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

The starting pay is very good for a job but it's beyond ludicrous, just totally insane, that a job which is only very modestly well paid for experienced professionals could sensibly: (a) have what amounts to an 'up or out' policy that doesn't allow people to hang around at the top of their pay bands for very long; or (b) be so demanding in terms of work-life balance that it's often deemed not suitable for parents/people with family responsibilities.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen I agree it’s been messed with too much. We need to go back to basics. Some of the most highly educated and intelligent people I know are in their 50s and 60s. They had a decent primary and secondary education without all this nonsense. It really is too much.

I do think part of the retention issue is that it's mis sold as a profession.

At the end of my STEM degree we had someone come in and try 'sell' converting the degree to teaching as a good option. It was all about £20k grant to train, 13 weeks holiday, secure job with set hours and a good pension. Nothing about the reality of it.

Most people that converted were people with low second class degrees, that had little work ethic. Most quit after 2 years and didn't have to pay back their grant.

The 3 students who always intended on going into teaching are still teaching and absolutely loving it.

Then there are a few people, like me, who would love teaching as a profession. Long sometimes unsociable hours and hard work are no different from my industry job. I already volunteer with kids and love it. But the salary is way too low at less than half of what I current in industry.

Firedgorl, the reason teachers are not leaping at your idea with cries of joy is because they are not in charge of the curriculum that they are, by law, required to deliver.

By all means, lobby the Government for a reduction in primary curriculum content, and a return to skills not just knowledge. Lobby the Government for a change to Ofsted’s inspection criteria. Lobby Government to fully fund social services, health and mental health support for schools, and a huge expansion in special schools. Lobby Government to fund proper support for children with SEN in school, including highly trained advisors as well as expert support staff.

Once all that is sorted, teachers may indeed plan and deliver ‘simpler’ lessons. However, the environment for that has to be right first.

Is teachers problem really the pay or is it the working conditions? Having looked at what teachers are paid, the scale they can move up without promotion or additional responsibilities (I'm in Scotland, it may be different elsewhere) and the holidays etc my conclusion is that it is the working conditions that are the problem. If teachers could limit their working hours to 36 hours a week and had decent support to deal with challenging and potentially dangerous situations I don't think there would be any question that it is a relatively well paid profession. The problem with getting a pay increase when the problem is working conditions is that the money is likely to come out of the education budget, which will mean less money for new teachers, teaching assistants and other resources and this will exacerbate the issue with working conditions.

Yes, it’s extremely much. I was a primary teacher and although I loved the kids and actually teaching them, the pressure and micro scrutiny every day was like being crushed by a 10 ton truck. I couldn’t leave work, ever. Couldn’t get it off my mind with worry about what I hadn’t yet done, how I was going to perform in the next days observations, how on Earth was I going to get x y and z resources, how was I going to make x lesson fun and meet the LO and criteria. How was I going to handle Bobby who could have a rage of anger at any moment and be a danger to himself or possibly other kids.
In the end I just couldn’t do it which was a shame as I did love the actual teaching part and I spent 4 years and 20k training.
But my life and feeling like I wanted to wake up every day was more important. Took a very low paid low stress job. It’s a shame. A real shame. It’s only got worse since I left other teachers tell me.

For people like me pay is not the issue. I have run workshops in schools as a support staff member. I enjoyed it and was good at it. But it was incredibly low paid for the work, teachers are paid much more. What stopped me becoming a teacher was the workload. I have a family and do not want to spend my life working evenings and weekends.

‘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,’

Why shouldn’t they learn that not everything in life can be new, exciting and stimulating ? That quite often the boring things, like learning to count , are not very ‘interesting’ but they are vitally important.

I think the pandemic is partly to blame for anti-teacher sentiment. I used to think the teaching profession was amazing and they had an incredible hard job.They have to ‘perform’ all day long to a challenging ‘audience’ and it must be draining.

Then the pandemic happened. I was really disappointed to see the attitude of many individual teachers and the unions. Especially as a frontline NHS worker.

However, I am able to separate that from the current pay and conditions for teachers. They are not paid enough for a very difficult job.

There is too much bureaucracy and lack of respect and excessive scrutiny. Like many of us in the public sector. Many teachers do care about the children. Unless they go on strike, more teachers will leave and children will suffer. I believe they have to go on strike for the children and for the future of education, and I support them.

I believe that if many teachers were allowed to strike just for the welfare of kids and not their own pay, they would. But their hands are tied.

Without decent education we are lost as a country. We need good teachers. We need to retain the decent ones and attract new good ones.

And the big issue is retention. The low retention rate means either the right people are not being recruited in the first place and/or the working conditions are not what people were expecting. Sort out retention by making the changes needed and a lot of the issues will be solved.

I do not get the message in the OP's post?

Oil Rig Rescue divers have excellent pay, brilliant shift patterns, and great pensions. Does not mean that I want to spend my time in the North Sea.

Maybe peoples skill sets lie elsewhere?

Good point @Allthegoodnamesarechosen The sooner they realise life is not all fun and games the better.

the way I see it education is about getting life skills, getting to the next step (you need to learn to count before you do square roots which then leads to gcse which enables you to get the a level to do a science degree).

education these days all seems a bit jobsworth. I imagine someone sitting in an office (not teaching) at the education department saying “when we teach great fire of london we MUST add a point to the curriculum about how it made people feel mentally” I wonder how many of these extra teaching points added to the curriculum are actually useful or worth it.

also I don’t get the point about reusing materials… sure the teacher has seen the sheet before but kids will only learn each topic once. It will be nice and fresh for them.

Both

So you’re comparing the ‘adrenaline’ of being in the forces with being a teacher, and wondering why it feels ‘boring’ to people who have trained to survive in extraordinary circumstances, to kill, to perform disaster relief, etc?
apples and oranges doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Honestly, duh.

One of the issues in this debate is that everyone has a memory of ‘being in school’ and they use that memory - however old and partial and from a child’s perspective - to shape their idea of what teaching looks like in today’s classroom.

Standard lesson, today’s classroom. Let’s take the video / worksheet / paint proposal, and a real class. In the class we have x, who has just arrived from Ukraine. Not only are videos of buildings on fire likely to be triggering, they also have no English at present. There is another child at the early stages of learning English. We have y, who is partially sighted, so will rely on audio, needs an adapted worksheet and will need support with painting. We have z, for whom pictures of fire will link to multiple inappropriate movies they have watched, and will this lead to behaviour acting out scenes from those movies, so will need an alternative actovity to maintain the safety of others. We have a, who is exceptionally anxious and whose mother has requested they don’t see any video about anything upsetting, which would include fire. We have b, who has a medical condition that means they can’t write or hold a paintbrush, and will need a scribe and sn alternative follow up activity. We also have c, who works at the expectations for 18 months to 3 years, and will not be able to access the lesson at all. They do have a 1:1, but of course the alternative activity needs planning.

This is, by modern standards, a low needs class in a nice school. There is 1 teacher for 32 children, and this is one of the 5 lessons of the day (plus things like reading, times tables etc) that must all be adapted for the needs of the class.

Those thinking that teachers can recycle lessons don't seem to realise that primary teachers are regularly moved around different year groups. So they're teaching entitle different topics and levels regularly. Many schools will not allow teachers to spend more than two years in the same year group. So they're constantly having to re-plan and re-resource their lessons.

Entitle= entirely

How to tell me you arnt a teacher 🤣
Primary kids especially just won’t engage, learn and retain with dull non exciting things generally speaking. Even more so now that we are in the age of video games / you tube videos and shorts and sensory overload in every day life. And also you are fully expected to make each lesson fun and engaging!
’oh sorry mr ofstead inspector that my maths lesson was pretty dull but the kids need to learn that life isn’t all fun and games you know’ won’t quite cut it 🤣

In our memories of our own schooling, many of these children would not have been in this class. There was a good school for the blind and partially sighted. Access to unsuitable horror films et al online was much less common. Yes, children with little English did start schools, but ime LA advisors provided support and dual language speakers were often employed short term to help.

The curriculum was less pressured - I remember Maths + English plus one other lesson, not today’s helter skelter dash through morning work, spelling practice, Maths, English, Guided Reading, ICT, lunch, History, Music….

'How to tell me you arnt a teacher'

I hope that you aren't a teacher ....

From this thread, I think there’s too much treating children like they are gods. In my day, we had a kid that for religious reasons couldn’t take part in the nativity. She did other learning whilst we all did it. It was fine. She was happy. We have become way to accommodating and as a result children are entitled and lack resilience.

just because some kids have a particular issue, we can’t make it all about them. Sometimes you gotta go sit out in the corridor and do Independent learning if somethings going to upset you.

Bear in mind the teacher will gave complaints from every parent except the one of the recent refugee if their children’s needs aren’t met.

They will also get a complaint from any parent of a child hurt by child acting out horror movies (who can’t be out of the classroom - flight risk). And at least one from someone sympathetic to the refugee child stating that the school should not be teaching this unit out if consideration for that child and so a totally different alternative should have been planned from today.

(If you think the above isn’t a real picture of what would hapoen, he k any number of NN threads titled ‘should I complain to the school about..,’)

Apologies for typos.

I'm pretty good on pensions. Anyone with service under the old regime, which lasted til April last year after the McCloud ruling, can take it at 60. Or earlier at 55 at a reduced level. I'm 47 and will be able to retire by 55 if I want. I still don't see many teachers working til 60 at the moment, though that may change in the future- probably not for a few years, though.

Ex school staff here, not teaching or TA.

I wanted to be a teacher, took an admin tech role in a good top secondary school. Ten years I worked there, after two months I quit my thoughts of training to be a teacher.

student behaviour was awful, the last HT an absolute cow, treated teachers like shit, treated non teaching staff even worse. Previous HT weren’t bad and had a couple I really liked. Got a letter from local EA once to say I wouldn’t be getting a pay rise but hoped I was grateful for still having my job!

ridiculous amount of admin for teachers, most lessons not a lot got taught due to behavioural disruptions. Most breaks there’s be a teacher stressed about how much content they’d got done in lessons.

you can’t tell a child off anymore. DH who was a teacher got a word in his ear from HT because he shouted at a student. That student was beating the shit out of another student.

really glad I’m the age I am, we’ve had the best of it and I worry for my grandchildren what sort of life they will have.

im not surprised teachers are leaving, if I’d have become one I’d be leaving too. So glad I dodged that bullet.

I am in admiration for anyone who wants to carry on being sworn and worse at on a daily basis. You all deserve a medal and a pay rise in my opinion.