AIBU to feel that teachers shouldn't really be striking?

[Pinky1011]

They have 3 months PAID holidays only work 9-4pm, no dangerous or really bad working conditions, great job security, good pensions, They had pay rises last year up to 8%!!! I work in the private sector and haven't had a pay rise in almost 6 years! I just feel compared to alot of other professions, teachers have it quite good? I mean their starting salary is the same as a junior doctor. I get it inflation has wrecked everyone, but surely the issue should be getting inflation down? Not just demanding for more money, which by the way only fuels inflation further. AIBU to feel that teachers just don't know how good they have it compared to the rest of us?

If you teach in Central London it is £1000 less. It is significantly lower if you teach in the rest of the country. As I said, a quick Google before posting would have explained this to you.

This.

The directed/non-directed time, and the vagueness of the latter, works to the English government's advantage in terms of a work to rule.

I've only seen WTR work, and yes it did work, was in the last but one pay round in Victoria. The teachers' contract explicitly states 38 hours per week on the premises for 40 weeks. It's gold and you'll never see a UK government agreeing to a contract like this.

It's the weekly total that nails it.

Do teachers work above and beyond that? Yes they do. The point is they can't be made to do it. It obliges management to do some planning of, say, meetings/catch-up/revision sessions and not behave as if they have some Mary Poppins magic bag of teacher time to fund such stuff.

But that is pretty much the maximum you will ever earn as a teacher. Unless you become a head teacher or deputy, yoi hit UPS 3 and there is nowhere else to go. No further chance of promotion. So the starting salary is good but after that, it kinda goes nowhere.

I have a 1st class degree and chose teaching. My husband has a 2:2 and chose to go into IT. He earns almost 4x my FTE. My best friend from uni went into tax consultancy and earns a 6 figure salary. I feel like I've been mugged off majorly by my own career choices.

Even with a £27000 bursary. It's awful isn't it.
We have 2 maths trainees NE uni.

Yes, the opportunities to progress to the higher bands are few and far between. However, I would also argue that your husband and best friend's salaries are not typical within their fields too outside of the SE. If you are based in the SE or a major city then I recognise that there can be a pay issue in the same way as other public sector roles (mine included).

There are opportunities outside of teaching and the public sector to earn big money. I too have friends that made arguably better career choices after uni but unfortunately trying to gain parity through significantly increasing the pay in public sector roles is not the answer.

I completely agree in respect of primary school teachers. I have about 6 primary school teacher friends and over the long summer break they go in about 3 times to clean and sort their classroom and set up for the new year. About an hour after school every day to mark etc. (which when you only teach 9-3 gives you a two hour window for a normal day anyway. Not to mention they get a full morning or afternoon away from the classroom included in that to do admin and marking.

it’s the same as usual all the lazy “hard done” ones make the loudest noise about how busy they are all the while, all the efficient work smarter not harder crowd just get on with it.

I’d say it’s decent pay even if you only worked half those holidays. Even if you don’t technically get paid for all the holidays and it’s worked out over 12 months you’re still not hard done by like you all make out!!

Serious question then...would you support the actual pay for maths teachers to be 10-15k higher than other subjects? So they could hit 55k without taking on extra responsibility?

Not being goady but it's something that I think needs a rational debate.

@foxynoxy it'd be lovely as I am a maths teacher but it wouldn't really be fair would it.

Some schools do offer financial incentives to get people into roles that are hard to fill.
Some schools also offer extra TLRs to retain good staff who are hard to replace. It's just not talked about much as it's kept quiet.

Still struggle to attract and retain staff in general. Mfl teachers are shortage too.
Science maths can't even get subject specialist on supply.

I personally would argue that it's not fair to keep equal pay. And before everyone jumps down my throat I'm not trying to turn teachers against each other.

However as stated in my earlier posts shortages are often in certain disciplines and also geographical areas. It is no coincidence that some disciplines do not struggle to recruit staff when teaching is one of the only careers related to their degree that offers a half decent salary.

My experience with shortage subjects is that there is a heavy emphasis on bursaries and golden handshakes but little incentive after that. An overhaul is needed with clearly defined distinct pay scales.

Again not trying to turn teachers against each other. And not arguing for anybody to have their pay reduced. Just new pay scales in harder to attract disciplines.

Then you have to expect experienced teachers to leave the profession, leaving shortages for your kids.

You can't have it both ways.

I have worked with teachers like this before. Generally they are either not fulfilling their respinsibilities WRT planning and marking, or riding on the coat tails of other team members who ard doing all the planning and organisation for them.

I consider myself to be someone who does a good job and knows how to prioritise - but I was still working from 7.30 to 5.30 on school days, plus about 2 evenings a week until 9pm at home on school-related stuff. That's a lot less than most others do.

We need to improve conditions for everyone. It's not only about pay.

Any pay rises have not been funded recently which causes further gaps elsewhere

then...would you support the actual pay for maths teachers to be 10-15k higher than other subjects? So they could hit 55k without taking on extra responsibility?

In my opinion all that would happen is the cheaper/more popular subjects would rapidly become.shortage subjects because a)we should value a rounded education and b) the workload is high in all subjects so it achieves nothing other than anger and frustration paying some of.us more than others. I say that as a shortage subject teacher.

Personally I think letting state school teachers off a percentage of their loans at 5 and 10 years with total write off at 15. I would totally write off the loan of any teacher staying in a school in a very deprived area for 5 years. I would increase the pay of experienced teachers to stop them seeking better pay outside of.educatikn and to keep them in the classroom rather than have no choice but to climb the career ladder for more.money

And I would.ensure that there is.enougjnfunding in schools for heads not be forced to find any reason to push out more expensive staff.

I can see your point and it may cause ill feeling so would probably be a non starter but some disciplines are basically oversubscribed and not everyone within those disciplines will be able or want to switch to the higher paying shortage disciplines. I can't see them leaving teaching in droves because of it but can understand that the staff room could become tense. Shortage subjects are often those where the skills are also in demand in the private sector though and without at least attempting to address pay I'm not sure how this will be resolved.

The loans are a good point and could incentivise some people to enter teaching.

Agree that headteachers should not be put in the position where pushing out experienced and more expensive staff is to their gain. A teaching post should be fully funded, where an individual sits on the scale shouldn't matter.

Your other point on paying more for experience is a tricky one and exists across all professions. If you are good at your job then you progress to the next rung on the ladder which is often leading/managing and no longer "doing". I've previously worked places where the experienced do-er can end up earning the same or more than the team leader and that causes plenty of other issues with nobody prepared to become the leader/manager and deal with HR related issues.

The fringe pay isnt enough to keep people in the fringe either. We have so many great staff who move to a cheaper housing area.

I have a few friends in teaching. One of them was explaining they pay rises they all got came out of the current school budget, so way less money for other needed things.

I am sadly of the view that striking will unlikely help, but if a union wants to crack on with it so be it. I’m also a parent with a child being flagged for additional needs, and his school has been fierce in advocating him getting extra support. They have been amazing the head and the senior leadership team especially.

I’m of the view decent teachers are real heroes who go above and beyond way more than what they are paid to do. As such it’s not hard for me to want to support them!

One of the main things that NEU teachers are striving over is to get the pay rise from central government not expect schools to fund it from their existing budgets.
If your child has additional needs this issue could affect them more than most as schools may cut costs by cutting the number of TAs they employ. So I’m pleased you are supporting the strike, it is in your own best interests to do so.

You are being unreasonable.

100% support for the strikers

The question I have is does the admin/planning burden need to be so great?

I'm in ROI and while teachers work hard, they don't seem to do the crazy hours that U.K. teachers do. Yet the outcomes for students don't appear to be affected by this.

I get this is top down policy, but what's the rationale for so much time being spent on this and how could it be challenged?

Posts like this make me want to weep and I'm not even a teacher.

While I agree teachers don’t have a terrible salary for the start of their career there are significant limits to getting anything above the top of the upper pay range.

When my brother started work as a teacher in 2007 his starting salary of 19.5k was a decent chunk above most of our graduate new hires on 17k. However after 16 years our new hires who stay are typically going to be earning around £50k with a minority getting to 6 figures. His cohort are typically going to earn somewhere around £40k with it being very unusual to be above around £60k at the top of the lead practitioner scale.

Brother is a graduate so in a subject where they have limited staff and is a genuinely engaging teacher who helps his students achieve better results at A level than are expected based on their performance up to GCSE. He’s now a head of department and he’s said he has no real interest in being a head teacher so he’s just never really going to progress. If pay doesn’t rise in line with inflation or close to inflation he’ll just earn less in real terms and, unlike most professions, he doesn’t have the option to go to a different employer to do same type of role with more money. The whole system seems structured so that the best, most motivated staff will often become the ones most likely to leave the profession. That seems foolish as surely those are the people we want educating our kids.

Sorry but you are wrong. I'm not a teacher bit jave worked in several schools. Most staff are in from. 7.30/8am and alot (90%) are here until 6pm. I have seen staff assaulted and hospitalised. I have seen over the year their admin loads increase 10fold. I see 6 classes share 1 TA between them. I see them Burnt out before the xmas break started. I see. More and more children with medical needs and SEN than ever before.
Teachers dont always have same holiday as their children so they still have childcare issues. Most teachers and school staff never see their childrens sports days or nativity because they can't book time off. Oh and yes they get paid every month, however the salarie is split over the year so no they dont get more paid holiday than anyone else!
Unless you have worked in a school dont judge.

This comes up a lot on MN . It would require huge structural changes but also, tbh, a change in the mindset of teaching leaders in England (and I presume Wales and Scotland - no idea about NI) and of teachers themselves. It's not a quick fix but I agree that other countries get things more right - in terms of meetings, admin, CPD , and pupil contact time (which is far lower in nearly every other OECD country).

For example, emails keep flying around our department asking colleagues to give up frees to house students catching up on assessments. I actually can't imagine that being gainsayed in a lot of other countries. Fixing culture is hard and one reason why work to rule fails.

by the way, in case tis hasn't been said , the DfE is on strike on the very day they are telling schools what to do in a strike.

I agree with you. As one who has been teaching for 25+ years, I know that it didn’t used to be this way and doesn’t need to be.

Unfortunately, it is and I don’t know how it can be undone. Is there an Ofsted type inspectorate in RoI? Their ‘wants’ are to blame for a number of very poor admin-heavy workloads-curricular Deep Dives for primary schools for one.

Unfortunately, it is and I don’t know how it can be undone. Is there an Ofsted type inspectorate in RoI? Their ‘wants’ are to blame for a number of very poor admin-heavy workloads-curricular Deep Dives for primary schools for one.

No there isn't. I mean there probably is something, but it doesn't loom anywhere near as large as Ofsted.

I appreciate this is a huge thing to fix, but it's just such a shame that unnecessary burdens are being placed on teachers time.