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

And although lesson are 9-5, most teachers are in school at least an hour before that, and often until 6.30/7.00pm

I think we don't give teachers the kind of respect they actually deserve in this country. They are literally educating our future... future leaders, scientists, historians, doctors, artists and everything in between and the government treats them like crap, the fact that they have to strike shows this. Scandinavian countries don't just have a fantastic education system because of the curriculum, it's because teaching in those countries is regarded as the top job and they place so much importance on it that they treat their teachers with the respect they deserve and get so much from them in return.

To be honest, we need a huge cash injection into the very infrastructure that props up society, teaching, schools, nhs, all of it. Instead, it lines MP's pockets, the ones who are privately schooled and have private healthcare and so forth. The only way to keep people controlled is to run their services into the ground, they're literally turning the economy into a shitshow and turning us against each other to bring the downfall...

I would have loved my teaching job to be 9-5. And if that could be arranged now, my daughter would probably stay in the job instead of leaving it. But of course the government would have to let go of just about all its bureaucracy and OFSTED targets, because the job as it is couldn't be done in that time.

Seriously, it would be bliss to just go home at five and focus on your family or your hobby.

Clearly the long holidays aren't that valuable for teachers, as many are leaving the profession for jobs where they don't get much holiday.

I don’t want to be a teacher because I don’t want to look after a room of children for the rest of my life. I assume a lot of other people feel the same. Nothing to do with working conditions or pay.

And me. I'd be an English teacher after 25 years doing something else – I think I'd be great and I'm definitely qualified. But I can't start again at the bottom while my financial commitments are where they are. Maybe when we've paid off the mortgage?

are you actually serious? is that the teaching you want for your children?

Not only that, but I reckon the vast majority of the active teaching - ie the presentation of new content - could and should be left to video resources.

Brilliant idea!

Stick them in front of the telly/computer.

We need to teach children to THINK, not just mindlessly allow information to flow over them. they need to learn facts, yes - but also discuss and question, and marshall arguments. That only happens face-to-face and interactively.

I lectured at a university, and the standard of students is appalling to what it was. So many now need to be spoon fed tiny pieces of information - they find it almost impossible to research anything properly themselves. Yes, they can use Google, but are totally undiscriminating and will copy and paste paragraphs of unchecked information into essays.

These aren't stupid people (at least most aren't) - they have just never been taught to think things out. They accept all sorts of rubbish as accurate without even saying to themselves "How can I check this", " Is there any contrary opinion?", "How rigorous is this research?", "as anything more up-to-date on the topic been published?"

A huge proportion of them also feel that as they are paying fees they a a) the boss of the university, and b) entitled to a 1st class degree even if they don't do a scrap of work for 3 years.

We should return to grants and ensuring that only people who can cope with university and the independent learning involved are adnitted.

It's letting them down to send them out into the world like this, and letting wider society down, too. A lazy rse who scrapes through in media studies is unlikely to kill anyone. A lazy rse who scrapes through in medicine just might.

Exactly. We could form the same question to any profession really- would you be a builder if they paid 300k annually? No, because I suck at demanding physical jobs etc. Funnily enough I know teachers who are pleased with pay, sick pay, maternity leave, annual leave etc. It's always on the internet where they complain how poor they are that they're on breadline and should be given priority to food banks.

My parents were in teaching back in the 70s and 80s. Even then, teachers never had short hours and long holidays. We were latch key kids, with my parents not coming home till nearly 6pm because of marking, detentions or, in those days, the many after school activities teachers were expected to do.
my childhood was spent walking around the piles of exercise books waiting to be marked. Holidays were filled with us being turfed outside so parents could do studying for the next year- guess it was lesson planning but didn’t know the term.

Teaching never been a 8:30 to 4pm job with long holidays. And it hasn’t always been well paid - teachers were on strike around wages when I was in secondary school in early 80s (or maybe it was late 70s?), and certainly my family did not have a lot of money to spare- few holidays and certainly never abroad

but what has changed I think is general moral. By the time I was graduating my parents both said don’t go into teaching. They cited that behaviour in class rooms had declined, children and parents had little respect and most of the time they felt like referees in the boxing ring . They also felt with the rise of national curriculum they were teaching by route to meet exam requirements- there was no allowance for teachers to work to a curriculum that was broader, enriching for general education vs than just pass exams. And the final nail was Ofsted inspections and their predecessors- the amount of time they were then spending on bureaucratic , non child focused activities to have the school get through inspections with good rating. They said that headteachers were becoming less supportive, more authoritarian in their need to maintain these perceived stands that were being published externally. There was too much blame, top down dictation. And then they had to contend with every new education secretary coming in and deciding to “tweak” the standards or curriculum based on their own vanity project even if they had no clue about teaching or why educational standards were failing some kids.

All of this comes down to the gradual removal of seeing teachers and educationalist as the experts in the business of teaching children and giving them the authority to deliver education systems based on what children need vs what will win votes. Like so many of governments actions, it is the undermining of expertise that is at the root of it. We could same we see the same in NHS.

in my job, in industry, I was respected as the expert. I was given autonomy to decide policy, practice etc based on my expertise. The CEO of the company didn’t try to tell me how to do my job at detials level. He recognised he wouldn’t have a clue- barely needed to know my job existed. . He trusted that with my expertise, I knew damn well what I needed to deliver to meet overall company objectives, and let me figure out how I would do it, as he would for my colleagues. My career wasn’t perfect, but at least I wasn’t being pushed around by every Tom, dick, and harry telling me I was useless and hadn’t got a clue what I was doing, and failing, and lecturing me every 5 minutes on what I should do even ugh they had absolutely no experience

if teachers feel unvalued and disenfranchised, only money will keep them there. When it’s not enough money, they will walk

You really have to have been both a teacher and worked as ‘something else’ to make any judgements.
Its a bit like never having had a child yet saying ‘what’s so hard about being a first time mum? It’s only a baby for gods sake? Just feed it and put it down to sleep and resume your life’.
Honestly until you are in the thick of it, you have no idea!

The National Curriculum for KS2 for History (relevant for Y3) states:
^Pupils should continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. They should note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They should regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They should construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They should understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
In planning to ensure the progression described above through teaching the British, local and world history outlined below, teachers should combine overview and depth studies to help pupils understand both the long arc of development and the complexity of specific aspects of the content.^

Can you explain how the proposed ‘standard lesson’ on the Great Fire if London - watch video, do worksheet, paint picture. - meets the requirements of this statutory curriculum? Maybe an emergency cover lesson every now and again, or, you know, when a global pandemic means children worldwide have to be taught online for a period of weeks or months, but not as ‘proper daily teaching for a mixed ability class’

@Changechangechanging i don’t want burnt out teachers. I don’t want classes where my kids get forgotten about. I don’t want teacher strikes.

the pendulum has gone too far the other way.

how would you fix this shit show then?

but why is there so much planning when surely there have been many lessons you've repeated over the years over and over?

I've been teaching for donkey's years and I could probably wheel out a reasonable lesson on most topics with just a board marker and a textbook. I'm also lucky that I'm a maths teacher and there a billions of free online worksheets that I can just print out, and my school subscribed to a website that has good powerpoints. Planning doesn't take me long.

However it still takes me time each even to think about what my class needs to do the next lesson, to select appropriate resources at their level and modify if necessary, to save and print those resources. Teaching is reactive. I cannot, as others have suggested, do all my planning in the holidays and then sit pretty during term time. The times I have tried planning in the holidays I have ended up binning it and doing something else. I need to teach the class in front of me, not some theoretical class, and I need to teach them according to how they got on in the previous lesson. With 4 lessons a week, that means 4 evenings a week need time spent planning the next lesson for that class. And then for my other classes too.

We've just started doing 'Retrieval starters' for each class, each lesson too, which need to be adaptive each lesson based on the previous lesson, so I don't just need to plan the teaching for the current topic, I also need to plan the reinforcement of previous topics.

As I said, I'm an experienced teacher who can plan quickly. It still takes time. For less experienced teachers who also need to get their head around how to teach new topics, it's really time consuming. For teachers in other subjects where there are few free resources, I don't know how they manage. (During lockdown I was horrified to find all the primary resources are paywalled, that was a real shock).

I think we expect too much from teachers and children In that case @cantkeepawayforever its no wonder teachers are burning out. It’s a year 3 lesson on great fire of london. It should be fun.

Yes- you have to deliver all that above requirements and then also make it really fun. Not to mention the several children in the class who have SEND and each present a unique challenge to access any part of your lesson or may be on course to disrupt it in any way possible.

@PurpleWisteria1 dont you think it’s a bit much?

I had a text from one of my teacher friends last night as one of the kids she teaches (11 years old) called her a “stupid fucking cunt”. She’s used to it but SLT insisted on calling parents. Mum said “well he gets wound up by you teachers doesn’t he, what do you expect?”

I take my hat off to teachers. I genuinely have no idea why anyone does it, nor why bloody MUMSNET hates the people looking after their precious darlings all day long.

Fired, it may or may not be a bit much. It’s statutory, ie legally required, whatever the makeup of your class / school, and us inspected against.

@prescribingmum Agree and I said almost the exact same thing on one of the other 25 threads currently running on this topic. It’s shocking to me how many people are truly thick as mince.

In my job if things were too much I would push back. I’d go see HR. Ultimately I’d quit.

people like me are just trying to help. money isn’t the issue. It’s just too much expectation. For kids and teachers. And for what gain? You think a 7 year old is going to recall that information mentioned on the curriculum when they are at uni and beyond? Unlikely.

what I remember from school is reading, maths and all the fun bits like looking after pets, making friends, cooking lessons, kind teachers cool topics like
Tudor history or the plague.

when people make suggestions to help the teachers always get nasty and rude and defensive. and almost want it to appear like there’s nothing anyone can do and it will be the worst job in the world forever. People on this thread are in agreement that it’s all too much.

it’s got to change.

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?

Because for decades now teachers have been telling us how awful it is and put people like me off even considering it. I don't know anyone who thinks teaching is a cushy job by the way. those who do must be living on another planet. I will counter that slightly by saying that teachers don't always understand other professions either and make unsubstantiated claims about how easy it is to earn good money for working fewer hours in industry. Simply isn't true and no mass exodus from teaching into similarly paid roles in industry either.

Yes, one of the things that makes primary teaching much more difficult than it was is the 2014 revamp of the Primary National Curriculum (the new spec GCSEs have, if I understand it, had a similar impact in secondary) - a significant increase in curriculum expectations at the same time as a significant increase in children’s needs and a significant decline in availability and hugely extended response times from all the external-to-school support (social services, CAMHS, special schools, advisory teachers, local authority advisors, speech and language, Ed Psychs, paediatricians, counsellors etc etc etc) that mean teachers have to fill all the gaps themselves.

Not sure of the exact average. But whatever the average is theres more to it than that simple figure, it’s starting salaries, rate of progression etc etc.

To all intents and purposes it is a 9-5+ job. No overtime - but tasks have to be completed for the next day/week etc.

4 weeks leave/year that’s effectively what I got. 12 on paper but not in reality.

I’m retired now after 34 years. I went at 58/9. Big exam changes on the horizon, my subject looked like it was disappearing. I wanted to go before I felt squeezed out, to go whilst I still enjoyed it, to leave on my own terms.

My pension is ok. (State old age pension in a couple of years will help)

Today’s younger teachers aren’t on such a good pension. No lump sum at the end - useful in paying off your mortgage.

There’s a lot of talk about teacher shortages, not enough in training, starting wages etc etc

Much talk, from Ministers, about grand schemes, vast numbers in training etc

Less talk about retention - why do so many leave after a few years?

Because that wouldn’t give enough ‘work’ to all the educationalists, educational psychologists, politicians, central ‘boards’,Stonewall and their ilk etc etc. Who get to stick their oar in,‘monitor’ and ‘assess’.

Sounds good to me though, with the added proviso that the boy at the back who keeps making rude noises and chucking things about gets to experience the Fire at closer quarters. [only joking; well,maybe)