Do you think teachers are paid too little?

[Looooop]

I've just read an article about a teacher (presumably who wasn't on MP1) who has to take on 2 other jobs to make ends meet.
I'm sure I'll get flamed, but ECTs start on 28k. I and other people live on way less than that, I don't understand why an experienced teacher of a few years should need 2 extra jobs?

That's awful! Related to huge increase in SEN?

If people want to match private you could do similar on pensions and other if it’s not that welcome anyway

They're not paid enough imo

Yes the starting salary is £28k which is sounds fairly decent. However when I left uni, 20 years ago, some of my friends went into teaching because the starting salary for teaching was...£28k. Which shows how much its reduced in real terms.

But objectively, there is a marketplace for jobs and there arent enough people applying for teacher training at the moment. Less than half the places are being filled. So in general, people dont think its paid enough for them to bother going for it as a career...therefore it isnt paid enough, irrespective of whether you or I think it's a decent salary

Teachers and nurses are underpaid. Comparisons are difficult to make though because of the holidays. I also feel TAs get a really raw deal, often they have specialisms in SENCO and so on but in some local authorities they aren’t paid over the summer. I do realise teachers do a lot of lesson prep, marking and outside school hours work, of course which takes up some of the summer hols. University teachers pay is quite rubbish too, we get fed up of people telling us we get mega long holidays. No we don’t, that’s our research period and we have leave entitlements like anyone in a regular job

I agree. They should be sent back home to their parents and told not to return until they're toilet trained. But how many teachers would be prepared to stick their head above the parapet and actually say that?

I think they should be paid more and that it should be funded by the government not out of the schools budgets. This takes away from the kids- resources and equipment. The government should fully fund education including the teachers increase in pay.

I don’t think teachers are poorly paid. Plus they get long holidays, at the same time as any DCs they have, so don’t have to worry so much about paying for childcare.

As an ex nurses, I think they are also fairly well paid. I found that I regularly took home around £2.5k per month (well over £3k gross), before I had to medically retire 7 years ago!

Both careers also have pretty good maternity, pension and sickness policies too. It’s those that work in the private sector in shops, factories, restaurants, care homes etc. that I feel sorry for. They pretty often only get minimum wage, with basic sickness, pension and maternity benefits. They are the ones who get left behind, struggling to survive, as the cost of living goes up way more than any wage rises they get.

It doesn't really matter what people think though does it? If the pay isn't enough to attract teachers and keep them then it's not enough.

Though I agree that the problem is the workload rather than the pay for many teachers.

This. My dad once told me that his rule of thumb was always that he wanted to be earning as many thousands as his age. He was born in a slum in Newcastle in 1956.

I was born in 1987, earn in the 90th percentile apparently, and am still not many thousands ahead of my age. As a rule of thumb for "doing ok", my dad's numbers from 30 years ago still work in modern society, on the surface. And that's ridiculous.

Some is certainly down to SEN but an increasing amount is down to lazy parenting. I’ve met countless year 7s in my time who can’t use a knife and fork or tie a shoelace. It makes me so sad for them!

That's utter bullshit!!!

I started teaching in 2011 - on about £21k.

So ten years ago they should have known that in real terms their income was going to fall year on year. I think that's psychics not teachers.

I don't think teachers pay reflects their responsibility and education in comparison to other graduate jobs.
However like PP have mentioned all salaries have stagnated and nurses, doctors railworkers council workers ans lots more are not necessarily paid their worth either.
It's also very dependant on age, location etc. I can see how a newly qualified teacher trying to buy a home run a car maybe start a family would struggle on £28k in some/most areas of the country and this goes for many other professions as well. But I also am aware that there are some teachers, nurses doctors etc who will have been working longer and moved up payscales who are paid very well (though could still have more) and the general public not earning those sums wouldn't have much sympathy.

I think not only is pay bad at the moment it's also conditions - lots of services have been running with tight budgets and had poor decisions made about how those services are run (for me allowing unqualified teachers into classrooms masquerading as teachers- parents often unaware) that has really devalued these services and made the job harder overall for the people working in them.

Whilst I agree that others have it worse, your comments about holidays and childcare aren’t necessarily true.
I work 3-4 days of every 5 day holiday we get marking assessments, mock exams and catching up with necessary work I haven’t had time to do in term time. So for me, we don’t feel the holidays are worth it any more as they don’t make up for the weekend day I work every week during term time. Also, now I have 2 children who are not yet school age, if I want to actually get any marking done properly I have to send them to nursery at a cost of £120 for two children during a week I actually don’t get paid for! That is very frustrating and whilst it’s my choice to do that, I wouldn’t be able to get my work done without doing so.

Reminds me of reception teacher thanking me for making sure DS could dress himself, tie his shoe laces and use a knife and fork before he started school. She said she was fed up of kids starting school knowing their phonics and numbers which she wanted to teach them but she was having to teach them how to dress themselves etc. She took early retirement just after that and it was such a loss as she was a brilliant, if fed up, teacher.

Heaven knows what she'd have thought of 11 year olds being the same.

Pay in most jobs can rise or fall in real terms. No-one has the god-given right to always expect their pay to stay the same.

The trouble is NMW tends to go up by a higher percentage than teachers/nurses pay so the gap closes. On NMW for 40 hrs a week someone will be on just under £22k a year, they could have left school at 16 and have no qualifications, the teacher/nurse will have left school at 18 and then done 3 or 4 years at uni so far they have lost up to 6 years earnings. Then they have student debt to pay and they are on £6k a year more but take off tax, NI, student loan repayments and they aren't really on more than anyone in a NMW job. Why bother?

Crobbycraft
Astonishing really then that so many of them seem to find the time to be commenting on MN threads in the middle of the day...

They are most likely part-time, retired or ex-teachers of course - silly!

There are very many ex-teachers and that's part of the problem.

Those on NMW usually have poor terms and conditions though. Statutory minimum pension, statutory sick pay, etc.

Numerous roles across all kinds of industries - health, pharma, biotech, finance. IT, diagnostics, communications, engineering, construction to name a very few.

A few reasons - flexibility in location/hours/days worked, scope of opportunities for travel/secondment/consultancy, speed of career advancement, scope of global opportunities...the list really is endless

The issue in teaching is retention. That is not so much about wages but about workloads and demands.

I felt sorry for you until I read your derogatory comments about primary teachers. As an ex- primary teacher, I can safely say that you have absolutely no clue whatsoever as to what primary teaching entails.

It was 20 years ago that it wasn’t worth me financially doing a PGCE, so irrelevant of inflation if it wasn’t a good financial decision that long ago it’s been the case for a very very long time.

I was better off doing an admin job back then, and I imagine a lot of people still are.

Most people’s pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, not just teachers.

No. I don't .

Not when you factor in pensions, time off and progression pay increases.

And yes these do count when it comes to pay. Compensation should be looked at as a whole.