To think this could solve teachers' problems

[NovemberRains]

Teachers want higher pay.

Their employers currently pay a whopping ~24% into a defined benefit pension scheme!

AIBU to think that a lot of their problems could be solved if they were just given the option to either continue as they are, or get a 20% pay increase and have a 4% employer contribution to a standard defined contribution pension scheme like the vast majority of the population get!

I respect teachers, but based on my knowledge when overall remuneration is considered including pension and holidays, they really aren't underpaid compared to other professions!

It's a similar story for other public sector professions!

If someone said to me I could fit 52 weeks into 39 weeks and have 13 weeks off I’d seriously consider it for the sake of an 8 week better ‘holiday’ period. A teachers salary is full time hours effectively.

i should have said I’ve met some amazing, dedicated teachers and equally met many with less enthusiasm and care. Same as any industry it becomes obvious that those who are deselecting but not resigning are tarnishing the good, hence some of the public backlash. I do believe everyone is entitled to a fair wage, and that yes the majority who pay into pensions are at the mercy of the government, no one knows what we will get. I do support the teachers and their struggle, it just needs some perspective as I said in an earlier post.

Because they're not allowed to strike about the rest !

OP, the teachers' pension 'fund' like the NI Fund is un-funded. It's a ponzi scheme where the govt of the day just trousers the contributions on a promise to pay out on some unspecified date in the future. Which can be changed. More than once.

Also all teachers' early retirement pensions are paid by the local authority until normal retirement age. It's why the education budget is a farce and one of the reasons why council tax has gone through the roof in the last 30 years.

I was a teacher working 3 days a week. I'm now working full time. I have more free time to spend with my children even though I'm now full time with the less 'holidays'. After last year having to work my entire Easter 'holiday' I looked for a new job. The workload is insane and work life balance is impossible. Until they make teaching an 8 to 4:30 job with timesheets, decent PPA (a full day) etc teachers will continue to leave in droves. It coats along on the goodwill of teachers working for free and they've had enough.

Just to add I'm working full time not as a teacher

We're not contracted to work 32.5 hours a week. We are contracted to work a theoretical maximum of 1256 hours a year over 195 days. Theoretical because it's then followed up with the bastard phrase 'plus any additional hours required to fulfil the professional duties'.

In most jobs, if those additional hours took you to below NMW it would be illegal. Somehow that's not considered in teaching.

I will be on 3 days residential in a few weeks with my class. Inc rising to check on a diabetic child's blood sugars in the middle of the night at set points. No additional pay. No time in lieu.

Great idea - tell people to not to sign up to become a teacher unless aboslutely sure there is not way that you won't be able to cope - only masochists need apply! That will really help recruitment.

I was a teacher for 4 years about 15 years ago - it wrecked my health and I still haven't got over it. I have run my own business for some of the intervening period, regularly working 60-70 hours weeks and taking only one week off a year for a family holiday plus Christmas Day and I still feel fresher than I did when teaching.

Unless you have done it you have absolutely no idea what it is like. None. It is nothing you can imagine yourself into, it is pyschologically over-whelming. I still have the odd school based mightmare after all this time.

My other half went into teaching late after a decade in retail. (Many teachers have done other jobs by the way.) He got the shock of his life over the workload but stuck it out for much longer than me because he felt he was already on career number 2 and could not change again. In the end after a decades+ service he quit without a job to go to and took a minimum wage manual job. Anything rather than go back.

So why do it at all? When you have a great lesson it is the best feeling in the world. I learnt a lot and my business runs better because I was a teacher (all that planning!). It helped me understand what my children's schooling was all about. I was a more effective parent at say parents' evenings and going over homework or school reports than I might otherwise have been. And someone has to do it and I am glad I did my bit for a while. Like National Service.

The issue with this is that the DB schemes are so underfunded and employer still needs to pay large amounts into the DB scheme to make up the deficit in addition to paying into a DC scheme so it’s actually not very attractive in the short term.

I can't stand up my position, because I trained/did my PGCE when I was 50, and gosh, shock NOBODY wanted a 51 yr-old NQT, and especially not one that had massively outearned the Principal/HT before training. I think the education system missed the point in the period 2005-15. I think I was shaping up quite well as a second career teacher, or so my appraisals suggested. But to complete the course, and never get an invite to an interview when all the younger people on the course (even the ones you knew did half of f* all) got called for interview. Ageism, certainly. I am even older now, my pension has clicked in, but I still quite yearn for the excitement of teaching, and the thrill of igniting enthusiasm in young minds. I hope there will be grandchildren, eventually.

OMG another thread on this. Is there no actual news again today? MN and teacher pay threads is like ground-hog day. It should have its own topic.

@EffortlessDesmond that's awful! You sound like someone with a huge amount to give. Your hypothetical future grandchildren are bloody lucky

I don't know whether the OP is still reading this! But on that narrow point, without talking about pay & conditions more generally, PP have mentioned that the TPS is unfunded (just like NI/State Pension). That means the suggestion that the OP made wouldn't work.

My pension contributions right now (and my employer's) are being used to pay the pensions of current retired teachers. It's not like a DC scheme where I'm building up an individual pot.

So if the pension contributions were suddenly cut across the board, how would current pensioners be paid?

(This is all "as I understand it" and of course I'm willing to be corrected.)

That's not addressing the op's point.

So you'd get it now instead of waiting 🤷🏻‍♀️

@sheeeeeeshh
You're missing the point. Both myself and my employer pay the pension contributions to the teachers' pension service. They hand it straight over to retired teachers, on the assumption that when I'm retired, it will still be in place and the same system will pay me. It's not an investment pension. If I keep my employers' pension contribution as a pay rise, then that money won't be paid to the current cohort of retired teachers.

I work 7-6 daily and Sundays. Less than other people?!?! 😂

Have you read the posts explaining how pensions work, @sheeeeeeshh ?

I've not read every post, but my own opinion on teachers is that they do have a good deal on paper, based on the holiday leave, generous pension and decent pay, making the whole package equivalent to corporate professional. This would be great if they just worked a standard 40 hour week, which we all know they don't. I've relatives who teach and I've been shocked by the amount of work they have to take home each night, one even keeps a trolley in her car to save her back from carrying her box of work in and out of school each day. No corporate professional position would require an additional couple hours of work outside of contracted hours to be taken home each evening.

@sheeeeeeshh plenty of other, very knowledgeable posters have done that. My post was addressing the goady tone. As you well know.

The strikes are 'formally' just about pay. They're not. That's all your legally able to say you're striking about.

40,000 teacher vacancies, increasing daily... I've lost count of the number of teachers I know that I have left the profession due to work conditions.

Yes, YABU. Current pension contributions pay for the pensions of now-retired teachers. Teachers do not accrue their own individual pension pot - it doesn’t work in the same way as a private pension.

Teachers are only allowed to strike over their own pay and conditions-anything else would be a political action, which isn’t allowed. The most significant problem is that recent and proposed pay settlements have been unfunded, meaning that heads would have to find the money from existing school budgets, which have been cut to the bone by the government and wrecked by covid-related costs. Teacher and TA redundancies are the reason children are in huge classes, and not getting the support they need.

Teachers are not paid for holidays (other than statutory ) , but the pay is spread over 12 months (I’m old enough to remember colleagues getting uneven pay through the year and nothing in August).

Other public sectors are also massively underfunded. Teachers see it, they’re the ones picking up the pieces when children are refused support from CAMHS or SEND services. And it’s why other public sector workers are also taking industrial action.

Unfortunately even the lure of the holidays is no longer enough to keep teachers in the profession. Teachers I know that have left say they don't miss the holidays because they don't need them as much in other jobs. They have more free time in evenings and at weekends.

Or, and I know this is a crazy idea, but the government could adequately fund health, education, and all other public services.

No, you have misunderstood teaching contracts. There is a specified amount of directed time per year, which accounts for lesson time, meetings, parent consultations INSET etc. The contract also states that teachers must work additional unlimited hours in order to fulfil their professional duties.