Scottish teachers pay offer

[GneissGuysFinishLast]

AIBU to think that it’s not really an improved offer, and that 12% over 2 years is overall a worse deal than 10% in one year, and that they are only making this offer to delay strikes?

(reported on BBC News here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64642699)

@GneissGuysFinishLast

Oh you know, the whole keeping people alive thing

I haven't said anything repeatedly. I said it once.

Comparisons were brought in because you asked if the (added hours) hourly rate was fair for that level.

Anyway I hope teachers get a good raise but id rather contracts were also changed and education as a whole sorted out.

(BTW, I don't live in England)

No.

There is no pay scale from 33 to 47.

Thats going across 2 pay scales. Bottom of band 6 to top of band 7

Most hv will be a band 6. So 16 to 19 an hour

You need to be a manager to be a band 7 or do some kind of advanced practice

Even top band 7 is still only about 23 an hour not 25

Arguably, nurses wouldn’t be able to do their job if they weren’t taught by teachers. Both jobs are valuable and needed. Why does it need to be one over the other? Their pay comes from completely different budgets.

What do you think needs changing about Scottish teaching contracts?

I presumed you were living in England because you were talking about GCSEs which are wholly irrelevant.

Can’t actually believe you’ve got the audacity to say nurses require lower educational level! I’m astounded. Most nurses I know have honours degrees and many go on to complete masters degrees. And never mind that a teacher teaches kids various subjects at varying levels of competency. Nurses from the day they step in a hospital literally spend their days saving lives and trying to prevent people from dying. The 2 professions don’t compare.

Lol

It's you who is arguing that nurses should be paid less because in your opinion they're not as clever as teachers. I only said they should be comparable and that teachers are already better paid than some other roles

It was the first hit that came up on Google.

I think the contracts should be changed to reflect the actual work required rather than setting teachers up to resent working more than their contracted hours and having to work 'holidays'

The education service needs much more funding and far more funding for SENand behavioural issues

No, I wasn’t saying nurses should be paid less. I’ve said several times they should be paid more than they are. I was simply stating that you can’t compare nursing to teaching, because the demands of the job are different. Why should they be comparable? They should both be fair, but not necessarily comparable.

Many jobs are underpaid for the work they do. Support workers pay is terrible. Carers too. I’d support wags rises for them too. But it doesn’t help nurses causes when they insert themselves into debates about teaching pay with whataboutisms, rather than supporting air pay for all workers.

This is exactly what the Tory government want - us workers fighting over scraps whilst they laugh all the way to the bank.

It’s bizarre that you’d go for an English qualification when the post is nothing to do with England.

What about Scottish teachers contracts is not reflective about the work they do? Have you ever seen a Scottish teachers contract? How would you word it? Because again, we are not striking because of our contracts - we are striking over pay.

I didn’t say nurses are less educated. I said that nurses REQUIRE a lower level of education.

Most teachers I know are masters and postgrad qualified, and I know many with PhD’s, but that isn’t a requirement.

I was simply stating that you need to make a like for like comparison in terms of education in order to compare pay - I bet those with masters etc are further up the pay scale, and more in line with teaches salaries?

“Never mind that a teacher teaches kids various subjects at various levels of competency” - not sure what you mean - or if again, that’s maybe referencing teaching in England where you may not have a subject specialist at high school level? That’s not the case in Scotland, if that is what you mean.

Nobody is saying that nursing isn’t worthwhile and nobody is saying nurses don’t deserve more pay.

The education service needs much more funding and far more funding for SEN and behavioural issues

Not to mention, far more training for teachers re ASN issues, because, according to Angela Morgan's recent report for the Scottish Government, many Scottish teachers don't seem to have much understanding of these at the moment.

You just said your last increase put you into top rate tax. You don’t get £16 an hour, especially when you take into account benefits such as huge pensions.

extra pay for teachers has to come from somewhere- what should we cut so you can get a 10% pay increase?

Teacher in Scotland here.

I hope we take the deal. It's a clever one, IMO, pitched perfectly to make teachers look greedy if we refuse and reads the current climate well - support is waning and teachers themselves are fed up of losing money and the impact to T&L of striking.

We won't get offered much more.

I reckon I'm in the minority but I think we're renumerated fairly well for the work we do. Maybe teachers are working longer hours but they're also determined to reinvent the wheel and resource everything from scratch. With some centralised planning and resourcing, workload can be cut, with the added bonus of improved T&L experiences. We get great holidays and there is a degree of flexibility to our working.

I want to stop losing double periods with my exam classes because of bloody strike days.

So yeah, I hope we take it.

Also controversially, some teachers work incredibly hard for excellent outcomes for their students. Others... not so much. Quality of T&L varies drastically across a school building, never mind the country. The fairly attractive pay packet and excellent holiday package has the unfortunate side effect of attracting lazy teachers who are frankly stealing a wage. If we rooted them out, there would be less bad feeling towards teachers. Unlike nursing, where poor practice would have disastrous and severe consequences, there are fairly piss-poor teachers taking up permanent posts across the country and dragging down the profession's reputation.

And I think nurses deserve more money too.

Of course its an issue in England too. They're also striking

If you didn't want people to comparisons you shouldn't have asked for comparisons.

You absolutely did say that nurses should be paid less than teachers because the entry level requirements were less. Or at least that's how it read.

They are comparable because they are both degree educated public sector roles. Teachers don't deserve more than nurses

Or any other similar roles.

If you have a contract where the employee thinks they have to work 15 hours a week and all their holidays for free, it's not fit for purpose

And yes, I know it's about pay.

Thats what's being debated. Which level of pay is the accurate one and is that a fair amount of pay for the role.

I do support better pay for all. I support linked wages too. I don't vote tory

Im not asking you to support nurses cause. Good job eh!

No I didn’t - I said we were supposed to get the pay rise in April but it wasn’t processed til November. Because I got 8 months of backdated pay in one month, that figure along with my backdated holiday pay put me into the higher rate tax for that month alone. If I had been paid that value each month I would have been taxed less on it. I’m yet to be rebated.

My salary is £25k and I work 30 hours per week.

It’s not up to me to find the money - there is plenty of pointless things the government pay for that could be invested in vital services, IMO. That’s the governments job.

@Botw1 agreed their contract isn’t fit for purpose - not their fault though - if teachers ‘worked to rule’ (I think it’s called) standards would drop considerably- govt takes the risk that most teachers will go the extra mile - just like most nurses will move hell & high water to make a shift/ save a patient.

@FuckingHateRats i completely understand centralised resources, makes perfect sense - however it goes against the policies of CFE, pupil led learning & differentiating - meaning teachers have to constantly reinvent the wheels to meet these standards

@SueVineer see my previous comment about Westminster taking 55p of every £1 Scotland generates - the money is there…..

@FamilyLife2point4

Again, I didn't say it was teachers fault. Although, you'd have to wonder why they sign them

Have you read EIS on twitter? There seems to be some strong feelings to reject! I’m quite surprised tbh - I am on the fence, arguably it IS just 1% more, and probationers are actually getting a marginally worse offer.

I guess it’s subject and school specific, I personally feel I need to constantly “reinvent the wheel” because of ever changing standards - particularly in the senior phase.

I completely agree that there are varying levels of quality of teaching across schools and this need to improve - professional update doesn’t go far enough IMO, it’s very much a tick-box exercise. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found there are far fewer opportunities for CPD over the last few years - even before covid. When I first started teaching there were content free courses, and there seems to be very little now - especially with regard to understanding standards.

I would disagree with you there - we have a lot of flexibility and pupil choice in our BGE curriculum, and still use a lot of centralised resources. The point is we've designed them to be flexible and adapt to the class. You cannot meaningfully differentiate when you're constantly creating new material - the goal becomes to have something to teach with, but cannot include appropriate scaffolding and support and challenge when you're always in new-resource territory. Because we have core units, were able to create meaningful differentiation work for EAL learners, or those with first level literacy. I could never support as well if I was creating from scratch all the time.

Plus, CfE is a bag of shite. I teach English - it's like they hate the idea of knowledge and knowing ANYTHING concrete. All wooly, generalised nonsense without a strong foundation of any core conceptual knowledge. It's an embarrassment. If my resources don't really fit with the CfE framework, good. They might actually be half-decent then.

@Botw1 going to guess new teachers don’t know what they are signing up for.

I see a lot of problems re pay and rising costs and for Scotland it’s easy to see where the problem lies inappropriate use of Scotland’s funds by Westminster- time to get angry & point the finger squarely where it belongs. Imagine the cost saving just getting to nationalise the energy when it’s 97% renewable.

@FuckingHateRats my understanding is for secondary, the curriculum has changed so much over the past 5 years alone, with more changes to come, and this is part of the ‘issues’ teachers face (I am told this is school related too - same wage different job, depending on school - low attaining vs high attaining, poor behaviour vs good behaviour, high SEN needs vs low needs etc) as parents we are told teachers are continually reworking the curriculum to meet needs.

They sign them because they believe what they say.

Teqchers in Scotland are actually in a far better position than teachers in England - their contracts don’t actually have a number of hours worked on them, whereas ours do. So we can legitimately stop work after 35 hours, down tools and leave. They can’t in England, which I believe is part of the reason for the strike.

The thing is, some teachers do down tools after 35h. They can legitimately do so. Others don’t, because they know if they do that, it’s the kids that suffer.

Could I do my job in 35h? Yeah I probably could cobble together a paragraph to read and find some questions on it, mark it, hand it back and go home. Maybe fire some grades into a report too. Job done.

Would I do that though? No. Instead I meticulously differentiate my materials individually for each kid in each class. I come up with new fun ways to teach, to improve uptake. I look up behaviour management strategies. I gather each kids jotter in once a week (I teach 250ish kids) and mark it, leaving individual feedback because that’s now the expectation.

The government know we will do this though, so they only need to pay us for 35h.

They sign the contract because they believe it to be true. They don’t realise it isn’t possible to do in 35 hours. There are so few teaching jobs, they are so happy to finally have one that they don’t really care what it says, to be honest. They also believe that now that they have actually secured a permanent job and have a bit stability, that things might get easier.

And to be honest, it does get easier once you have taught in the same school for a few years. I was in my school for four years when covid hit and I was finally getting to the point where I wasn’t working CRAZY hours. I felt like my courses were good, I had a feel for the school, and so on. And then covid hit and I was back to square 1 because all my resources needed to be made suitable for online learning. And then we weren’t allowed groups. So I’ve had to adapt everything again, and my workload has increased. Im hoping next year will feel less stressful. Maybe.

@FamilyLife2point4

C'mon

It's been pointed how intelligent teachers have to be but now they don't know what they're signing up for?!

The landscape of teaching is changing, for sure. More and greater diversity of need. Behaviour is a real challenge.

I don't think these are shocking facts for new teachers though. We have more languages in our classrooms than ever before, but this is expected. Behaviour can be very difficult, but this is experienced on placement.

I find my job very challenging at times, but so do most professionals. I also feel it's a huge privilege to teach a subject I am passionate about, that pursuing my own subject knowledge is legitimate professional learning for me, that I can be part of a young person's journey into adulthood. We need to big up the benefits of teaching, to attract the right candidates.

@GneissGuysFinishLast

Theres your answer as to why some people think teachers don't deserve a pay raise

I love your last sentence 😂 so true.

I wonder how long til the next thing comes along. I feel like covid has distracted them a little. It’s been a while since they introduced something “new”

What part of this post explains why people don’t think teachers deserve a pay rise? It would be helpful if you could quote it as I have no idea what part you mean?

@Botw1 i don’t believe anyone fully understands what any job entails until they do it - I’m thinking if my customer service days, people can be awful - my cousin was held at knifepoint working for farmfoods, didn’t sign up for any of it.