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)

'So we can legitimately stop work after 35 hours, down tools and leave.

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.'

Meaning they are taking home a full time, whole year salary for 35 hours a week, term time.

And they want another 10% because its a 4 year degree and should be a competitive salary?!

@FamilyLife2point4

Dont you get practice placements and a probation year?

They must have a rough idea

@Botw1 I did a training course as a probationer recently where they were spouting “remember your why!!” They brainwash you in the beginning, young girls who have always wanted to be teachers and see it as their calling and what they were born to do. Generally people go in to teaching because they want to make children’s lives better.

When you’re 21 years old graduating and earning £28K and you live at home/have no other commitments it doesn’t seem too bad a deal!

Fast forward 10 years, you’ve got 2 kids of your own at home and your nursery has just upped their daily fees to over £70 per day, you have no energy to do your older child’s homework because you’re too busy marking the 30 homework books of your class and it’s all pretty fucking grim…

It’s still not £16 an hour. You get loads of holidays and a generous pension that costs at least about 25-30% of your salary. So don’t talk rubbish

it’s not realistic for you to get 10% pay increase when there is a huge public sector funding crisis. Who else in society is getting that? What should be cut do you can get yet more money?

Pp said they were on 42k?

And I think most working parents will empathise

At least you get the holidays off with the kids

Silver linings and all that

So what’s the answer then?

The answer really should be that we should be able to down tools after 35 hours, and still do our jobs well.

In my experience, the ones who do down tools after 35 hours are not the ones campaigning for more pay. I could tell you exactly who in my school works to their contracted hours (and I’ll say it again - they are perfectly entitled to do so! They shouldn’t HAVE to work unpaid overtime or during their summer - they aren’t being paid for it!) - and I could also say, these people aren’t the ones I see at the picket line on each strike day.

Generally speaking, the ones who feel that they aren’t well paid, are the ones working more hours than they are paid for.

I don’t know what the answer is. One solution would be decreasing contact time, to allow more time in the school for preparation. But I got into teaching because I love actually being on the chalk face, so that would decrease my job satisfaction (and potentially also my stress levels right enough)

Or, do we use more centralised resources? Well, yeah, that would work for certain subjects, but not all. And it would probably also decrease my job satisfaction, because I get a good sense of accomplishment when I make my own resources.

Or, do we remove the hours stipulation? No, because then we can have ever expanding workload placed on us, and we will just be expected to do it, like in England.

Or, do we pay teachers overtime reflective of what they actually work, at their normal hourly rate? That would boost the average FTE(based on the approx 50 hours that most teachers seem to claim) to £65k. Obviously they’d need to evidence the extra work they do, so someone would probably need to be employed to do that in each school too.

In the balance, I think 10% is fair.

Absolutely the holidays are a benefit but I was answering your post about the fact that new teachers should be “aware” because of placements etc (post grads only get a total of around a 16 weeks in total!)

I'm all for the 10%

And reworking of the contracts so teachers stop doing voluntary work then saying they are underpaid

If that means paying overtime for work that can be evidenced as necessary maybe that's the way to go

£42k is top of the pay scale, not probation year which is what they are referencing. You don’t get to £42k for many years.

If you don't know what being a teacher involves by the end of the super duper degree course plus probation year then there are big failings in a course that has such high entry requirements

She said 10 years down the line it doesn't seem a good deal.
10 years down the line it's not still 28k

I’d 100% give up my time to make more money. Just in the same way my nurse sister picks up a double time bank holiday shift or a 1.5 time night shift when she has a holiday booked or weekend away she’s saving for.

How many graduate jobs in Scotland get paid more than that though? Once you take the employer pension contributions into account it’s about £55k if not more. Few in the private sector get that salary in Scotland even as a graduate and none get those holidays.

There are options for teachers to make more money?

Marking exam papers. Tutoring

@Botw1 youre twisting my worsts- my point was that the new teacher excitement and wanting to do good inevitably wears off when you’re ground down by the pressures of the stuff they seemingly “should have been aware of” due to placements.

Also believe me there lots of teachers on £28K who have children/mortgages/nursery fees too (myself included)

So you even admit lots of teachers just work the minimum hours! Yet they deserve to make twice the average Scottish wage and get twice the average holidays. Not entitled or anything!

I’m a primary school teacher so exams aren’t relevant to me. I’m a teacher not a tutor, next you’ll be saying I should pick up bar shifts to top up my wages… you know exactly what my comment meant- there is zero scope to earn overtime by actually doing the job you’re trained and employed to do.

@YerAWizardHarry

I didn't twist your words

Op said you were talking about a nqt teacher pay, I was only pointing out 10 years down the line isn't newly qualified

Yeah there's loads of people in loads of jobs with mortgages childcare etc. Lots of them on less than 28k.

It’s normal for salaried workers to work beyond 9-5. Most teachers I know work far less than average

Why should you earn overtime when you are supposed to be a salaried professional?

@YerAWizardHarry

You could always retrain as a nurse?

Easy to get into (allegedly) and loads of vacancies so plenty scope for OT

@Botw1 I worked for the NHS for 10 years prior to becoming a teacher, my sister is a healthcare support worker, I know exactly what it entails, thanks.

My sister takes home more as an unqualified band 3 if she’s working nights than I do as a teacher. My point was that I have no scope to use my role as a teacher in the same capacity in that I can’t top up my wage by picking up an extra shift or deciding to commit myself to night shifts.

For each hour I work, I get paid £16. Holidays don’t come into it - we aren’t paid for most of those.

I am not getting any pension payments because I’ve had to opt out of the pension scheme in order to afford my mortgage and childcare costs. Obviously these are not universal truths, but I am purely speaking about my own situation.

@YerAWizardHarry

Yeah I got your point. I don't get why it's relevant?

If you'd rather have less time and more money, do something else

@Botw1 you're not getting it are you? People WANT to teach. They LOVE the children but things are shit right now! “It’s shit for everyone!” So bloody do something about it! Everyone has the right to industrial action.

My shopping bill is up £40 a week, my childcare bill has gone up a third, I need to remortgage and I’m about to have to pay £200 extra a month, my last electricity bill was £250. My outgoings have basically doubled in the last year. EVERYONE deserves to be paid well for the roles they do but I didn’t expect to waste my late 20s retraining to better my life for a job that was previously well respected to now be in a situation where I can’t afford to heat my house and pay my bills and to be treated like shit by every Tom Dick and Harry who think we should just shut up and put up!