To dislike the way unions push for big payrises only at the bottom?

[WillitFit]

I work in school. The lowest paid teachers are to get c.9% and everyone else 5% (if they accept it).

Support staff have been offered a fixed sum, just under £2000 on all points. Which is more than 10% for some, about 3% for me!

Everyone works hard and everyone deserves payrises that keep pace with inflation, surely? The more senior people have worked hard to get to where they are, often over many years, why is it OK to see their pay eroded?

I'm classed as middle management in school, I'm also classed as support staff. There is no career progression for me, no pay scale for me to climb. The extra £2000 will go some way to make up for the £8000 I lose due to my salary being pro-rata (unlike teachers). Rates of pay for TA's are atrocious for the work they do.

I get your point, but maybe leave support staff out when you argue it.

Most people I know have a lifestyle that fits their salary - e.g mortgage, outgoings etc are usually directly proportional to earnings. Therefore whilst I am on a decent wage and so is my husband, we also have decent outgoings each month which means we cannot absorb the price increases either!

The issue is, the 2k support staff isn’t funded. The teacher increase isn’t funded. So the already agreed rises are not funded. The support staff budget will put many schools into a significant deficit.

The issue is here, no one would argue support staff deserve the rise. No one would argue teachers shouldn’t be on a wage they can’t survive.

It does not change the fact that these rises are NOT funded. Heads will need to use the summer to decide where to cut and for many schools, with reducing numbers, that will mean redundancies. Often TAs are the first to go and that’s another thread entirely!

This thread, for example www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4593518-govt-announces-huge-cut-to-schools-funding-redundancies

Itisasecret - i am aware of that. Our 3 year budget had us in deficit this year and we are using up our surplus to balance. then next year we were going to balance the books as we made lots of brutal cuts and the impact was meant to be for year 2. We now wont be balancing the books and have used the surplus up so i dont know what happens next!

I think we will have to find another small school and share a head or something.

@antlerrose I understand 23-24 per pupil funding is increasing, not that that helps us this year

Let’s not let this be a divisive issue pitting teachers against each other or against support staff. All staff need a good wage increase in line with inflation.

This decision to taper the increase is all about retention, they know once teachers make it to year 5, they are much much more likely to stay in the profession. They know senior staff are highly unlikely to leave. The increase in wages at the bottom end is about retaining those Newly qualified teachers to avoid them leaving the profession. In reality, you can earn more in Costa, than you can as a newly qualified teacher without the workload, responsibility and student debt.

The government know they are facing a crisis of recruitment and retention. I don’t think they actually give a shit about any teacher and certainly aren’t bothered about spending more money on state education (which is why nearly all school budgets are now in deficit and schools are having to fund their own wage increases)

It's much easier to make changes to absorb increases if you are not already cut back to the basics. As contracts come to the end of their fixed term you can cancel or downgrade. If you didn't have to time showers or use minimal heating before then you can cut usage. You can change what you buy in the weekly shop to keep costs the same. Someone who already had the bare minimum can't do that. Obviously a mortgage you are locked into but many other outgoings are not fixed.

100% this.

I mean, yes I could cancel Sky and cut down on my food bills and energy use. I'm already doing that. But there are a cohort of people (like me and many others) who earn enough to go out to work full time and have our children in childcare. That's about £1300 a month. I can't cut down on that. Similarly with my mortgage and car payments and insurances. Those are proportionate to my salary. Someone on 20k may have only £500 a month disposable income after their (salary proportionate) outgoings. Same here!

Someone on 20k may have only £500 a month disposable income after their (salary proportionate) outgoings. Same here!
I've just gone from 20k to 22k, I can assure you I don't have £500 a month disposable income! It's pretty much all gone on the basics, basics that are getting harder to cut any further. My 10% payrise will make things easier in the short term at least.

That was just a number I plucked from the sky!

It was recently in the news that a fifth of UK households now have negative disposable income.

Not all teachers at the top of the pay scale are middle aged and mortgage free.

I am mid 30s on UPS2 and still have a huge student loan to pay off and no chance of buying a house due to sky high rents. I can't sleep at night worrying about how I'm going to afford to pay my gas and electricity bills come October. I look to the future and am faced with no further opportunities to earn more money unless I leave the classroom.

When I look at people I went to school with my age and even younger, it's only now that my salary suddenly feels a lot less than I should or could be earning if I had gone down a different route after uni. I am seriously looking at retraining to leave teaching and boost my earning potential.

Funnily enough, this year I had more than one teaching job offer, all willing to pay my UPS salary because my experience is suddenly valued. I understand why they need to increase the wages at the bottom of the scale because recruitment is such a problem. But honestly, some of the 'qualified' teachers we have walking through the doors these days... well I can see why HTs are keen to pay to keep their experienced staff. If all the experienced staff leave, God help the teaching profession and the education of future children.

Btw, I fully support the pay increase for TAs.

@Svara I can absolutely believe that. I use credit cards to get through the month. And like I said, both myself and my husband have "well paid" NHS jobs.

Not a pity post AT ALL. But I dispute people saying that those on higher wages do not suffer in all of this.

Not all teachers at the top of the pay scale are middle aged and mortgage free.

Exactly. Some UPS teachers trained under £9000 uni fees so the argument earlier in the thread about new starters having student debt doesn't really hold. I have student debt, a mortgage on a house big enough for a family of four and two children in childcare to pay for - definitely worse off than when I was in my 20s!

Not all teachers at the top of the pay scale are middle aged and mortgage free.

Another UPSer here with student debt, 2 kids, mortgage, bills etc to pay.

Most people aren't mortgage free until close to retirement now. You're unlikely to be mortgage free 12 years into a teaching career!

When I went into teacher training 12 years ago, I looked at the top of the pay scale and thought it was a decent salary and that it'd be enough to live on whenever I got there. It was comparable to a decent salary in other industries.

If I was leaving uni now and living in London, there is no way I'd consider teaching because I know I'd make a lot more money more quickly in other graduate roles. It is short sighted to only give decent pay rises at the bottom of the scale as you are then only attracting people who don't think they have the future potential to earn more money elsewhere.

People aren't stupid. With the inflation and cost of leaving increases, nobody is fooled by the starting salary and everyone will be considering their future earning potential.

@bohorainbow I completely agree. Lots of teachers I know left within the first 3-4 years for civil service or private sector jobs because of the earning potential. They realised they needed to get out quickly!

Did you say no to the increase then?

How dare the poor people want more money!

Also, the comment about lifestyle fitting the salary. Do you expect sympathy for you having less disposable income whilst you pay your high mortgage for your nice house, whereas the low earners probably can’t even get a mortgage and have to pay extortionate rent costs?!

I see the recent bout of industrial action as a response to the cost of living crisis which is being caused by lower availability of food and fuel. If we give everyone the same pay rise to compensate for that, everyone will want to consume as much as before, prices will go up, and the poorest in society will be no more able to afford food and fuel than they are now. To get through thos crisis we need to see more equal distribution which means that we need to increase wages and benefits for the poorest while either not increasing or decreasing the income of people further up the ladder.

I'm a high earner. % based pay rises are stupid, the poor sods earning 19k are aghast at a 2% pay rise, for those earning 100k it's 2,000.

High earners simply tend to negotiate individual packages anyway so costing in % based pay rises for them only takes the available pot away from lower earners.

I don't know, OP. Generally speaking I would agree with you. But the cost of living crisis will hit those at the bottom the hardest.

@Anycrispsleft Agreed, and food and fuel cost the same regardless of income. They only cost more if you choose to use more.