Teachers - how much do you earn?

[coopekid]

So it's my 5th year of teaching, not in London or fringe, and I am on £27,260 and have been since Sep 19 (no across-the-board pay increase as announced last summer for me ) This - according to the NEU advisory pay points puts me somewhere between M1 and M2. Interested to hear what other Teachers are earning?

I'm Outer London and in my 6th year. I'm on the last point of the Main Pay Scale, which is around £41,000. I think it's something like £41,100 or something.

@coopekid yes we received the pay increase- think it was 3% for those lower down Main scale and 1.75% increase for everyone else. Our appraisal cycle runs Oct-September and we receive our pay increase in December pay, backdated to September. This includes any nationally agreed pay increases too. We receive a letter every October confirming if we have been awarded our pay scale increase if we were entitled to one and then you have 2 weeks to appeal any decision that you do not agree with. Sadly I'm top of UPS now, so no increase for me aside from the national increase- which was also applied to TLRs too. The 1.75% uplift worked out to be about an extra £8 take home a month but it's better than nothing!

I work in a school that's part of a local MAT. We have a strongly unionised staff with over 60 members (teaching and support) in the NEU. When our school converted to academy status and then later joined the MAT they agreed to continue following the STPCD/burgundy book on matters concerning pay and that was part of our TUPE. Not only was it morally the right decision, but also they knew staff wouldn't stand for a deviation from STPCD and standard national payscales and would ballot for industrial action.

Wow, I hadn't fully appreciated how poorly paid the profession is given how many qualifications you need for it and how how many years experience before you can even earn a remotely decent wage.

7th year of teaching on 35k or so up north.
Was over 2k a month take home

@dootball

Don't forget to factor in the generous pension contribution from you school too , which is currently 23%.

I also now work in private school , where I have taken small pay cut in the top of UPS, so now on around £38000. However I get free meals and 50% of my childrens school fees, which is work quite a lot currently!

Teaching many subjects there is also the opportunity for quite a bit fairly lucrative tutoring if you want to.

I hope you managed to have a break in service before taking the pay cut otherwise your pension is likely to drop significantly if you work for anther 10 years.

@NovemberR

I would imagine that if someone has 3 A levels, a degree and a year's PGCE then they could earn an awful lot more in other professions than doing a teaching job. I think the figures on how many teachers drop out in the first three years suggest that it's tough.

I wouldn't want to do it - and I'm genuinely confused that someone thinks 27k a year with all these qualifications, experience and responsibility is a lot of money. It strikes me as a lot of work to earn very little.

I'm not a teacher - but am aware that there is a massive recruitment and retention crisis. For those thinking this is great I see the government is always advertising what a fabulous job it is. The profession is always open...

I've been following the job market closely for the last year, as I've been hoping for a change of career direction, and beg to differ. The salaries talked about here are excellent, especially considering the holidays, job security, pension.

I'm not taking away from the difficulty of the job in any way but there are many many challenging jobs with only 28 days holiday per year, that require significant responsibility, longer working hours, years of study, and pay less.

I'm in the same local authority as you and staff at my school have moved up the scale if they met the criteria (a whole point, not partial increments, every year). It sounds like your school has a really mean policy of partial increments or something. Speak to your union rep as you should be on a lot more than that by now. Surely the staff in school talk about it at review time?

£40 K plus but I am top of scale and the £40 K is for my main teaching job. I get paid extra on top for being SLT.

@BarbaraofSeville

It has been a long held belief that teachers and nurses are universally very poorly paid and of course, the salaries of both are low for the responsibility and qualifications required.

However, in many areas of the country, where a lot of people are on under £20k, and are unable to get permanent full time work, teachers and nurses, on £25-30k or more, will be amongst the best paid people in the area.

So from that perspective, it's easy to see how teachers and nurses can be seen as being well paid by some.

Exactly! Simple as that. It is a well paid profession compared to MOST people in society. That's a fact.

I work for the nhs as a band 4 working for cancer services sometimes making very difficult calls to patients. I have a degree so now with my poor £22k (full time not 39 weeks a year!) I'm considering re-training

@NovemberR I wouldn't say I'm very low paid. Like I said, the average salary for my region is around £23k. I'm job hunting and have seen many job adverts asking for a degree and 3 years experience, for a salary in the region of £23-26k, even in major cities.
That's the reality for young people now, unless you're in a traditionally high paid industry such as law, medicine, tech or finance.
£25k for your recently graduated nurse DD is good, great that she was able to get that. A friend is a nurse and she was on £21k after 3 years on the job. I don't know how the nursing pay scales work but I'm guessing it's maybe region-dependent.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher myself as it's not where my talents lie, and I'm not saying their pay is excessive - just that objectively their pay and conditions are very good compared to many other jobs and that the private sector isn't the land of milk and honey than many imagine.

@Hope4theBestPlan4theWorst

I work for the nhs as a band 4 working for cancer services sometimes making very difficult calls to patients. I have a degree so now with my poor £22k (full time not 39 weeks a year!) I'm considering re-training

Yours is the type of job I was thinking about! Cancer Pathway Navigators in the NHS will never be paid more than £24.5k in my area but the job description is lengthy, with a wide range of skills required and definite stress and pressure.

I have a degree, lots of work experience and would never dream that I'd ever be paid as much as teachers are. Tell me all the roles paying more outside of London? I can think of many unless you are a teacher, doctor, nurse, ceo in business, accountant, pharmacist (40/45k tops). You'd have to be very high up in the civil service or council to earn a teacher's wage. Retail management, even for a large city centre store would be less!

Do sn school teachers get more money ? Less academics needed but more stress I imagine .

[quote ChochoCrazyCat]@NovemberR I wouldn't say I'm very low paid. Like I said, the average salary for my region is around £23k. I'm job hunting and have seen many job adverts asking for a degree and 3 years experience, for a salary in the region of £23-26k, even in major cities.
That's the reality for young people now, unless you're in a traditionally high paid industry such as law, medicine, tech or finance.
£25k for your recently graduated nurse DD is good, great that she was able to get that. A friend is a nurse and she was on £21k after 3 years on the job. I don't know how the nursing pay scales work but I'm guessing it's maybe region-dependent.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher myself as it's not where my talents lie, and I'm not saying their pay is excessive - just that objectively their pay and conditions are very good compared to many other jobs and that the private sector isn't the land of milk and honey than many imagine. [/quote]
Well put! All completely true.

@sameday2021 - not sure why you wouldn't dream to be paid the same as teachers.

With a degree you have a qualification that only around 25% of the population have achieved, ok so it's not a post-graduate qualification that most teachers have but still well up there - though with the new pathways into teaching you could do that 'on-the-job'.

According to ONS the MEAN average salary in the UK is £31,590.

M4 with an SEN allowance, outside London.

[quote diddydave]@sameday2021 - not sure why you wouldn't dream to be paid the same as teachers.

With a degree you have a qualification that only around 25% of the population have achieved, ok so it's not a post-graduate qualification that most teachers have but still well up there - though with the new pathways into teaching you could do that 'on-the-job'.

According to ONS the MEAN average salary in the UK is £31,590.[/quote]
Well, I never found a route to be paid that much, just my experience. Although I had an excellent degree from a red brick uni, I never had a 'calling' such as a doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher. I've done lower & middle management roles all paying less than £25k in my area. Plenty of stress and responsibility, but not great pay.

I thought the average salary was £26k? Has this increased within the last couple of years?

@rolliy not easy at all to be on £50k

I'm in my 40s at the top on my scale with SEN points and on about £40k

In primary it's hard to earn more unless you are a head

@sameday2021
This was from the November 2020 data set that ONS published.

Tesco's pay structure was one a colleague (before I gave up teaching and started my own business) used in their Business Studies lessons regularly and she had stories of taking work experience students there and being met by students who had dropped out of their A level courses earning more than she did.

With the pay freeze on public sector pay coming I did look at what has happened to teacher's pay compared to private sector pay using the ONS and other sources over the last 10 years...it made for interesting reading.

I'm on 54k as a primary HT it's twice what I started out on as an NQT so that's pretty good. It's a pretty tough gig at the moment though !

Also hopping on to say you should be on M5 by now. I don't understand why you haven't queried this the first year you weren't moved up tbh. It'll be hard to negotiate such an increase now... Good luck op

@quarks

I left teaching to work as a TA for a while, as teaching ws incompatible with parenting at ages when my children needed more input.

As a TA I earnt far more per hour than as teacher

Also this!

I used to take my Economics students to an annual business studies competition. As part of the day they used to make the teachers sit through a presentation about careers in accountancy (this was so we could encourage our students to apply). I sat there looking at the eye watering salaries on offer and in future years opted for sitting in the break room marking and eating the free biscuits (while contemplating a career change).

There are professions and professions.

I could, however, if called on, draw an explanatory diagram of a monopsony labour market to explain why the cancer nurses are badly paid.

@ChochoCrazyCat Is your good nurse friend in the UK? I would very much doubt that she was on 21k after 3 years of nursing. The starting wage when I qualified 10 years ago was 21k and the starting now is 24k.
However if you remain a staff nurse for the whole of you career you cannot earn more than 30k. Unless you get a promotion.

I think perceptions about teacher pay vary a lot depending on where you live and who you know. I'm quite happy with my outer London teacher pay, but I have a lot friend who rake it in in TV and they think I get paid a pittance when they see me working twice the hours they do for half the money. If they were nurses I'm sure they'd feel differently.