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?

There are many teachers who prefer to do what they went into the profession to do, which is to be in the classroom and teach children. That doesn’t mean that they are not ambitious or talented or capable, just that the reason they went into teaching isn’t valued as much as climbing the pole, greasy or otherwise and there are opposing viewpoints. One is that staying and doing the job you trained for equates to a lack of ambition or ability. The other is that senior leaders have no idea what teaching is like, are autocratic and remove themselves from actually working with children as much as possible.

If you equate salary with success, then a classroom teacher might not be deemed successful. If you believe success is feeling valued and valuable in your job, then salary may be less important.

I agree that the issue is more the workload, stress and unrealistic expectation of teaching and teachers. For some, a salary of £47,000 might be worth that, for others it isn’t. Personally, I don’t think the remuneration reflects the level of responsibility and workload, particularly for teachers who choose to stay in the classroom.

Out of interest, do university lecturers follow the same pay and structure as school teachers?

Obviously you don't need to answer this but do you have children (yet) OP?

Your idea that all teachers should aim NOT to be classroom teachers or they are somehow lacking is ridiculous. And shows a certain mindset that is usually indicative, in my experience, of someone who couldn't do that job too well. SMT is full of such attitudes!

Yes I completely agreee with this.

Well said @Foxyloxy1plus1

sansa pay rises are no longer ‘relatively automatic’ I know of schools where only a handful of teachers have progressed up the pay scale in the past 5 years. In some schools it is very difficult to progress.

jumpy no. Higher ed is totally different

foxy, I definitely agree with your post You are an excellent classroom teacher is often a euphemism or at best a backhanded compliment for 'we don't want you and your ideas on our SLT'.

This is harmful to the idea that classroom teaching is skilled and precious. if everyone took up responsibilities we'd be in even more of a pickle.

Piggy, I was talking about salaries, and how teaching salaries compared.

Stop being so fucking bossy!

Foxy, that’s fine if that is what they want. IME it isn’t, a lot of the time. By the way, plenty of people have promotions and still teach. 40k of my salary is given to me for teaching.

@Foxyloxy1plus1 has said it beautifully.

I do piggy yes

Newyearnewnameforme I sort of agree but then most of the teachers I know well enough to know their salaries are no longer classroom teachers. Plenty are on £100k plus.

It comes back to same logic that the basic salary for a newly qualified person is not going to match that of a person with twenty years experience and postgraduate qualifications who has moved around for the best opportunities.
I wouldn’t expect an NQT to be earning more than a newly qualified nurse or doctor. Like other jobs there are opportunities, if you are good enough and you take them. There are wider opportunities in education than in some other jobs.

@Newyearnewnameforme

Op you sound very fortunate to have found a school where your pay appears to be fair.

My relative has only been teaching for a few years granted (maybe 3) but he moved from his first school as he was ‘promoted to’ acting HoD where he was being paid nothing extra - doing it for the experience, to a school that had just restructured and unless you were a core HoD, the going rate was a TLR 2a.

He’s since continued to look for better progression, but too many of the jobs he would have to move too far for. He has a young family and a Full time working wife who need him here. He’s not a shortage or core subject, so Jobs in his subject area are fewer and far between.

Your personal rise up the teaching scale and your appropriate TLR are not representative of what’s going on around the U.K. and therefore you are Unreasonable.

FWIW, I do think that people are put off promotions by this sort of attitude, which is that people who love the teaching and children stay in the classroom, while others climb the greasy pole. I think this is particularly problematic from a feminist perspective.

There are fewer opportunities for promotion in Primary Schools as there are fewer (if any) HODs so do you suggest Primary teachers retrain for Secondary? Besides which I wanted to stay in the classroom because I liked actually teaching the children not attending meetings and doing even more paperwork. I also had enough going on in my private life and wanted to do other things than extra work aka 'having a life' or 'working to live rather than living to work' - not laziness just a healthy work/life balance. Not everyone goes into teaching with an ambition to get to the top, I'd say most don't.

I don't think anyone here is actually complaining about their salary, as you say, they have a choice but you are completely wrong and very misleading to suggest that £47k is a normal teacher salary.

I think teacher are reasonably, but not amazingly well paid for what they do.

Totally agree with you curious
The best teachers I know love the teaching and learning part of their jobs but hate all the other pointless crap that they have to do. The higher up the management ladder you climb, the less teaching and more pointless crap you have to do.

stop being so fucking bossy. Charmed.

It seems not very easy to have sensible conversation with you.

I am sure you are great at what you do but I wonder how sympathetic your attitudes are to struggling staff.

How old are you @Newyearnewnameforme and how many years have you been teaching?

I was making £45k at 25 but not in teaching.

Happy New Year fellow teachers!

What hasn’t been mentioned on this thread is the Conservative manifesto promise to raise the NQT salary from its current level of £24k to £30k, which will presumably mean a massive shake-up of the pay scales if we don’t want new teachers being paid more than experienced ones.

So soon we’ll all be diving into piles of money like Scrooge McDuck if the Tories are to be trusted...

This thread really isn't going to last much longer.
Which I still maintain was the op's intention all along. For some peculiar reason.

It’s not just the pay. It’s the fact that they don’t get paid for holidays when they have to do planning/marking/prep. The long hours (parents see nothing of this and assume they work 9-3). Demanding unreasonable parents, conflicting priorities, frazzled bosses, ridiculous ofsted demands of box ticking whilst ignoring the reality of a cohort of little humans. Unachievable targets. No bloody money for paper and pencils. Ever changing government requirements.

I’m not a teacher and I think they deserve every bloody penny, and more.

No, Piggy, I’m sorry, it’s too much. I’ve explained to you why I’ve put it here, either accept that or stop derailing the thread. I do not just want to talk to teachers about this, hence why I put it here. I don’t want to use the term thread police but actually it’s quite apt.

I definitely wasn’t making 45k at 25! I am in my 30s; I’ll put it that way

Taking under consideration the workload, no, they are not. I quit teaching a couple of years ago at 32000 which was decent, but not considering hours spent after work to do more work, and the expectations to do even more work. Some teachers work 60/70 hours a week for that pay, so not sure it's such a great deal.

cherry where are these wider opportunities? Do you mean out of the classroom? Because that usually involves swallowing pay cuts.

It’s fine. It is prob equivalent to a lots of public salaries. I earn about £44k as a band 7 health proffesional with post grad qualification and lots of expience and specialist training . Not amazing but pays the bills. Had I stayed doing the same job I did when I qualified I would be on a fair bit less. It’s prob equivalent to a police seargents pay. Or a senior manager in the civil service.