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

Unfortunately, teachers' time is of no monetary value to school managers. If management imposes yet another time-consuming task, teachers just have 'find the time'.

But a strike day only counts as 1/365 of a salary? You can't have it all ways and this is why teachers lose public sympathy. Nobody disputes it's a hard job, but acknowledge the benefits.

@WineDup all those people in a single class?! If so, then you are screwed. We all are.

And what About Edward, my son that is a well adjusted regular kid with average reading age that just wants to learn without the constant meltdowns and shitty behaviour?

Not all teachers. Here in Scotland we were defucted 1/263

I'm a parish priest. When I came to my present post I had six clergy colleagues but they've all retired/gone off sick/moved away, so now it's just me, and I simply have to absorb the workload. I work 80 - 90 hours a week, every week.

I've been ordained for twenty-five years, and always worked very closely with the schools in my various parishes, whether or not they are church schools. Teachers work way, way, way harder than I do. The head of one of 'my' current schools (not a church school) often replies to emails at midnight.

Do you have different STP&C?

Oh, you sweet li'l thang, you!

You've obviously missed your calling. You should be running the education system.

The curriculum changes constantly, "new" and "improved" teaching methods are introduced all of the time. None of them gets a chance to become established and start producing results before it is superseded y another, for- filling for everything - including daily assessments of pupils "progress" takes up a huge amount of time, and is meaningless, classes contain more disruptive, and sometimes downright dangerous, pupils than ever before - even at reception class level.

Our government is failing our children and has been for years. There is so much potential in so many kids, and by the time they are 11 life and the education system has kicked seven bells out of it.

Plus, even if it were possible, "re-cycling" teaching sessions doesn't work - it becomes stale and boring and the children have no enthusiasm for it,

@Bigweekend
A strike day does not count as 1/365 as salary. Hope that helps.

Honest answer?

I’ve probably not had a chance to get round to Edward yet. Then the bell rings.

And tomorrow will be the same.

Im aware how awful that is, but what can I do?

School managers are teachers and I've never worked in a school where leaders aren't intensely aware of workloads. They can't always change it, having to work with the demands of the system, but it's not fair to say they don't value a teacher's time.

I guess it must be different where you live, but where I am nobody thinks that teachers have an amazing deal. Everyone I speak to thinks teachers do a difficult job and don’t get paid enough.

When I see threads like this I tend to think that the OP just has a bit of a victim complex but that’s probably a bit unfair. Maybe there are areas where teachers get abuse for their long holidays and “gold plated” pensions (they’re not gold plated anymore are they?) and I just don’t see it 🤷‍♀️

In my DP's class at least a third of the 31 pupils are SEN and low ability. One pupil is pretty much non-verbal but their parents refuse to admit child is SEN and won't apply for ECH so child has no additional 1-1 support. A fifth of them have chaotic home lives that involves my DP regularly meeting with or producing reports for social services. At least three come to school every day starving hungry so DP gives them breakfast he buys out of his own money and he also bought new shoes for another because their feet were two sizes too big for their trainers that were falling apart at the seams. He also has a few Edwards who he worries about equally because their learning is definitely impacted by all of the above.

So yes, schools are screwed, and so are teachers. I wish he'd leave and go back to his previous profession (he was a re-trainer) but he loves the actual teaching.

I’m a teacher (about to be ex teacher) and before teaching I was never an anxious person. Now I’m a shell of who I was. There’s so many things causing it that I can’t even put my finger on just one. One part of it is the lack of control. You have control over absolutely nothing. Everything is dictated to you by your head teacher and if they say next week you’ll be standing on the roof in a swimsuit giving a talk about migrating birds, guess what, that’s what you’re doing. I didn’t realise that part of it caused me anxiety until I returned from mat leave and realised as she read out the calendar of dates for the years and expectations of how many assemblies and open afternoons you’ll lead, I realised I was having a panic attack on the spot (hidden from everyone around me obviously).

People crying is a completely normal part of the job and there rarely goes a full day where you don’t actually see someone in tears, that’s not to mention the number of people (like me) who were crying daily in private. The parents ridiculous requests and the fact they’d phone in over literally the most minuscule of things massively increased my anxiety. I felt like I wasn’t able to do my job properly because the behaviour was so bad. There was absolutely nothing set up for ASN kids so everyone was just thrown into your classroom as if it was going to be okay. Children and staff were regularly assaulted. A window was smashed in one of my last days and two staff had to go to hospital. Despite all of this, you had to maintain this false ‘everything is rosy’ image to the parents. So people would phone in to complain over the more major things (like a table being thrown at their child) and you had to almost gaslight the parents and act like everything was fine. Even though none of what was happening was actually my fault, it was all perceived as if it was and I was the number one person responsible for it all. I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. I couldn’t drive to work taking beta blockers to stop the panic attacks anymore. I couldn’t sit in meetings and lie to parents face’s anymore. I just couldn’t take it. I’m now off sick and due to hand in my notice. I cannot wait for the feeling of being free. These ‘get into teaching’ adverts come on tv of 6 kids sitting round a Bunsen burner, all laughing along with the teacher and it just angers me how far from reality that is 😔 My biggest regret in life is doing teaching at uni and staying in teaching for as long as I did.

Oh yes, the problem isn't the things you have just listed, the real problem is teachers talking about it.

Any way to make the awful situation in schools the fault of teacher is to be totally grabbed at.

To recruit more teachers what we need is not to improve those things, but to shut teachers up and keep it secret. Then when those trainee teachers enter the classroom in their first training placement, they won't notice these things for themselves at all and will totally not drop out.

When I see threads like this I tend to think that the OP just has a bit of a victim complex but that’s probably a bit unfair. Maybe there are areas where teachers get abuse for their long holidays and “gold plated” pensions (they’re not gold plated anymore are they?) and I just don’t see it 🤷‍♀️

Try any of the strikes threads going on at the moment.

@WineDup i figured as much. The government really are failing us. Why does every kid have issues these days? I swear it wasn’t always like that. It’s not fair as the other kids are suffering. Either class sizes need to half or we need to put the people that need extra help in smaller more specialised classes. Or we need to double the number of staff in the classroom to help.

Pay wasn't the reason I left, it was the behaviour.

If they would just get rid of fucking power points it would save a lot of time and the kids might actually listen a bit

Do we need another thread like this?

I literally find them so depressing. There’s already the one about the strikes. There will be people who always think we do nothing and get paid loads and that it’s easy. There’s no convincing them. All these threads do is open the door to another cyclical “you do nothing!” “actually we do XYZ” “so you think you’re the only ones who work hard??” conversation.

To be fair I haven’t RTFT so maybe this one isn’t like that. I doubt it though.

100% - great post.
Teaching really only suits full-time for energetic youngsters nowadays - once you get a family it becomes untenable to teach full-time. Hence the burnouts someone referred to upthread.

@emotionalmotionsicknesss i think most people here are trying to think of practical ways to help.

its all terribly underfunded.

the example above about a teacher feeding hungry kids with own money. That is not ok. Should the government do that though?! I’m not sure. It’s the parents job. And sadly round my way a lot of parents prefer to spend money on large dogs, phones and trainers than make sure their kids are fed properly.

I literally find them so depressing.

I find the fact that we can't hire teachers so depressing.

No one on this thread needs to justify how hard they work, the evidence is there in the OP that we cannot get people to do the job no matter how hard others assert that it's a piece of piss.

Which means that they should do some self-reflection, not that teachers should list their work schedule.

Oh @Thunderpunt.
You don't realise the irony of what you've written, do you?

amp.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/21/teachers-and-social-workers-suffer-most-from-lost-decade-for-pay-growth-in-uk

sorry if this has already been posted but no teachers have not had their pay protected, they do worse than the private sector and many other public sector workers

why isn't the private sector seeing a mass exodus into teaching?

Because of the time, and cost, to retrain, not because they don't want to do the job. DH would love to do it, but cannot afford to lose his salary whilst he studies.