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).

I know a teacher on a good TLR who was very recently told if they wanted a mortgage they should consider getting a partner.

Perhaps it depends where you live.

@mumsneedwine agree with you 100%.

Knowing the situation with DS1's friend (now happily in her early 20s, working, thriving, contemplating returning to education) the school and her family were just happy she got through to the end of GSCEs alive. Top set maths/English in Y7/8/9 became irrelevant. Grade C English, grade C maths only on resit....these were amazing given what she had to go through. Her "potential" for As/A stars (8s/9s) became irrelevant given her mental health crisis. Her teachers and head of year should be thanked for the support they gave her - not penalised for her getting grades below expected.

Guessing you are not in the SE then? Or London? Or Cambridge?

Just trying to think where you can buy house/flat for £120K...... (oh, and be paying of students loans, and saved for a deposit....)

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.

You surely must be kidding? Are you somehow under the impression that all classes of the same age would have the same expected outcomes? Even within a subject area within one school that's not remotely the case. Quite aside from different ability levels (especially but not exclusively between classes in a subject that's setted), that does not allow for other factors affecting student attainment, not least the effectiveness of whichever teacher taught them previously! If I take on a French class in yr11, the vast majority of what they've learned in French will be down to teaching by people other than me!

There clearly is a problem. It’s really scary that people can’t see it, we are literally sleepwalking into a disaster. Many secondaries don’t have official teachers in core subjects. The vacancies in schools have never been higher - they can’t be filled. The ITT recruitment has never been poorer. There is a literal crisis in school staffing and all people can say is - it’s not that bad but holidays! Why are we so short on teachers in England we are trying to chuck 10k bribes to foreign nationals?

There are many measures that could be incorporated into performance related pay.

Parent ratings, child ratings, observer ratings, performance of class (with variables accounted for), subject matter knowledge….there would be many more

The point is only that blanket pay rises are hard to swallow. We all know bad teachers, and we all want better and more teachers. There has to be some element of performance accounted for when thinking of getting a payrise

There already is!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We. Have. Performance. Related. Pay.

Exactly, @Lostinalibrary - I can't decide if it's that parents don't care or that they don't really understand how bad it is. I guess part of the problem is that only the section of the population that currently has dc between 11 and 18 has skin in the game.

Qualified teacher salary
Your school will have their own pay scales for qualified teachers. Pay increases will always be linked to performance, not length of service, and will be reviewed every year.

https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/salaries-and-benefits

Parent ratings - April the 1st has gone.

I am really glad that my children are almost through, our youngest is just in secondary now - we are looking at private. They aren’t taught by a science teacher most of the time. If parents could actually see what’s happening in schools, the recruitment issue, the jobs, the ITT figures - I don’t know why they wouldn’t be concerned. It’s really, really bad - to the point they are trying to bribe foreign nationals with 10k. We are critically short on teachers in all sectors. Parents don’t know this as schools do a blinding job of covering for it - until now. Can’t even get supply nowadays.

The people who say - “it’s not that bad for a masters grad, holidays, pension.” They are not critically thinking and burying their head. If it was all fine, why are we critically short on teachers in England. People say, “leave if you don’t like it.” Erm… they have.

Parent ratings, child ratings

<head explodes> I've heard a lot of stupid ideas about how to run schools from people who have never wotked in one, but I think that actually takes the fucking biscuit. You haven't a scooby doo what you're talking about.

This would do nothing for recruitment and retention.

Aye this is fucking hilarious - a pay rise for putting young Harrison in the football team and not setting any homework for him and Olivia.

Ha yes. Parents haven't a clue!

Teachers have never been paid in line with doctors or bankers.

I think it's important that teachers are paid fairly because there are a lot of teachers that could easily move into private sector jobs with a lot better pay with their degree qualification. Such as maths, science and computer science teachers.

As a computer science teacher of 12 years, I've had enough now and will be leaving end of summer term. I know I couldn't do this job until retirement so decided to get out while I am still reasonably young. I've done my time, now it's time for me to do something for me. For the industry I want to go into, after a few years I could add a third/double my teacher salary, even if I started at entry level.

So, if other teachers thought like me... There wouldn't be many teachers left willing to continue to take that pay cut to teach.

Aye this is fucking hilarious - a pay rise for putting young Harrison in the football team and not setting any homework for him and Olivia.

Yup. "Hey - Miss Smith didn't confiscate my phone when I was playing on it in the maths lesson, and Mr Williams didn't tell anyone he saw me selling Charlie a vape. I'm definitely giving those two a top rating! That cow Mrs Anderson who put me in detention for calling Emily a sl** though - she's going down! She makes us do loads of work too - boring!".

What could possibly go wrong?

Reminds me of when former teacher but now-comedian Greg Davies got nominated for "teacher of the year" award by "Gemma."
All she wrote, on a document of many pages, was, "He's a well-good laugh and he don't make us do no work."

This is a major issue in IT in the public sector as a whole tbh. Easy double of salary and 6 figs within a couple of years. The issue is - the bursaries and even if they did a golden handshake for retention of science, maths, and IT - it still doesn’t work. The military have shown that with their extra payments, retention bungs and higher payments to those in those industries. Graduates with expertise in key areas are given all the money to stay. It’s still not enough compared to the enormous benefits in the private sector in these industries. It’s all broken.

The maternity provision is shite compared to a lot of the private sector. Not as good as one might think.

@proppy sick pay is better than average though, granted

Just as an info point- experienced teachers are leaving (as I am once I find something- nearly 2 decades teaching) because unless you climb the greasy pole there is no reward for staying. You reach the top of m6 then have to hoop jump unbelievably to get onto the upper pay scale. Which then puts a target on your back as expensive.

People will denynit but I know it's true- i'm also a school governor and i've had to shout down (unsuccessfully) decisions to "encourage" upper pay scale staff to leave in favor of cheap newly qualified.

Our local school governor pretty much said at a parent forum that they liked cheap NQTs as was then and it wasn't a shame when experienced (expensive)staff chose to leave...