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'm pretty sure that sensible people realise that £38k isn't Scrooge McDuck money.

I'm a bit broken (mainly by behaviour) today. So are very many of my colleagues. Two more TAs have resigned this week. Many teaching and support staff are off with stress or other health conditions.

Retention is going to get exponentially worse. Like, really soon and really, really worse.

Four teachers have resigned from my last school over the last few weeks. Out of a teaching staff of 20.

The chances of replacing them by April? Very slight, I'd say.

Whatever some of you think about teachers, this proportion of teachers abandoning their profession demonstrates that it's not the relatively easy and well paid job that you think. And it will absolutely affect your children negatively. Which is why you need to support them.

We have 6 adverts out right now for teaching staff across 4 subjects and literally 1 applicant who can't start until September as they are in the Middle East. One.

We also work with 4 supply agencies but are looking at dropping one as we are now getting supply who barely speak English, which in turn is driving behaviour off the wall. Nothing against them as people trying to get experience, and 2 have been able to speak to our students who have additional languages, but it is making it so much harder.

You wouldn’t survive a day in the real world.

Leave teaching and find out yourself what it’s really like.

And good luck trying to find a job with 3 months holiday a year.

This doesn’t sound poor. Just middle class.

You work 30 hours a week + get school holidays ?

A lot of people don’t even have a second child because they can’t afford it.

Exactly! It’s funny how some teachers think all the other jobs in the world are less stressful.

In all the posts demanding more pay, they forget to acknowledge their holidays!

I am quite happy to do a few odd supply days locally but nothing available, no vacancies in my local areas at all....either no funding for staff or no vacancies ??

@BackAgainstWall many ex teachers do survive in other jobs. Very few teachers go back to teaching. There certainly wasn’t a rush when Boris was asking ex teachers to help after COVID.

I am sure most ex teachers aren’t sitting at home on benefits and not working.

It’s really not a good idea to encourage teachers to leave the profession. With fewer teachers training and more teachers leaving, the education system is pretty much buggered already

I absolutely acknowledge the workload. But paying existing teachers more suddenly won’t help with workload! What’s needed urgently is to increase funding to hire more teachers and support staff. That will start to ease the workload and stop people leaving.

Teachers are already compensated quite well for the time they spend working !

@Jazz12 teachers can’t strike for more funding. By striking they are hopefully highlighting to people the dire straits our schools are in

@Jazz12 If teachers are well-compensated, then why aren't people applying?

What’s needed urgently is to increase funding to hire more teachers and support staff

You've not been paying attention. You can't hire a teacher that doesn't exist.

There are so many schools trying to hire teachers right now who can't get anyone. No applicants.

That’s not “middle class” - we are very much working class. Household income is below national average.

I work 30 hours per week, but I work 50% more hours than I’m paid for.

And actually, those on higher incomes tend to have less children than those on lower incomes. It’s obscene that a two income family shouldn’t be able to afford to have a second child.

Every single teacher I know has worked in the “real world” - I worked for 10+ years before teaching.

I’ve worked in retail, sales, hospitality, finance, and in the third sector. All significantly less stressful than teaching.

Leaving teaching is exactly what people ARE doing. And have been for a few years, which is why we now have a problem.

I don't know any teacher who left, who is unhappy in their new job. Quite the opposite! However, the three teachers we had at my school who came from corporate jobs, all went back to them after two or three years. They said it simply wasn't the job they thought it was. And one of them left due to a stress related condition, which resolved once he was back in his old role.

Does your husband work fulltime? You should look at how to increase his salary.
your salary is lower as you are on a 60% salary which is going to make it harder if the other salary isn’t high enough to support your reduction.

Wouldn't I? Must have dreamt the 20 years I worked in the third sector, the £million plus budgets I worked with, not to mention the staff I managed. I also successfully worked lots of minimum wage jobs in my youth. Like all of my teaching colleagues

I suggest you try managing a class of 32 15/16 year old, fill their heads with knowledge and make sure they know how to tackle questions so that they maximise their GCSE grade. That's as real world as it gets.

Many of us have survived pretty well in the real world. I did until my late thirties - I was a late entrant to teaching. Ex colleagues who left at about the age that I started teaching are surviving well too. They’re earning as much as or more than they did in the classroom, their work life balance is better and they can take their holidays whenever they like. So you’re wrong.

I didn't start teaching until I was 43, I'm well aware of what working in the " real world" is like, thank you very much!

That "real world" comment cracks me up every time.

Just did a quick calculation. 70% of the teaching staff at my school did something else before teaching. Nobody I know who has left teaching has said anything other than how grateful they are they escaped. And teaching very, very much is the real world. In all its gritty, screwed up charm at the moment.

He has a good salary but is part time - we aren’t interested in changing this, instead I’ll go full-time. This is temporary as we couldn’t afford to be without my wage so I only took a short mat leave. As I say, we aren’t struggling as I’m not able to pay the bills, but we certainly don’t not have any extra money for horses or anything ridiculous like that.

If we were set to have another Conservative government I'd bet that within a few years they'd change legislation to mean all schools could accept unqualified people as teachers. Makes sense, they'll work for the low pay and after all who cares about your child's education? Certainly not this government. We likely won't have them much longer but that'd be the picture if we did.

Gove did that a decade ago. You don't need a teaching qualification to teach anymore, unless in one of the increasingly rare LA schools.

What people in the private sector don’t appear to like is the fact that the real world is actually in the public sector. Plenty of private sector jobs that are actually a piece of piss.

Ooh. It’s so easy to throw around pointless, rude comments. I can see why some people do it, rather than engage any brain cells. I blame their teachers - clearly didn’t do a good enough job of educating them. 😂