AIBU teachers deserve a massive pay rise!

[GinDrinker00]

Week two into home schooling and I already want to open the gin before midday!
Eldest DC has autism and ADHD and is a struggle to motivate on a normal school day let alone at home. Lots of refusing to do work to the point the head is now ringing every week to help advise.
How do teachers and TAs cope? You all deserve a MASSIVE pay rise!

Sits back and waits for the inevitable teachers bashing to follow.

Thank you. Xxxx

(Now lets see how long it takes for the "but they get all the holidays" brigade to show up here).

I have always felt teachers are appallingly paid and treated in this country. We harp on about how great the nhs is- and it is- but a free education system is fantastic too. If only more of the British public could see this and not just treat it as childcare.

They should but they won't.
I think many would be happy if the government supplied the essential equipment to use for teaching.
It shocks me on MN how UK teachers reach into their own pocket for essential white board markers, glue and pencils. What profession can be achieved without tools. I take my hat off too, DD's teacher is compiling work to help us at home.

There won’t be any money.

They will at least have jobs though, so there’s that. Unemployment is about to reach scary levels.

Absolutely right!
Particularly TA's as their pay is terrible!
Just think, we're home schooling with planning set by the teacher, no pressure from the government on data and statistics, no parents complaining and without 20 other children with different needs and abilities!!!
And they are continuing to work, looking after key workers children, putting their own health at risk during their holidays!
I think they deserve a massive pay rise and clap too!
I really hope people show a lot more consideration and appreciation when schools return to normal!

I think TA’s should but teachers earn a wage that is appropriate for the job I feel.

no pressure from the government on data and statistics

Actually I think the parents should be performance managed and DC's progress closely monitored.

I don't disagree that teachers might not be paid enough, but I dont think they are doing any more right now that anyone else working is? Our school has sent nothing home so I am teaching, gathering resources and lesson planning myself, and working 12hr days on top of that. Our school has a skeleton staff working (their words) to provide childcare for key workers whilst all other teachers are home with their families. They are not providing lessons or lesson planning for their students whilst at home.

I, and my many colleagues on the other hand are working more than full time, with an increased workload AND get a paycut to boot on top of lesson planning (without the benefit of the years of training and experience) and teaching.

Teachers are professionals and should be more highly valued and potentially paid, but they are not saints, better than other professionals right now.

My kids school have been teaching online via video, sent out multiple work books, weekly phone calls to support parents, daily emails from their class teacher and head teacher and SENCO with resources.
Some schools might be lacking but in general most schools and staff have stepped up and for that they deserve it.

Mine have done fuck all the last 2 weeks and DC are at private. They sent some Twinkl sheets home the day they closed and I’ve heard bugger all from them since. Having paid £1k for that week and still expected to pay full fees next term. I’ll be taking my key worker place next term although I don’t need to as I’m WFH.

Pretty much all of my local friends are teachers and none of them are working at the moment. The only teacher I know still working is a close relative who teaches at a private school.

No, because I expect many other employees will be getting pay cuts

There is a massive global recession / depression starting
The UK economy has been hammered too

and we will all be paying for this disaster for years

teachers earn a wage that is appropriate for the job I feel your average teacher ie. not a head of department etc...have endless amounts of work outside of their working day, dealing with difficult parents and government stats and markers-
I know admin jobs that pay better!

It's no surprise people like the OP are struggling to cope because they are not trained to TEACH in the same way teachers are.

Most people deserve a "massive payrise", teachers included. But in the next year or two even having a job will be something to cling on to. Teachers, like nurses, have the guarantee of job security.

@edwinbear, are you seriously planning to send your children into school even though the safest place for them is at home, and you will be there? Just to prove a point to your school? FFS. The rules are there for your safety as well as that of others.

I wish you hadn’t started this thread. The teacher bashers will be out in force, achieving the opposite of what you intended.
Thanks though. 😊
I would much rather teach my class of 30 all day every day than teach my two just in the morning. The kids at school are angels for me because I’m shit hot at my job, but my own two can be hard work because they’re my kids.
I’m working as hard as I can from home, setting and marking work by email and going in to cover keyworker children. However, it’s not teaching. It’s giving them stuff to do. And before anyone says ‘why don’t you just do online video lessons?’ We can’t. I teach many children who aren’t well off. They have a parent’s smartphone to access the work - that’s it. Even if they do have a laptop, their parents need it to work from home.

What usually happens on threads like this is that someone (OP) says teachers are amazing. A few people agree. Then someone comes along saying yeah, but they're not better than anyone else. Or they're not the most amazing in the whole wild world. Then the rest of the thread is spent pointing out all the other jobs that are as good or more amazing than teachers. Then someone says they're sick of teachers saying they're amazing and better than everyone else. And everyone piles in.

I'm a teacher. Happy with my salary and would prefer NHS /carers to get a pay rise.

What I do think this crisis has highlighted is what really matters in education. Work scrutiny, constant book looks, targets, re writing the curriculum, focused groups, intervention classes, more revision groups and repeat! Not important.
Stable, supportive, educational community is important.

As a teacher, thank you but rather than giving me a pay rise, I’d rather the government properly funded my school.

As a teacher I absolutely don’t think we should get a big pay rise. Many people have/will lost jobs. We won’t. That puts us in the fortunate category.

I think ALL the ‘X should get a pay rise when this is over’ threads are naive and not particularly appropriate right now.

The speed at which people are being laid off in the private sector is frightening and the government prop ups will not go on for ever. We’ll be looking at terrible unemployment stats in a few months. I expect public sector cuts will follow soon enough.

I'm not going into how hard the staff in my school are working.
Huge numbers of people, in all areas, are working their arses off and doing their best in unprecedented circumstances.
What I will say, to everyone who thinks that we have job security, five members of staff in my school are being made redundant at the end of the academic year and 12 of us with TLR's are losing our posts due to the chronic underfunding of schools.
Despite that, we are still doing the very best we can for our pupils.

DS's teachers are in the main all working and teaching online lessons. DH is also teaching and planning science lessons. However, DS's school's twitter feed is showing the results of a competition between the PE teachers as to who can run the fastest and DH keeps receiving emails from departments such as food tech with cake baking competitions. So it's probably safe to say that not all teachers have the same work load at this time.

I think this scene in The West Wing sums up how I think teachers should be paid!

Without good teachers, you don't get the next generation of scientists, doctors, explorers, writers, journalists and so on and on and on it goes. They provide the foundation on which every thing else is learned. Exceptional teachers are like gold dust (Just thinking of that teacher in Educating Yorkshire that helped Musharaf to overcome his stammer)
If you know one, or are one, when this is all over, appreciate them more than you ever have in the past!