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

I agree with this. I don’t think the pay and financial package is terrible, I think it’s fairly attractive with clear potential progression. It’s way better than your average private sector job.

However, the expectations, workload and stress are bloody awful.

Parents have no idea of the scrutiny teachers come under from OFSTED and the ever-changing policies that the government keeps introducing. The focus is more on providing an audit trail and fulfilling policies than meaningful teaching.

I was a senior school governor for 5+ years. I have SEN children and I had contemplated moving into teaching to use my knowledge around SEN. After what I have seen - absolutely no chance. The job is thankless.

Also, I worked as a claims assessor for 15+ years. A very large proportion of sickness claims were teachers with stress/anxiety/depression. It’s so bad that the insurance industry now treats teaching as a high-risk occupation when underwriting sickness health cover.

No amount of money could make up for the workload, the stress and the huge political burden that’s been put on teachers. OFSTED is a political organisation that is jerked about by government whims and their assessments are less about quality of teaching than just meeting the latest government gimmick or fad.

Yes but there is actually something in this. Why can't the workload be scaled back to a normal working day?
My mother was a teacher until she retired a decade or so ago and she didn't do long hours. But these days it seems to be so bureaucratic that it creates a shit load of extra work.
Not saying the pay doesn't need looking at because I think it does but in terms of retention surely addressing the ridiculous workload is important too?

One of my friends said that the real benefit of her teaching high school history for a year was that no other job could possibly be as bad.

I’m going to answer honestly, in case the OP is genuinely interested in hearing some answers. Being well aware of how these threads usually go (and I can see this one is not an exception already), I’m not trying to be provocative.

I have a few friends, both men and women, who have became teachers as their second career, via the ‘Troops to Teachers’ scheme. I did briefly look at going down that route myself as part of exploring my options, part of which was asking them what they thought of it, having already made that leap from the forces to the classroom.

The consensus from them all was that the job was quite a lot easier than their previous ones- the pay was ok, low stress, days could sometimes be longer, but they were warm and dry, and no 24 hour shifts, exercises, last minute duties, working weekends or 6 month stints away every couple of years more than made up for that. But the biggest red flag for me is that they all said it was just a boring environment- both from an adrenaline perspective, but also their interactions with the fellow teachers. A slow grind, was how one described their working day. Head down, plod on, stare at the clock. Though apparently the kids could sometimes be hilarious, though mainly not intentionally. But not anywhere enough to offset the overall feeling of ‘meh’.

So that was mainly the reason I didn’t seriously consider a job in teaching.

Husband got out after 15 years in secondary and has taken a £14k pay cut. He's much happier.

Anyone who fancies his job and thinks it must be a piece of piss. Step up do it. On top of staying up till whatever time marking and prepping in school hours he was fending of grooming rings outside the school gates, dealing with classes where there were 12 different languages and some of the children were new so didn't speak a word of English and then a head of department who criticised everyone if test results weren't high! Ridiculous and both him and I had enough of the craziness.

@DomesticShortHair you are talking out of your arse! Sorry but I'm calling the bullshit!

Someone will be along soon to break down exactly the issues of bureaucracy in the UK system, I'm not competent to do this as I no longer work in the UK. I left before it all got very silly and spent 16 years working where my lesson planner was never looked at and I was only observed by SLT once. BTW I did plan my lessons.

I think they do deserve a pay rise, I don’t think they earn that much to be honest. They put up with a lot of hassle from parents, marking homework in the evenings and weekends etc.

DD’s school is lovely, the teachers appear to be hard working, friendly, they go above and beyond. DD is happy, progressing and we’ve never had any issues. (Fingers crossed).

Can't be "scaled back" because. 45 min detention or "enrichment" after school every day. Cpd until 5 once per week. 2x parents evening until 630 just this month.
If I start teaching something today and the students have prior knowledge gaps I need to plan a lesson for that tomorrow as well as adapting today's lesson in real time to allow for that. That then leaves less time for learning the actual topic we need to cover.

Even if you are lucky to have a bank of pre prepared lessons you still have to tailor it to your current set and or year group. Also have to cater for send children.

Oh and for those saying we couldn't do "a real job" I worked in business for almost 10 years before career change.

This was prior to DC. I started teaching before Tories got back in. Job is now not what I signed up for.

Pgce students are being snapped up. Several have already got jobs for September.

And your perfectly entitled to. Quite frankly, I don’t really care if you believe me or not- doesn’t make any difference to me either way. I do find your reaction interesting though- just for curiosity, which parts do you find implausible?

We were talking the other day about the stellar work so many teachers do. A great teacher absolutely changes lives and I’ve seen this in two of my children, one of which had something caught that would never have been otherwise. Also the planning teachers do, personally comparing it to a lot of other jobs I’ve done, is amazing. Lockdown should have shown most people how difficult it is to have a plan for most children’s days and they do it with a large number of students. Add to this the inability to take days off in term time (I work in retail and in December it’s a huge deal to take any days off so I don’t know how teachers do it!). You will never ever be able to reason with the ‘I could do it’/ ‘my job is so much harder’ people.

I've been a teacher for 15 years and everything about that description is almost entirely the opposite of my experience and all teachers that I know, and in fact everyone who works in a school.

Almost the only saving grace of teaching at the moment is that your feet barely touch the ground all day. I'm constantly paying attention to multiple different situations all day as well as attempting to deliver a lesson plan.

This year’s 5% pay rise wasn’t funded. It came out of existing budgets to the detriment of every child and member of staff.

There’s absolutely no way we’d be striking if this has been a properly funded pay rise.

I’d rather they hadn’t put the pay rise through at all than like this. TAs already not being replaced, class sizes increasing, fewer resources etc. etc.

So I think teachers work very hard and deserve good pay and respect but this is why a lot of people get annoyed my teachers. Generally they seem unable to understand that other jobs can also be hard, tiring, stressful and long hours.

Yes to this! We are now having to do a skills audit for our local authority to justify our positions because they’re looking to make redundancies in order to cut the overstretched budgets. We don’t have enough staff as it is so I really don’t know how we’ll manage.

But the biggest red flag for me is that they all said it was just a boring environment- both from an adrenaline perspective, but also their interactions with the fellow teachers

I can see that the lack of 24 hour shifts, not being deployed overseas at short notice and being indoors most of the time might be an advantage. But anyone who finds a school environment boring as described above is either a)a very boring person themselves or b) hasn’t actually ever set foot in a school.

I used to be quite critical of teachers - until I worked as admin in a large London state school. I now know that there is not enough money in the world to tempt me to do what they do. The hours, effort and dedication involved are truly mind blowing.
A good teacher ( or nurse or carer or train worker) is worth their weight in gold. These aren't jobs anyone does for the money. If they feel so undervalued they need to strike I 100% support them.

My child's primary 90% of the homework is on computer apps that mark it for them. I don't see what's so traumatic about being a teacher especially at primary level - reception to at least year 3.

Lots of workers in the private sector didn't get inflation level rises

I wish they'd make schools 9-5 and all year bar the 28 days leave the rest of us get with all lesson planning and marking being done in that time

Bet no teacher will agree to working those hours with so little leave though.....

@DomesticShortHair

I too have a couple of friends that went that route on retirement. Neither completed their first year as they found the attitude of the (secondary) children, the workload and the drudge without reward was not worth the pay.

One said he was actually scared of the angry person he was becoming, worse than he had ever been in Service, trying to persuade disinterested, angry disaffected youths to learn, without management help and with his hands tied by ineffective strategies sent down by those who hadn’t been in teaching for years.

I did make that move to education (although not teaching) and seeing it first hand can completely understand why they didn’t continue.

So you have to work til 6.30 twice a month. How difficult for you

Of course they would. Many teachers have previously worked in the private sector previously and many more go on to work in it after leaving teaching.

@thestealthwee If you increase the contact hours, you have to increase the pay... The government won't agree to that.

I'd glady work 9-5. On paper I'm paid for 32.5 hours per week. Most weeks I work double this.

I don't think my pay is that bad. However in real terms it has been slashed in the last 10 years. Teachers are also only allowed to strike over pay. We can't strike over lack of funding or the shit show that is the pulling of all support services. We strike over pay and make noise about the rest.

@thestealthwee

I wish they'd make schools 9-5 and all year bar the 28 days leave the rest of us get with all lesson planning and marking being done in that time

The teachers in my school start work at 8, and none of them leave earlier than 5 (as do I). They also take work home most evenings (marking or setting work) and that’s in a Primary School.

Just because the kids leave at 3, doesn’t mean the staff do - how ignorant!

I left at Christmas.

What frustrates me about this debate, with teaching but also with other public sector careers, is the focus on 'strikes for pay'.

The narrative being fed to the masses makes us sound greedy, lazy and ungrateful.

The issue is less the money, and far more the working conditions. I would have stayed if the day to day job was more bearable. But I wasn't bleeding myself dry AND having no money left each month.

One or the other would have been bearable (just) but it's the combination of shit conditions and the kick in the teeth of pay freezes (essentially cuts!)

People have no idea what a teacher does on a day to day basis - you just have to listen to the callers on LBC. They don't appreciate the planning - I heard Nick Ferrari say the other day 'surely once you know the stuff you don't need to plan anymore', the marking, endless demands, lack of time to actually do the job etc etc.

I loved my time in the classroom with the kids - but I couldn't bear the bureaucracy and bullshit that made the job untenable. And I'm not a YES woman - I stuck my chin out, and questioned things, stuck up for my team and tried to protect their workload. I became unpopular, as you can imagine 🤣 so I quit. Now they're up shit creek without a paddle as they can't replace me - recruitment and retention issues are real!

Have you ever tried to teach 5 consecutive classes of exhausted kids three days before a holiday?

Kids are learning, growing and developing and the holidays are for them to process and reinforce their learning. The holidays aren't for teachers - they work through the majority of them anyway, despite holidays actually being officially unpaid.

Do some research on child development and learning, then tell me that the kids don't need the holidays to consolidate their learning.

I have to say, your comment is ill informed, and you seem to think teachers are glorified babysitters. And you are part of the problem as a result.