AIBU to think teachers are not paid that well in England and Wales

[ImaynotliketheEducationSecretary]

If salaries in England are so "good" why then are salaries in Scotland £9K higher?

If salaries are so good, why then apart from the NE and Scotland (who are on far better salaries) are teachers, 4-5 years post qualified, paid less than the average salary? If salaries are so good, why could so few teachers even think about buying a house? By the way, I by no means think teachers in Scotland are overpaid. I think they probably are paid far, far more fairly than E or W)

Do we really think so little of education that that is what teachers are paid? People who need degrees and post-grad qualifications to teach their subject? Who need passion and empathy to care about their students? Who do not just do 9-3 in the classroom - but, many, many hours outside the classroom too?

Read below and if you really think teachers salaries are so good, would you, on reading the below, encourage a friend/DC/sibling to join this well-paid profession?

Figures all from end of 2022:
M4 is what you could be earning c4-5 years after qualifying.

Scotland
Teachers Salary - Starting £30,081 & M4 £42,915
House Price average £191,492
6.3 x starting salary
4.5 x M4 salary

Average salary in Scotland in 2022 was £33K
Actually, you maybe OK being a teacher.

Wales
Teachers Salary - Starting £28,866 M4 £33,5877
House Price average £220,326
7.6 x starting salary
6.5 x M4 salary

Average salary in Wales in 2022 was £34K
You maybe OK to be a teacher - but only if you live in a cheaper part of Wales.

England
Teachers Salary - Starting £28,000 & M4 £33,850 ((M4 rising to £39,655 with inner London weighting)
House Price average £313,073 England (North East 162K, SE £402K London £542K)
On average, houses are 11 x starting salary and 9 x M4 salary
Ha ha ha ha if you are in London (13.5 x M4 salary) or South East (12 x M4)
NE teachers are possibly OK a few years later at 4.8 x M4 salary

Average salary in England in 2022 was £33K
North East £29.5K
SE £34.5K
London £42K

Don't be a teacher unless you are in the NE/somewhere cheap to live. How the fuck any London school recruits and retains staff is beyond me.

And, BTW, I am not a teacher. I just went down this rabbit hole as DD was talking of becoming a teacher post-degree....and having gone down said rabbit hole I am not sure I would recommend an extra 9K+ debt to do so. I don't really want her to move to Scotland (we are on the SW).

The sign up figures are also misleading. There are many graduates who do a schools direct type course, and are paid to train, who then decide never to become a teacher. I’ve mentored many over the years who do the course, but at the end decide never to teach after spending a year in schools. The retention crisis is very really.

But how do you define performance for teachers ? Is it me getting my top set triples all 9s ? Or my bottom set achieving a 4 or less ? Because the latter will have involved a whole heap more effort than the first one, despite on paper it not looking as good. If I can keep the 10 in my bottom set in school until exams, so they at least silly them, I will take it as a major win.

So how do you judge my performance? Because if it's just on grades no one is going to want to teach anything but top sets, who frankly are pretty easy !

I used to be a school governor (in SE England). There was one year when several teachers left to go to schools abroad. I always remember the head commenting that it was the only way they could afford to buy houses.

@EmmaStone The pension is genuinely good (in both old and new forms) and is worth a lot, although the employer's contribution isn't as easy to value in an unfunded DB scheme compared to a DC scheme. I think that there are a couple of problems in seeing it as a tool for recruitment/retention.

Recruitment; I genuinely don't know how many graduates weigh pension into their career choice compared to starting salary!

Retention: the teachers who care most about their pension are the ones near retirement anyway. Having a nice pension doesn't help with the current cost-of-living crisis if you're in your 20s/30s/40s. The old "final salary" scheme gave you a great reason for staying in as long as you can, but the current scheme doesn't do that to the same extent.

You're assuming, EmmaStone that a working week for a teacher is the same as a working week for other people, which it isn't. You are also assuming no work goes on in the holidays, which it does.

Really? Do you currently work in education or are you talking from previous experience? I have worked in school improvement. PM in education is notoriously difficult to design but not impossible. What features would you be looking to financially reward?

So why are people not flocking to become teachers?

I will repeat the same questions (not trying to be pushy at you specifically) but "if you want to recruit and keep your best <insert job here>, but not enough people are applying....what do you do..?"

The alternative to having enough teachers in schools....is crap education.

Oak academy is not going to cut it.
Do we want our children/grandchildren plugged into massive halls full of tablets watching vidoes?
Cover teachers with no degrees in the subject not able to answer the questions from inquisitive students about "Why didn't Castlereagh approach it differently?" "Why did the feminist movement start then and not earlier?" "Did Americans really believe Jim Crow laws" "How does <something sciency I do not understand> happen?"

You need people who know their subjects to answer these questions, to lead the discussions, to fire passion in our children. Our grandchildren.

It’s plain as day that the salary isn’t good enough.
A salary that rewards the role would not see the current recruitment and retention crisis.

You can't compared tens of thousands of teachers with a random person you happen to know of! Lots of people outside the teaching profession, and outside the public sector wouldn't get anywhere near being paid in full for 9 months.

Should we just pay public sector workers including teachers the market rate and pay extra tax for it. This would solve the shortages as demand of workers would equal supply. Supply agency costs would be reduced as well.

I think the missed information surrounding salaries is the abolished portable pay. Years of service count for nothing because Heads/Governors can set the pay scale at whatever they want/can afford.

With all the budget cuts my worry is all job adverts will increasingly be capped for example at M6. I can see this becoming a concern very soon. The narrative may soon be shifting form ECT's are cheap to employ to experienced classroom teachers are cheap to employ. 😱

Yes, but they’ll probably get more than 2 weeks.

Surely you look at how well the class has performed in the year, i.e. where you compare the performance of a particular group against performance of the average of all groups for that age and/or subject, etc, i.e. whether the classes taught by each teacher improves more or less than other classes taught by others.

I have a few family and friends who are teachers so not dismissing the job or necessarily disagreeing with the argument they should be paid more (although I think in wales they have recently agreed a fairly good pay rise?) But just pointing out the flaws in your argument

You're comparing average wage and average houses
But average wage covers everyone from 16-65(plus). My brother had a late birthday and did a degree in primary education (so no need for a post grad) so was teaching full time by the time he was 20.

I'll focus on wales because that's where I know more teachers- not sure where you've got the average wage as £34k, ONS puts it at £30k in wales . So by their third year of teaching (possibly only at the age of 23/24) they could already be out-earning half the country .

While m4 might be quite low, within 2 years salaries in wales then go up to just under £40k by m6 (will be over £40k with the new raise) which again for someone who could only be 26/27 by that point is a decent wage and well over the national average.

Lots of teachers will be thinking of applying for leadership roles after 7 years teaching (or well before) which is then quite a significant increase.

That's also only the basic wage and there are all the other TLR/lead practitioner additions which teachers can take on -again can be quite a significant extra amount.

Also while everyone goes on about the holidays-I know a fair few teachers who do either tutoring or lead childcare (like council schemes) over the holidays to boost their pay, which people in other jobs with only 20 odd days of annual leave aren't in a position to do. Again not all teachers do this and I appreciate many either use the summer for planning or just as a well earned break, but the option is available to them when it isn't to most full time workers.

And again you're comparing against average house price- but young teachers will usually be buying their first homes on the ladder which will obviously be cheaper than the average price.

Obviously I understand that not all teachers are young but it just shows the variables!

A 24 year old in their third year of teaching in the Welsh valleys, earning £31k when the national average is £30k and hoping to buy a house in Merthyr Tydfil for £100k for a 2 bed semi might feel quite well off compared to their friends.

A 37 year old in their third year of teaching earning £31k where the average in the South East is £34,431 hoping to buy in Oxford and (because they are older with kids to home) needing at least a 3bed and with prices starting at over £500k might very well feel very underpaid!

Most jobs don't pay much at an entry level, that's exactlt why people take on extra responsibilities and go for promotions as they get older! You could pick lots of jobs where the salary 3 years in isn't particularly high, teaching isn't unusual in that.

At least in teaching they are guaranteed to progress up the scale every year until they get to the top -my last job was in the civil service and we didn't have increments at all, I earned the same amount the day I left as when I'd started 5 years prior!

That data doesn't exist.

And as I've said, we've got performance related pay. Michael Gove introduced it. Progression up the pay scale depends on meeting performance targets.

Some schools include pupil performance as a target as a way of not having to give pay rises.

How much more tax are YOU will to pay? A couple of percent for teachers, a couple of percent for nurses, etc etc., and you're soon increasing income tax by 10% or so. Not many people can afford or would accept that!

Of course, those who don't pay income tax don't care and would support that kind of rise if it benefitted them!

Lots of teachers will be thinking of applying for leadership roles after 7 years teaching

They really shouldn't be! Particularly as you are talking about leadership, not TLR.

Of course, those who don't pay income tax don't care and would support that kind of rise if it benefitted them!

Do you mean to suggest that teachers don't pay income tax

Why should a teacher be responsible for all the outside variables that exist amongst the pupils of any given class? So much affects progress - and there's only so much the teacher can do.

But you also assume that non-teachers never work during holidays or long days either, and my experience in a different profession is that they do.

Look, I'm not saying teaching isn't hard, and I'm an economist, so believe in the market correcting itself - the government will increase wages when the general public starts questioning why there aren't enough teachers/doctors/nurses, and they risk losing their majority. If I was a public sector worker, I'd feel hugely frustrated by my personal inability to change my salary or differentiate myself amongst my peers on the same pay scale. I get it. But I just don't think it's fair to only tell half a story about public sector pay.

But you also assume that non-teachers never work during holidays or long days either

I’ve got research showing teachers work around 5 hours a week more than similar graduates. Where’s yours?

the government will increase wages when the general public starts questioning why there aren't enough teachers/doctors/nurses

What do you think the strikes are about?

I don't know a single teacher doesn't own their own home.

You would only need x 3 or 4 salary here so perfectly possible even as as single person.

Unfortunately I can't control the external factors in my students lives. Domestic violence, the care system, death of a parent, mental health etc. all impact hugely in a child's life.
Let's take an example. A student gets fantastic SATS at KS2 so their predicted grade for progress 8 should be a 9. But their 5 years at secondary school are mired in anorexia and bereavements that cause a lot of anxiety and days missed. My personal achievement will be if I can nurse that student through school in one piece, but my performance will show I've failed as they didn't achieve that 9. How should my pay be calculated - on the dropped grade, or ensuring a person survives and manages to move on to a new start ? Alive.
Fortunately my school realised grades and progress are only one part of education. Personal development, nurture and life skills are sometimes more important.

"the government will increase wages when the general public starts questioning why there aren't enough teachers/doctors/nurses"

Yup. That's exactly where we are. But the government stick their fingers in their ears, call us all Marxists (😂😂) and pretend it will all go away. And the public will v v soon realise that there are not enough teachers as there already aren't doctors. Better pay, more stay, so better conditions, more stay. Simple.