Teachers - well paid, long holidays, gold-plated pension

[noblegiraffe]

I keep seeing this being trotted out as a reason to give teachers yet another real-terms pay cut.

Those who are going on about how great teachers have it, why have we got so many vacancies? Why is there such a shortage of teachers? It is really starting to bite in schools. My school has increased class sizes in maths and English, there are kids who have had a series of different supply teachers in core subjects since September, and A-level students who have had to teach themselves the syllabus in Y13 because they had no teacher at all. GCSE students have complained about their teacher not knowing what they are teaching because they've been roped in from another subject. We used to try to protect exam classes, but can't anymore.

Teaching vacancies are up. But the worst thing is that teacher trainees numbers have plummeted. The government has missed its recruitment targets for years, but the situation is getting much worse. Teacher recruitment for next year where schools generally compete for local trainees, which usually starts about now, will be really difficult and there will be lots more schools with unfilled spaces in September. Maths trainee numbers where I am are genuinely horrifying.

So, given the assertion that the private sector (the "real world") has it much worse and that teachers have a pretty cushy job with lots of perks, why isn't the private sector seeing a mass exodus into teaching?

Is it maybe not that cushy after all? Maybe the government actually needs to do something about it? Maybe those who think that a 5% rise is 'fair' need to have a rethink if they want their kids to actually have a teacher?

getintoteaching.education.gov.uk

If that's the point you'll continually bash teachers over, it's proving my point that parents don't really care about the conditions their children are being taught in. Yes, you support the strikes but you are using the misnomer that causes most hatred towards teachers. You say it yourself, they are not paid for holidays! There's no technicality.

This post made me laugh out loud and then my eyes rolled so far back in my head they went full loop! What a great idea, strange no one had thought of it before now. 🙄

@echt
Back to the UK Teachers are paid to attend 195 days - that's why they don't want to work when the school is closed to pupils. Nor should they.

But that’s exactly my point, they are paid for 195 days. So what if they were paid for the full year, not just part time 195 days.

Anti-teacher sentiment starts at Primary. Children from chaotic houses are approached quite rightly with more care and parents feel the teachers are acting out of role. Teachers check to see if the child is eating enough or well enough, they are making sure the child is clothed appropriately for school, checking for safeguarding issues such as abuse. Parents can see this as an infringement on their privacy and dislike being judged.
This continues into secondary with minibuses knocking on doors of late or frequently absent students and with heads of year insisting on uniform standards etc.

None of this is the teachers' fault, it is of course the government for taking away child services expecting teachers to monitor families with school-age children.

I would be cheering all teachers on for working in such challenging circumstances and with children's welfare at stake.. however, I worked as a secondary teacher for 10 years and left because of the awful gatekeeping and self-importance some staff displayed. I met the very best of all humanity in schools, but also the very, very worst.

@IMissThe80s what do you mean - how few could hold down a proper job?

I work for an education provider. I started a few months ago. The heads, principals and teachers I've met are some of the best managers, innovators and people centric colleagues I've ever met.

They work outside their core hours, in their spare time and are forever seeking improvements. I've worked in industry and commerce for 33 years and I don't recall seeing the same dedication anywhere else.

Teachers deserve to be paid better. End of. Good teachers deserve more.

Recruitment of teachers is bad for many reasons but I suspect one of the primary reasons is that existing teachers are their own worst PR campaign.
I rarely hear teachers extolling what a great career it is, how much they love the job, etc.
More likely to hear:
Pay is shit
Parents you have to deal with are arseholes
Kids can be awful
Hours are too long
School budgets are too low/being used for the wrong thing
Work all through the holidays
No support from SLT
Not to mention the constant harping on about how the Tories have decimated the education sector.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to go into teaching after reading all of this stuff which is constantly trotted out on here by teachers?

You have a good day now sweetie.

And in my job I’m contracted for 40 hours per week, year round. I don’t add up every little bit extra I do, I work whatever’s needed in the week as it’s a professional job. But I get paid year round, I get paid holidays. Match teachers to this and bring in line private sector. Teachers would get a salary rise.

They are paid for the full year, they're just only expected to work for 195 of them. For example, something the unions won't be telling the public, for a strike day a teacher is only deducted 1/365 of their salary. In what other industry would that happen?

Teachers are paid for the holidays. Support staff usually aren't, but teachers are.

Agree the pay isn't reflective of the workload, which appears immense.

As a non teacher I don't understand the huge amount of individual planning that needs doing. With the curriculum being so rigid, why doesn't it come with a planned schedule too (to save every teacher in the land having to create their own individual ones?).

Feels terribly inefficient and wasting valuable teaching resource.

I’m an ex secondary maths teacher (one with a maths degrees as well, quite a rarity!) currently I work in middle management in the civil service and considering a move back to teaching as our children become school aged but feel I’m gonna lose a lot of work life balance/perks for not much change in salary - personally hope the strikes do drive teaching salary’s up and usually in maths I should be able to secure a higher wage because of giving up my evenings/weekends again will come at a cost now we are a family of four and my husband works shifts as a police officer so going back to teaching means we will have less family time than now where I can work flexibly/from home.

My decision is mainly being driven by school holiday childcare for our two girls, boredom of civil service role and missing teaching the higher level maths/further maths a level etc. which I’ve always loved.

Not everything is about money. I wouldn't teach if you paid me a six figure salary. I very much doubt increasing salaries by a couple of grand per year will help, that's a complete red herring.

We need to get discipline back into schools and find ways to allow teachers to teach.

@Thunderpunt teachers are saying how it is.

I wonder how many posters teacher bashing still allow these supposedly awful people have the care of their children day in day out

I wonder how many of these posters have spent a day in the classroom to see what is actually involved

I agree it's not about the pay.
The conditions are stressful.
Plenty of charity sector staff earn worse wages than teachers, but their employers are very decent in my experience.

Conversely, if teaching is such a relentlessly bleak hellscape then why don't you just leave? I've had some awful jobs, I quit them

That’s exactly what teachers are doing - leaving. Which is why if you have children in school they may be taught by non-specialists, rotations of supply teachers (if the school can get them), a TA who will leave pretty soon as well because she’s burned out, or by a deputy head with two other classes in the hall.

Be careful what you wish for, or the unthinking advice you give from a point of ignorance.

Some comments on here make my blood boil.
I am a teacher. Trained as I have a desire to help and teach the next generation. Sadly like most of my colleagues I am looking at leaving. What have been offered another job elsewhere. Much better hours and much better pay. It makes me sad as what I want to do is teach but financially and for my health I don’t know how much longer I can do on.
I work from 7:30 and most days do not leave until 6pm. Sometimes later on parents evening etc. when I get home I am planning next lessons and checking children’s work as I cannot do it during the day with 30 children in a class and the majority of the time no TA !

A lot of the parents have no idea that their children are being seriously let down by the Government and all the cuts. I have to buy all my own resources too. In the so called school holidays I am doing reports. Class prep. Etc.
I literally would get better pay and conditions working at Aldi.
Normally I wouldn’t get the chance to write this but I am at hospital in the waiting room and my blood pressure is already sky high.
Thank you to some of you for making teachers feel so unappreciated, trust me we don’t need it, we feel it already.

I don't disagree with any of the points regarding teaching workloads etc, but charities are the worst people to work for IME

@Bigweekend I guess there's variation!

You appear to have missed my point which was about the recruitment of teachers into the profession.
Teachers 'telling it like it is' sadly do no favours in encouraging people into the job. Whilst I'm sure a higher salary would make it a more attractive position, with all the shit that apparently comes with being a teacher, does the money compensate that shit?

I find it disingenuous when people point out they aren’t paid for school holidays. Their salaries aren’t pro rata like a TA. Support staff are on a band with a salary which is then slashed to account for holidays and not being full time ie 37 hours a week.
Teachers however are paid for 1,265 directed hours. Which is 32 hours a week over the academic year of 39 weeks. So even a starting salary of £28K isn’t terrible in theory.
Obviously it’s impossible to get all the work of teacher done in directed time and
the stress is real. The micro management and excessive paperwork to justify everything you do, in addition to being on your A game in front of kids all day. So really paying teachers more won’t solve retention problems. People will still leave because the job itself has become untenable.

@Bigweekend

No they're not. They divide the wage into 12. This partly came in because teachers were quite legitimately claiming benefits in the school holidays. Each position in teaching has an hourly rate attached to it, but as it's ludicrously inaccurate, it's rarely mentioned. For most teachers, this equates to directed hours and union agreed non-directed hours, not holidays. I don't think it's particularly low paid, but equivalent private sector wages are rising in response to inflation. The working conditions have to change; in other European countries folk are doing PHDs about the English education system, largely as studies in bad practice.

Plenty of other public and private sector workers, who do 9-5 then do hours of extra work too, it's not unique to teachers. I don't understand why the holidays are so long if they teachers are marking anyway and say they are not actually holidays

So you think differentiation is “easy/hard” worksheets?

Im a high school teacher.

Timmys reading age is 5.
Sophie has ADHD and needs movement breaks.
Simon is hearing impaired so can’t watch a video unless there is lip synching
Aaron is very able and needs more challenging work.
Pete is colourblind and needs someone to help him choose appropriate colours.
Katies baby brother died in a house fire two years ago, so I need to call her pupil support teacher and make a plan.
Leah has autism and finds the sound of fire engines in the video overstimulating.
Emma turns up half an hour late because her mum took an overdose last night and she had to take her brother to school first. She’s had no breakfast and very little sleep.
Rory is in hospital because of his cystic fibrosis and I need to set work which he can do there.
Ellies relationship with her foster mum is breaking down - again. Her behaviour is unmanageable at school and at home. She ripped up Ally’s worksheet and has stormed out of class.

This is all normal, by the way.

The issue isn’t the pay it seems. Although a little rise would help.

the issue is the government cuts and poor parenting resulting in messed up children.

in an ideal world… the government would pay for prit stick and other resources. They would also pay for more TAs and more teachers to help with the workload to make sure teachers do what they are meant to do.

TAs are badly underpaid too. I literally couldn’t afford to do a 12k a year job. I’d be homeless for a start.