much as anything) factored in my staying in the job.

But I was lucky that getting on to UPS was easy back when it came in. Young teachers have to jump through hoops to even get their annual increment, never mind UPS. And they don't even get to assume they'll keep it.

But I was lucky that getting on to UPS was easy back when it came in. Young teachers have to jump through hoops to even get their annual increment, never mind UPS. And they don't even get to assume they'll keep it.
Very true, when it first came in I had to fill in a long form to get on to the first level but the other two were 'waved through' by the Head because she knew what I was worth. I know it is not like this now as pay increases have to be funded from the already stretched school budgets. For the same reason NQTs are preferred to experienced teachers as they are cheaper and TAs are used to cover classes much more than they should.

I was happy in my Classroom Teacher role, happy in the school where I had worked for a long time and happy with my salary living in the North. I had no urgent desire to leave this job until the new management took over and, after half a term, the bullying started. I retired at 60 five years ago and am so happy to be out of it although I won't get my State Pension until next year.

Lipperfromchipper
The system in Ireland sounds great from what I've heard. Some people I trained and worked with wanted to go back home to teach but apparently it was really hard to get jobs in their area of Ireland. We were shocked and a little jealous of their recounts.

@LolaSmiles yes jobs are harder to come by, the recruitment process is very different. And also nobody leaves a permanent job unless they have to as such. Irish teachers can take up to 10 years of a career break! (5 max at a time!) and still come back to their permanent post.
We get up to 5 days off for personal reasons (called EPV days),
We also get a paid week off when we get married etc so we are not made to get married outside of term time as such.
We can also take off 1 day a year for family graduations.
It’s little perks like these that keep the morale up as such!

To be fair, when I did a graduate diploma, my school let me have a Friday afternoon off for travel time to Scotland and then graduation day paid as well. Mind, the flight was delayed back from Edinburgh so I got home gone 1 and had a full teaching day the next day! 😴

32 percent is the current 5 tear average, however to get a better picture you should use the 10 year which is nearly 40 percent.
I actually don't think that you'd find such high attrition rates in other professions.

You also have to look at the figures for 'returning' teachers though:

"There were 44,600 FTE qualified new entrants to teaching in state funded schools in 2018." This includes:
 23,500 newly qualified teachers
 4,600 teachers new to the state-funded sector
 16,400 who are returning to teaching in state funded schools after a break.

Your insistence about the teachers shifting into private schools not being recorded is what I think you imagine is a clever point, it isn't

I mentioned private schools, maternity leave/career break, supply teaching...

30% of 'returners' in 2016 were under the age of 35.

Ah, this becomes like those nursing figures!