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 am not a teacher so therefore everything I say can be ignored 😉

Based on many conversations with teacher friends and when I thought about a PGCE myself, my personal opinion is that the pay is OK (but not great), the pension is great, the holidays are great.

What put me off (from their tales - all secondary) was shitty management, politics, ever changing admin, awful behaviour from students with little management support, and arsehole parents.

You could double the pay and none of that would go away.

Rightly so: teaching in the 80s is not really something to aspire to. But there is a middle ground.

What are you on about? This would address the theme that keeps cropping up that teachers are not paid for school holidays so why should they work in them (and therefore either end up working in them anyway or have a huge term time workload, or both). Paying teachers for holidays would mean they are getting paid for work they already do. Of course they can choose, or maybe the class work would dictate, to do some of this work flexibly during term time or weekends, but the difference would be they are paid for school holidays and so wouldn’t be paid as a part time job anymore. I’m not saying work to rule 37.( hours per week as when do you ever get that in any professional job? You just work whatever the employer needs, but at least they would be paid for a full year.

My DP is a primary school teacher and having read this thread I think the biggest reason people teacher-bash is optics. Striking for more pay in a cost of living crisis was always going to ruffle feathers and I don't think the unions have done enough to make it clear that due to current legislature, the only issue teachers are legally entitled to strike over is pay. They simply are not allowed to strike over conditions or workload caused by the ridiculous curriculum and attainment expectations. If they were, these strikes would've happened so much sooner, and far more regularly. Pay is part of the problem but by no means all of it.

But what really saddens me when reading threads like this is that many parents don't seem to care about those conditions. Instead they're obsessed with what they think are teacher perks like holiday and pension (while always conveniently overlooking that teachers don't get paid for holidays). Instead of frothing, maybe think about who suffers the most if teachers continue to leave in droves? Your children.

I am so thankful our DC is midway through secondary, and so is my DP. I would be seriously worried having a child starting primary right now. What kind of state are schools going to be in a few years if the teacher recruitment crisis continues? I predict classes reaching 40+, no specialist teachers available for subjects like maths and physics, SEN and pastoral provision being cut, no extra curricular clubs because there aren't staff to run them. It's already happening, and it's just going to get worse.

And the more you froth, the fewer people will bother to train. Why on earth would anyone enter a profession which has become as despised as bankers or journalists?

@echt also I’m really hoping you’re not a teacher if that’s how you speak to people who have reasonable suggestions or debates and that’s the language you use.

As with most of the other strikes there are lots of ‘experts’ who think the jobs are easy etc etc. Both DD’s schools have been amazing since they started, one is now in secondary whilst the youngest is just finishing primary. The primary school provided spaces for parents during the pandemic. We got regular emails about lessons and what they were going to be doing. During covid they were amazing. Outside of covid they were just as dedicated, always trying to come up with new plans to help the kids learn. The teachers are often there late and come in during the holidays preparing their classrooms. I can see them when I’m walking past and they do that for the kids. DD’s secondary school are always planning DD has sent many emails for help and has had a response quickly with lots being late into the evening and early hours of the morning. I don’t dispute some teachers and schools won’t do this but I think people need to realise what teachers actually do. I think it’s largely ignored. They need a better level of pay and their Woking conditions reviewed.

What are you on about

Teaching in the 80s was perfectly fine. And has generated a bunch of adults that are balanced and have decent jobs.

to be honest kids these days have so many issues, poor parenting etc. I say take me back to the 80s. A more detailed lesson on great fire of london isn’t going to fix behavioural issues, nappy wearing in reception, etc.

Apologies if somebody has already posted this. I think it does a fairly good job of summarising why teaching (the current expectations and demands) is so exhausting and why the job can’t be shoehorned into a 9-5 hour work pattern.

”Imagine you have roughly 6 hours a day in which you need to conduct roughly 5 hour long meetings. You also need to prepare for those meetings. They need to be engaging and dynamic with activities for people to do throughout the meetings. Oh, and those meetings aren’t with adults. They are with people whose prefrontal cortexes are not fully developed so you’re also helping them manage their behaviours. You also need to mark in meaningful ways all of the work that they do in the meetings. You also need to communicate with those families regularly. You need to be assessing all day. You need to meet benchmarks from all over the place. And the whole time you’re going to have some members of the public telling you that you suck.”

Totally agree. The situation is a mess. I work as an agency worker for supply staff. There's more than enough work as they're short on teachers. I Iove working in schools but won't do it full time due to the bureaucracy of it all. It's revealing I'm the staff rooms that a lot of the time the demographic for teachers is early twenties and the the support staff are 40s who were teachers who don't want the faff of the system and have taken a pay cut to have less stress.
For me, it's not the money that puts me off as much as the unecessary workload (i.e. paperwork not teaching) and lack of support.

Teachers went on strike and schools closed loads in the 1980s?

The idea of teachers doing 9-5 got me thinking about how it would work. I would love to do 9-5 with the usual annual leave that I could take at any time I wanted. But there would need to be massive, sweeping changes

1. 6 week summer holiday for kids would need to go. You can't plan for the year in advance. You don't know the students that you'll be teaching. You can't catch up on marking and assessment. Marking and assessment need to be as immediate as possible (Loads and loads of research). One week break for students would be doable - a week for teachers to do medium term planning is perfect.
2. Teachers would be working much shorter hours per week so would need reduced contact hours. Students in 4 days, one day off.

The maths works out pretty well. Current teaching days in a year = 190. For the new proposal to equal this, we'd need 190/4 = 47.5 teaching weeks. So 4.5 weeks of holiday for kids spread over the year, as opposed to the current 13. Those weeks will be part of teachers contracts and for training, long and medium term planning etc. Teachers can ask for annual leave like other workers, which would need covering. They could also go to doctors appointments, dentists and even funerals that aren't for immediate family members, if prepped in advance

Would it be better for me? Maybe.
Would it be better for children? Maybe. Summer learning slump is real.
Would it be better for working parents? Maybe. Same number of childcare days needed, but more spread out.

Is it too radical? Definitely

@Inkpotlover “while always conveniently overlooking that teachers don't get paid for holidays”

Ah, that again.

Your post is about optics, but for me that’s one of the “optics” mistakes.

No, technically holidays are not paid.

But say a teacher gets paid £30K for 39 weeks. No teacher ever talks about pay, “I’m on £40K pro rata.”

It effectively is paid holiday, but when arguing about pay nobody wants those “optics”.

I fully support a strike for pay, but that is the one point on which I’ll teacher pay bash all day long.

Ironically… some of my most memorable lessons were when they wheeled out the tv and put Bbc learning on 🤣 through the dragons eye etc.

ok not every lesson should be tv and worksheets but some could easily be. Not every lesson needs to hit these ridiculous ofsted moving goals.

@FlakyCroissant lovely! I would hazzard a guess that I hit a nerve there!! Love the way that people have to resort to rude, nasty comments when they aren't articulate enough to form a reasoned response!

So giving cash to the children from abusive families is going to help the child is it? Of course not - me thinks you need to give your "ignorant" head a wobble!

Genuine question, but is it not the case that they want the cheaper (aka less experienced) teachers? Not that there are overall no teachers. I do know of teachers looking for work who've struggled to find permanent positions because they have 20+ years' experience and are therefore unaffordable for a cash strapped school. They are not disengaged incompetent duffer types either.

I think so @HomeTheatreSystem and said the same. Lots of experienced teachers struggle to get jobs.

You can't have it both ways. 37.5 hours per week means just that, not "whatever the employer needs". I know. I've worked it, and believe me the employer backs off like a scalded cat about compelling teachers to work when the school is closed to students.

Back to the UK Teachers are paid to attend 195 days - that's why they don't want to work when the school is closed to pupils. Nor should they.

I know you're saying work to rule, but the 37.5 hours pw hands it to the teachers on a plate. If only......but the UK Gov is savvy and would never agree to this.

My DP trained as a computer science teacher in the pandemic. Before that he had had “proper jobs” in private sector IT for 35 years.

he got through 2 terms as an nqt after training and quit. Partly because of the horrendous stress and the long hours. And partly because he realised that hour per hour he could earn more stacking shelves in Tesco. He was making less than £5 per hour.

he’s now back in a “proper job” (IT project manager), loving the work, no stress, earning more, working half the hours.

how do you explain that?

Teaching in the 80s really wasn’t fine, @Firedgirl .

Corporal punishment still happened, children with additional needs were treated appallingly, teachers could teach ‘whatever they wanted’ and while some people have fond memories of skipping through meadows filled with wildflowers learning about nature more children were stuck in front of endless maths textbooks. I can honestly,hand on heart say I learned nothing.

Now, things have swung the other way but OFSTED have been around for the best part of thirty years, so it isn’t just that.

Rises linked to inflation would be a great start, so you weren't actually getting a pay cut every year.

I'm afraid to say there are also lots of not very good teachers out there and some of them are the ones with long experience.

IME (of recruiting in schools) we'll pay what it takes if we get the opportunity for a good teacher, but if it's just a case of filling a post with someone who will do, because we can't get anyone else, we're not going to pay top money. Also, a struggling teacher who's been in the role for a long time is much harder to help/develop than a less experienced one.

Teaching is a hard job and just like any other career, some people aren't very good at it. Many are amazing, watching a good teacher in action is like theatre, but pretending the other sort don't exist doesn't help anyone.

Like any other profession, a teacher goes in on an entry level salary, which is a pretty good graduate entry level (and goes up with experience). As with any other career there are opportunities to take on extra responsibilities and climb up the career ladder to earn a better salary. The pension as with all in the public sector, is very generous in the current climate and far outstrips pensions of those in private sector. Maybe it’s time to pay teachers and public sector workers more, but reduce their very generous pension. There isn’t money In the pot to pay for it all. Also in my experience private sector workers are not getting cost of living rises either, companies are feeling the financial strain and can’t afford it.

I was a teacher and I'm now a data scientist. I initially took a pay cut to change careers. I left because of workloads, micromanagement, and being treated by society as the shit on the bottom of people's shoes. I didn't leave because of crap pay, I always thought the pay was OK. I don't agree with teacher's striking because of pay BUT I do agree with them striking over workloads and general working conditions. I think it must be easier for the unions to fight over pay or something?

I am an ex-teacher. To be honest, I think the pay, pension and holidays are pretty good, although stagnant pay is frustrating. It's a very liveable wage though particularly once you get past the first couple of years.

My issue was student behaviour, huge classes, poor resources, unreasonable demands from SLT, and the constant threat of Ofsted. These things combined made the job untenable to me in the state sector, therefore I am moving to the private sector. The pay is not very different, but I think the conditions will be.