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 don't want to be lawyered by someone who studied law at university and then worked their way up the ladder at a law firm, learning their trade. I want one with arbitrary real world experience.

This thread simply demonstrates the inability humans have to accept the evidence in front of them if it doesn't fit their worldview.

If teaching offers such a desirable package, why is it hugely under subscribed as a profession? Why do so many new teachers leave so early in their career?

You can debate, compare and complain all you like, but the evidence is clear - working people don't consider the rewards of the profession to be comparable to the workload and pressures it demands.

Accept it and reform, or let education decline further and further and as a nation, suffer the consequences.

It still makes no sense that people continue to say they are not striking for pay but for conditions when their union is asking for more pay. How does that help conditions? Completely illogical

as has been stated more times than I care to count on this, and many other threads:

• teachers were given a payrise this year of 5% (or thereabouts)
• the payrise was not funded
• a non-funded payrise means that schools have had to rejig their budgets to give their staff the payrise they are legally entitled to
• the rejigging of budgets has happened whilst schools are also negoiating the rising cost of living in terms of food and heating and essential supplies such as exercise books (increased around 3 times on where they were this time last year) and paper
• the rejigging of budgets means that the only way pay rises, food and heating, essential supplies can be paid for is by taking money from elsewhere.
• this 'elsewhere' is the money that would previously have been earmarked for resources for the children and/or salaries of support staff.
• In many cases, older and more expensive staff have been ousted from their jobs and replaced by ECTs. Schools are full of staff under the age of 30, with very few experienced staff left to ensure they are appropriately mentored and supported. This means that even fewer staff stay long term. This also means that behaviour standards in school are dropping, with fewer and fewer people able to manage even middle-range behaviour issues. There is a knock-on effect on teaching and learning as a result.
• loss of support staff means if staff are stressed because they don't have teh support they need in class, teachers leave which then means those still in school are losing valuable PPA time trying to cover lessons (because the school cannot afford supply, even assuming there are supply staff to be found), staff are having to plan their own lessons and those of absent colleagues and ensure that cover is in place one way or another, some schools are increasing class sizes to compensate which increases behaviour issues amongst students which teachers have to manage if anyone is going to actually learn anything, staff are buying supplies from their own pockets to ensure their books look appropriate when they are checked (and they will be checked, despite the lack of resources that staff now have to put in them).....

Teachers deserve better. But more importantly, so do the children we teach and our country as a whole. Our future depends on well educated, qualfied people to move us forwards. We are going backwards at the curren time.

You are missing the point

You said

Ineffective lawyers are not promoted to management

I pointed out that what you said isn’t necessarily true.

But what really matters is that teachers are leaving the profession for a variety of reasons, including what they feel to be poor pay.

Hence I, a retired teacher of a shortage subject, could be working in a school every day between now and the end of July, and pretty much name my price. Guess what? I choose not to do that (and get paid more, so don’t need to work as much).

Absolute rubbish!

You say that as though teachers do nothing but whine and join in a "top trumps hard life". They don't.Like everyone else they will mention difficulties they face if people are discussing problems with their jobs, but they don't get into the "Four Yorkshiremen" Monty Python sketch when job stresses are mentioned. You talk as though that they play the "pity me" card constantly.

Nonsense!

’If school management cannot run the school on the allocated budget then they should be the ones tell their bosses it can’t be done’ @JangolinaPitt

Who are these ‘bosses’? Funding comes from the DfE. I don’t think Nick Gibb would give a shit if my head phoned up and said ‘sorry mate, no money left’. Striking IS how we’re telling the ‘bosses’ that it can’t be done, because they’ve ignored us thus far.

Yes! That's the other thing people forget. When you teach, you have to be 'on' all the time. There's no slacking off at your desk checking Facebook or WA-ping your mates or watching the trailer for the new series of Succession on YouTube during working hours and you need to stay upbeat and engaged or you'll very quickly lose control of the class. My DP is worn out mentally in a way he never was in his previous office job.

This!

Exactly the point I was making earlier but you put it far more eloquently than me.

People can sit and debate, hypothesise and complain about teachers all year. It is not getting more people to train as teachers or retaining them in the profession

Teachers deserve better. But more importantly, so do the children we teach and our country as a whole. Our future depends on well educated, qualfied people to move us forwards. We are going backwards at the curren time

Thank you @Changechangechanging - that is exactly the point I (much more clumsily) tried to make umpteen pages back. The government is failing a generation of children - bright, intelligent, eager little minds with so much potential. The waste is CRIMINAL.

People go into teaching for a variety of reasons - but almost all of them have in their make up a desire to make a difference and to give children the opportunity not just to make something of their lives (not everyone will be a high flier) but to maximise their potential, and not just in the work environment. Give them a love for something other than sitting in front of tv/game station; help them find their strengths and explore things that they may find they love.

Quality of life can be improved in so many ways - they may not become a CEO but they can learn to enjoy other activities (many of which are now extra-curricular and few will get a chance to even try). Every child has strengths and many will never find their passion because of the way education is going down the toilet in this country. It is shameful.

Hmmmm very often inneffective lawyers end up in management ime. I don’t think your comparison is well thought out.

Playing devils advocate here.

Do some people go into teaching, who may not be willing or capabale of dealiing with a high pressure job. So the benefits package could be a lot more, and they would still not be able to deal with the working conditions.

Some people do, particularly these days as teacher training take basically anyone out of desperation (which also creates a lot of workload for current teachers who have to work to get them up to scratch or follow the procedure to fail which is really hard).

But we are also losing great teachers. My trainee last year who was good went straight to work in a private school. That govt bursary of tens of thousands completely wasted.

I don't think teaching is easy by any means.

But equally there are upsides, particularly around job security, that not all private sector jobs have. I sat and watched a third of my colleagues made redundant when investment banks started cost-cutting in the downturn. Yes, the salary and bonus was fantastic in the good times, but it was a hire and fire policy (which is highly stressful for the people doing the firing as well).

I have a friend who's a head and he tells me it's actually really quite hard to manage underperforming teachers out.

Teaching is an important job and I'm sure it's also very stressful (particularly for the SLT managing shrinking budgets).

But my friends who are teachers don't always appreciate that other jobs are highly stressful in a way their job may not be, whether people having to oversee large-scale redundancy programmes or others on zero hours minimum wage contracts. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way to teachers who are doing a valuable and worthwhile job.

And how will pointing out the existence of other stressful jobs help recruit and retain teachers who are actively choosing other jobs over teaching?

It should go “teaching is a stressful job, and we have a critical shortage of them so we need to take action.

”Teaching is a stressful job but….” is useless here.

Not necessarily. Perhaps it resets the narrative that teaching is far more stressful than other jobs?

It's not badly paid, there's decent job security, it's a worthwhile occupation in terms of inspiring kids and the pensions are better than the private sector (which doesn't say a lot in fairness). Is that not a positive in terms of recruitment?

Your understandably I'll-informed musings would be more valid if there wasn't also a very serious retention problem. Very few who leave go back.

*ill

And no-one has explained why people should support a strike for pay if the real reason is something else.
A strike is clearly not the appropriate protest if the real reason (🤔)is conditions then work to rule instead and do a better PR message to parents.

Clearly not, given the disastrous recruitment figures.

do a better PR message to parents

what more do you need than the system is going down the pan, your child is being taught in bigger and bigger classes, by supply teachers, by unqualified staff (including admin staff), by an ever-changing number of supply teachers, there is little experience (real experience gained over 20 plus years) left in any school across the country, behaviour is worse and worse, staff are expected to do more with less and less, support staff are being sacrificed to pay for heating and exercise books, there has been a failure to meet ITT numbers for years but it is even worse this year and way off (31% in my subject), I suspect more children than not are now being taught by non-specialists in maths (and probably science and MFL). MFL is in serious danger of being knocked off the curriculum the shortage is that bad (and those that do come through are poorer and poorer quality), staff are leaving and increasingly are not being replaced, schools have adverts out again and again and again.....

As I said, the children deserve better. And we deserve better as a country. A poor education system will seriously limit our futures.

Serious, what more do you need?

then work to rule instead

Work to rule as a teacher in England is utterly pointless as the rule is we need to work as many hours as needed to do the job.

We tried it, it made zero impact.

Its not necessarily secure. Increasingly schools employ on fixed term contracts for one academic year.

From my understanding, work to rule would work here in Scotland since we have a clearly defined working time agreement, whereas this doesn’t seem to be in place in England. Unsure about what the situation is in NI/Wales.

Work to rule would have a far, far bigger impact on children than sporadic strike dates. In teaching, work to rule is a far more extreme measure than strike. However, it’s true impact would take weeks/months to be seen.

@JangolinaPitt Teaching is your third career, you say?
What were the two you failed in, before switching?