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

Just FYI there is a massive shortage of teachers, It just doesn't meet your numbers yet.

Maybe we should try to stop it before it gets to your numbers.

@Florenz "Teachers do tend to moan more than any other occupation."
And what is your evidence for that, other than a cheap bash? There are half a million teachers. You reckon you know for a fact that they moan more than any other occupation?
Which ones? Name them. Back this up with some verifiable stats.

What do you mean name one? All the other occupations. Most people that don't like their jobs just quit and do something else instead.

Florenz

There is a difference between "moan more" and defending a profession that gets moaned at and then being accused of moaning.

"All" other occupations? Bollocks.
As I thought, you have no evidence.
However, there IS evidence of the absolute haemorrhaging of teachers from the profession. But hey, you sit back and make your cheap shots but please don't come back on here and start complaining theat your children don't have qualified teachers standing in front of them in future.

If it was that bad they'd quit and do something else, and there wouldn't just be a shortage of teachers, there'd be no teachers, or a MASSIVE shortage of teachers, with only 1 or 2 in each school.

That appears to be the way it’s heading, as they are quitting en masse.
Well done on your prescience.

🤣Solicitors in multinational law firms moan incessantly, ime. They don’t quit in droves, though, they are just temperamentally inclined to moan. Many parents moan incessantly, but few step away from parenthood.

There is something going seriously wrong in education when there are big shortages of teachers. Only a complete twerp would wait until there are few teachers left.

As for the century in which teaching is - I seem to remember Michael Gove had a massive hand in the current curriculum and exam system and didn’t want to listen to “experts.”.

Teachers are very under appreciated and underpaid.

I think another thing about this weird perception that teachers “moan more” than any other profession is that there is in fact no other profession which has such a massive role in the life of the family. Doctors and nurses you only see when you are ill; solicitors when you are in trouble, etc, etc. Teachers are involved in families’ lives for a significant part of the day, for most of the year, for well over a decade of a child’s life. Parents therefore whinge more about teachers than any other profession simply because that is the profession they have most dealings with, for the longest amount of time - and funnily enough, this means they also notice more when teachers bite back and don’t just tolerate every unreasonable demand that is thrown at them. No profession will tolerate being undermined by ill informed and generally vindictive people who claim that the profession’s members are lazy, low skilled, easily replaced or moany - not even the teaching profession.

Excellent point, @Walkaround

Look at the demographic of teachers though - it’s one of the most female dominated professions, and traditionally women would be more likely to make do and put up with things that wouldn’t happen in a male dominated industry.

I’ve worked in a school setting for 15 years: 4 years as support staff and 11 years as a classroom teacher.

The one thing that always strikes me about these threads is that there are lots of people who aren’t teachers who pertain to know what it is like to be a teacher. I think this comes from the fact that all/most of us have been in school as pupils and had first hand experience of a school environment and therefore seem to ‘know’ what the job entails. What we forget is that when we were taught in school, we only saw the lesson being delivered- not everything that happened in the background. Equally, parents see the reports and have the parents’ evening conversations, but again, they don’t really know what the job actually entails.

Just because I have seen a nurse and have experience of using their services, doesn’t mean I know what their job actually fully involves. Same with Royal Mail workers. I trust that as a collective body, they must feel a need to strike and there must be something unfair happening in that sector if the strength of feeling is so strong to vote to strike. Many don’t seem to afford teachers the same courtesy.

I was on strike today: yes, it’s about pay, but the main reason is that the pay rise WAS NOT FUNDED. There are less support staff and less resources in school as a result as schools can’t afford them. The budget didn’t even give extra money to heat the schools your children are learning in. THIS IS WHY WE ARE PRIMARILY STRIKING: we care deeply about your kids and want them to be in warm classrooms, with all the resources they rightfully deserve, with the support of members of staff and with teachers who are not overworked as a result of staff shortages.

This. 100% this!

I'm a teacher and I'd agree that a lot of teachers moan quite a bit.

I expect people in other jobs moan too, though.

Where would the money come from to pay for the teachers pay rises? More tax on private sector workers? Most of whom haven't had anything like the pay rise teachers are demanding, and many of which earn less than teachers do in the first place, some quite a lot less.

They could track down more tax dodgers like Zahawi, that’d raise millions.

Our current tax system has no mechanism to just to tax private sector workers. No idea what you are on about. Perhaps you really mean business owners and shareholders? They do all the real work, right?

Average private sector wage rises are currently at 7.2% compared to just 3.3% in the public sector. So yes, the private sector workers are getting better pay rises so really don't know what you are talking about on that point either.

All tax is paid by private sector workers unless there are public sector workers who pay more in tax than they earn from their jobs.

Not read the post properly but as the daughter of a teacher ..... it's sooo horrendous for them and I dont blame them for striking, I support them! My childhood memories are being sat in my mum's classroom, after school, while she worked relentlessly to get her classroom in order, mounted pictures, planned lessons for the next day..... and the there were the staff meetings..... I'd still be in the classroom but the cleaner would be asked to check on me! I love my mum and I'm so proud of her.... but what a horrendous job to do! Not to merino the parents that shouted at her for not doin this that and the other, the amount of work she did at home, the money she spent in resources for her job, the amount of time spent in the classroom during school holidays preparing for the new term...... it's a hard job, it's not 9-3 by any means! This is what I learnt about teaching as a child and funnily enough I'm not a teacher...... ironically I'm a nurse tho... but that for another thread 🤣

By the same token all post tax public sector wages are state funded benefits for the private sector significant amounts of which is actually funded by borrowing.

Or do millions of public sector workers not buy goods and services from the private sector?

Hey, if it’s so amazing in the private sector- why not come across for a higher payrise!
Your sick pay will reduce by 80%
You will lose your index linked government backed career average pension, but you can then put in 24% of your monthly pay to equate to about half the benefit you gave up.

Its all smiles and rainbows in the private sector!

Do not get angry, it’s a tongue in cheek reference to ‘if Teaching is so great come and do it’

I've no idea what this means but are you suggesting that public sector workers don't pay tax?

That’s a weird little fantasy. All those public sector workers who currently pay tax should cease and desist at once - they should not be paying tax at all, as they don’t earn real money to pay tax on like the private sector does, they just steal from the pockets of the private sector. Because obviously money is a real thing and not at all invented by quantitative easing trees for the benefit of the private banking and business sector - not like state education, healthcare, social care, refuse disposal, passport services, border control, etc, etc, which aren’t contributing anything to the economy or the human population🤣🤣🤣.

Talking your usual twaddle 🙄

Bit like the postal workers you're slating in another thread......

So public sector are wrong, private sector are wrong

Are any workers right?