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!

I don’t necessarily agree teachers deserve a massive payrise, anymore than anyone else. However, the resources they need should be properly supplied so they don’t have to buy things for their class and the unnecessary paperwork admin should be removed

As a teacher I have to disagree. Teachers' pay is good I think, with a good pay scale and promotion opportunities. The holidays are brilliant, I know lots of teachers work evenings, weekends and some part of the holidays, myself included, but it's still 13 weeks off. Currently on mat leave so not experiencing what things are like at the moment but some of my friends are doing loads to support the kids remotely, and some not so much. Seems to depend on the school.

For the parents complaining about lack of work, please bear in mind, initial packs were put together with about 48 hours notice while continuing to teach (and mark in the evenings etc.) The last 2 weeks will have been a combination (for many) of trying to work out a plan for the new way of doing things, learning how to use the technology, responding to students and help them use the technology and providing care for key workers' children (which involves planning engaging activities for suitable for 3 - 11 year olds that don't require them to be less than 2m from each other). Those teachers are also likely to be working at some point during the Easter holiday- in school to provide care and at home to make sure everything is up and running for 'next term'. The planning required for delivering lessons remotely, especially to enable children to access it with limited technology, is a lot more complicated than planning for a face to face lesson. And it is new to us. And of course many of us are trying to balance this with caring for our own children / making sure our parents have shopping etc.

I don't mean this is a reason for higher wages.... just please don't berate teachers too much for not providing as many resources as you would like over the last 2 weeks. Please give us chance to get our heads round this new way of working. It's a steep learning curve, we are getting there!

I'm a SEN TA. Supporting my SEN child and also helping out at times and teaching the whole class is completely different to supporting and home schooling my own DC - one of whom is the same year group as I often teach.

When at school I'm Mrs Queenie. At home I'm mum. That's the difference. I have the skills to teach, but I'm mum at home.

My DC are at two different schools, two very different levels of work, one has been set lots and massively supported, the other "look at these websites", my own school, we worked triple hours to ensure our children went home with supported packs, thankfully I made an extra pack for my child.

Yes TA's should be paid more, we earn 25% of what teachers earn, but we also don't have the same responsibility as teachers. My class teacher is amazing and has the TA and my back, and supports and appreciates us. Now is the time to ensure every child is supported and working to some level. But...... When we do eventually return to school, no child will be left behind, we will recap all of the curriculum that is necessary, all childrens learning is the paramount of importance to all teaching staff.

How much do teachers earn? Do they get paid all year or is it term time only?

All school staff are paid for 38 weeks a year, plus holiday, ie Bank Holidays and statutory holidays, my county it works out at five weeks (including Bank holidays of ten days/two weeks), that figure of 43 weeks is then divided over 52 weeks, so we are paid all year, but at a lower rate, and we're only being paid for 43 of 52 weeks, or we are unpaid for 9 weeks of the year. I hope that makes sense.

My mum, former headteacher, made the point that it’s hard for parents to “teach” because we are parents first and foremost, and not trained to teach groups of children. She could never teach me anything when I was younger because I viewed her as my mum - but she was an amazing teacher. She reminded me my job right now is not to teach, it’s just to keep up skills as much as possible.

Sure teacher and TA’s might deserve a pay rise - but actually social care worked out there delivering personal care with little PPE or support, or moving into care homes for a month at a time to reduce the spread, earning very little money, probably deserve it just as much (if not more).

After school club leaders too

I think you'll find, OP, that most social-type jobs deserve a pay rise. Allow me to demonstrate.

• Shop assistants? Yep!
• Post(wo)men? Yep!
• Doctors (particularly the junior ones!)? Yep!
• Teachers? Yep!
• Nurses? Yep!
• Bin collectors? Yep!
• Bus drivers? Yep!

I've almost definitely missed out a few - apologies to those professions!!

Hats off to our key workers carrying the torches in the existential darkness! 🎩

Yes they should, so should NHS staff, police officers, fire brigade, prison and probation staff, social workers, care workers etc. They won't because this country doesn't value public services, a clap on a Thursday is meaningless.

To be honest anyone in a key job should get a pay rise but none will. The reason being when this is over they will (probably) have jobs but a lot of other people wont.
It's about the only benefit to being a key worker.

Probably : along with many other professionals. HCP's for a start off. And the bloke that does the bins. And the supermarket check out person.

Spread the wealth a bit eh.

I have done a lot of jobs and been self employed - I have taught and returned to it. I work in a school that needs to improve, it has been in and out of special measures for years. My salary is ok, I have earned more and less but the work huge. I love it but it’s exhausting. 140 kids a day through my room and so may with additional needs and requirements. All sorts of social issues, gang stuff, drug taking, undiagnosed SN and no resources. Hardly any TAs, no books, not enough paper, awful room, no heating, a roof that leaks. Behavioural issues a plenty but really I want money in the school accounts. I want a room that’s pleasant to be in, TAs well paid and supported, IT, pens, resources. These things would help me - I mean I would always take more money but first invest it in the system (and stop financing fat cat execs on ego trips).

People will just be relieved that they have a job when all this is over. So the whole processes will just start over.

Lord and serfdom, really

Give yourself a break you're not a teacher things are weird right now and emotions are all over the place try and learn though doing thing your kids enjoy (I know you didn't ask for advice but I feel like we're all putting too much pressure on ourselves when we're still trying to get our heads round this ourselves!)

Also I know it won't happen and things are going to be hard when this is over but wouldn't it be nice if all key workers/essential workers got a pay rise now we've realised who is doing the most important jobs, the jobs that keep the country running.

Teachers are quie well paid proportionally, the starting salary relative to a 1 year post grad qualification of the back of pretty much any degree is pretty good? I am qualified as a teacher but gave it up in the second year as I didn't find it fulfilling. I then worked in retail management which I found harder graft, for less overall financial net gain.

Dsis is a teacher, she is currently doing 1 to 2 hours work a day on full pay, is mostly redecorating her house and loving life, gloating about job security and half a year off and volunteering for a day a week to teach key workers kids on a reduced schedule. She was sent home on her day last week because nobody turned up....

Teaching at home is bloody hard because it's not an institution, children respond better in one where they have people in charge of them, the classroom environment and it's processes to settle them into learning time, clear reprimand, clear rules and a sense of community.

Schools as an institution deserve a heck of a lot more money for equipment and enrichment and more qualified staff and specialised support staff but I don't agree teachers personally do.

I don't think they deserve a pay rise.. But I do think schools should be funded properly so no teacher is required to use their own money for supplies.. That isn't right or fair to expect..
But as teachers they are paid to teach a set class or age group... Their focus is entirely that..they get lunch and breaks to prep for the next thing / sort themselves out /have a pee without an audience...
Unlike everyone doing it at home currently who is juggling homeschool for a mixed age/ability group at the same time with subjects they don't specialise in and with 0 training... Aswell as working from home themselves or juggling babies and toddlers too.. Making meals and housework... Its not comparable

If my 12yr olds math teacher starts teaching algebra whilst doing counting with my preschooler and fractions with 9yr old balancing my 5 month old on her head whilst making lunch/prepping tea and trying frantically to keep on top of the rest of my house then of course I would feel she/he deserved a pay rise

Sorry but your reasoning is faulty. Teachers are trained to do their jobs, they don't just walk in off the streets and look after our kids.

if a teacher turned up with no training to do my job for 4 months they would be sobbing and terrified and would probably cause several million pounds of damage in about two days.

As parents we aren't trained to teach, we haven't the benefit of having seen the lesson plans for the term, we have few resources except whatever pens and pencils and computers we have at home. It isn't surprising we are in awe of the teachers.

We have been told by our school we only need to teach for 3 hours a day because the rest of the day is spent by the teachers doing crowd control or admin, not actual teachers. We have been given a pack of worksheets to do and a weekly email with a massive list of websites we can log into, and that's all. The worksheets only covered English or Maths, except for idiotic tasks (eg "go and find all the right angles in your house""). Presumably they had SOME materials ready to teach for the two weeks just ended so it wasnt as if they had to scrabble with zero notice, we knew for weeks the schools would close.

Our school also opted out of providing holiday care so the keyworkers'/vulnerable kids have to go to a school in the town centre. That's great the teachers get their break and I've no objection but it seems silly to expose kids from all over the town to each other, what's the point of isolating them only now to herd them all together for the holiday?

The teachers in school (currently 3 teachers for a pool of 3 to 10 key workers'/vulnerable children) are only supervising not teaching as it would be unfair to let these kids get ahead of ours floundering at home.

So there are 12 teachers plus the Head and the TAs, of which three are in school but with only a handful of kids to watch and not teach.

Why is this any more heroic than what our shop workers are doing? No one is clamouring to pay them more.

Generally I think teachers are paid okay. Nurses on the other hand, and carers, and the cleaning staff in hospitals - they deserve a lot more.

Teachers will be kicked back to their start position. And they have colluded in their own downgrading.

Oh and with the added expectation that since they conceded that they are child care, they should continue to do so. At the weekends. Over the holidays.

What the fuck where their unions thinking???

Were, not where.

Presumably they had SOME materials ready to teach for the two weeks just ended so it wasnt as if they had to scrabble with zero notice, we knew for weeks the schools would close.

Yes, we did have materials and resources to teach but we needed to be there to teach it. None of my resources were appropriate to send home because they wouldn’t have made sense without me teaching something first. We had to create home learning resources that didn’t need us there. That limited us to relearning objectives and practising key skills.

My main issue is people bashing teachers without having the faintest idea of what we do. I would never bash an entire profession when I’ve never actually done it. Going to school and having children in school does not qualify you to understand what the role of a teacher is.

Would to be paid a bit more - bring it up to match the inflation over the last 10 years . But would love the respect and acknowledgement that we do a pretty good job most of the time and work pretty hard.

Oh and I've worked about 6 / 7 hours per day at the moment setting and marking online. Looking forward to easter hols so I can take a break. Secondary teacher with many year 10 and 12's who are halfway through their exam years and need to continue working.

Big pay rise for TA's would be very welcome.

Um no, my DD teachers seem to be barely doing anything, just a couple of emails a week they send to every pupil.

Nurses, carers and public workers such as supermarket staff need pay rises not teachers (who already got payrise this year)

I have a lot of respect for (good) teachers, but technically everybody who currently still works and homeschools /cares etc , dors crazy shifts earned a payrise. none of us will get it
(if homeschooling would be my only job, it would be fun. doing it on top of my demanding job isn’t). my oldest has SENDs