To think teaching should be one of the highest paid jobs?

[donutque]

Not a teacher, but my logic seems sound.

I’ve seen plenty of threads / comments on here that question if teachers are really that underpaid (often quoting 28k as a starting salary) which seems like a strange race to the bottom.

I work in finance and wouldn’t take a job for a low salary, I’m in my twenties and I’m compensated well. I believe I deserve that, I name my price when I go for jobs and won’t accept lower. This is because I’m 1) qualified 2) have a skill and the market demands me, I am in short supply.

I can see a response I may get is that
teachers, whilst good, aren’t necessarily the most intelligent or talented / high quality individuals. But IS IT ANY WONDER?! The top talent graduates and gets sucked in by the big 4 / investment banks / magic circle all because of money (I promise you that it is rare that a child just bloody loves debits and credits, has a passion for selling stock, or checking the bank statement matches the p&l) Of course, some top grads go into teaching but this is usually because of their personality type (desire to give back / do good / love of children). It’s not the common occurrence. They certainly aren’t doing it for the big pay off.

So if teachers started on, let’s say, £30k but upon qualifying were paid £50k, with a teacher with 5-10 years service being on 60/70/80/90k (no extra responsibility), I guarantee applications would be flooded. Teaching would be a career that is attractive. You’d have the best teachers, which is important. Not just for basic education but teachers are what gets your little offspring into university to become the next doctor, lawyer, politician, plumber, accountant and so on. Teachers are LITERALLY the backbone of society.

Scandi countries document well how education leads to greater GDP, and a basic understanding of economics will explain why paying teachers well is far more beneficial to the economy than anyone who says “but how do we afford it?!”

so, AIBU to think teaching should be one of the highest paid jobs?

Teachers aren't the most talented or brightest?
Strange comment.
All teachers have degrees, lots have masters, and language, music and art teachers in particular have unique talents.

When l was teaching, there were loads of doctors amongst the staff. So some of them were pretty bright….. l mean how bright do you have to be..,…?

OP, I agree with your sentiment but you have managed to be quite insulting along with it. I am a teacher and have a first class degree.

I have been told by several head teachers that they were initially worried about my academic achievement as in their experience, the very 'brightest' peoole don't make the best teachers. There is so much involved in the job and academic intelligence is only one part of it. It is a vocation.

Back in the real world where children are unfortunately neglected - teachers are needed to fulfil this role. Until such times when all parents fulfil their function and you know this is never, this reality needs to be in the front of their minds when they decide to become a teacher. No wonder teachers get frustrated about their jobs when they expect a different job to the one they signed up for.

No, teachers are not needed to fill the role of social worker, social workers are needed to fill the role of social worker.

And mental health specialists are required to fill that role, and SEN specialists are required to fill that role.

But because there's a shortage of all of the above, their jobs get dumped on teachers who are not trained to do them, and it does beg the question of when exactly teachers are meant to do their own job of teaching.

It didn't used to be like this.

Loads of jobs are badly paid, no matter how good you are. I have had management and head office compliment my work but it's still badly paid.
I work in childcare which is having huge problems with recruitment because of bad pay, long hours, very little time off but never see anyone suggesting we get more money (because we're only looking after other parents children all day). Educating them, feeding them, changing them, doing unpaid hours of paperwork that you can't start until 6 at night because that's when the children go home.
Yes they do a very important job, yes they should be paid more but one of the highest paid jobs? Do you not think nurses and junior doctors should be on more, why just teachers?
You are incredibly fortune to be able to dictate your own salary but unfortunately not everyone and certainly no teachers I know can do that.

But because there's a shortage of all of the above, their jobs get dumped on teachers who are not trained to do them
Then they should refuse those tasks.
Teaching will not be taken seriously as a profession by outsiders if teachers themselves don’t value their specialism.

Back in the real world where children are unfortunately neglected - teachers are needed to fulfil this role. Until such times when all parents fulfil their function and you know this is never, this reality needs to be in the front of their minds when they decide to become a teacher.

The thing is, until really quite recently, the job of a teacher was to be alert to neglect, abuse, SEN, mental and physical health issues, disability etc etc, to report and document it appropriately, and carry out recommendations of the appropriate professionals who were expert in these things in collaboration with other school staff.

So a teacher would observe and report evidence of eg neglect to the safeguarding lead. It would be reported to social services, and with social services involvement a range of actions would be agreed, some of which would be the school’s responsibility to implement, including via eg specialist support staff in a nurture room or specific sessions with support staff with pastoral responsibilities, but also general support such as free school meals. Other actions would be carried out by social services, GPs, dentists, food banks etc.

What happens now id that teachers have to not only identify the existence of need, but also personally meet it. Few cases meet social services threshold. School headteachers have organised their own food banks and clothing exchanges. Nurture rooms are closed as there is no money for staff, and there are no support staff with pastoral responsibilities. There are no NHS dentists and health services are overwhelmed. So the individual teacher personally battles to meet the child and family’s needs alongside the other 30+ children in the class.

I could tell exactly the same story for abuse, mental health, SEN, disability etc etc. in every case, teachers are having to personally observe, then devise some kind of way of meeting each child’s needs personally, with no support external to the school and rapidly dwindling support within the school as support staff are cut to the bone.

But faced with sole responsibility for a class full of children that a teacher knows and cares for professionally, how can a teacher refuse? If a child in front of you shows evidence of neglect, or abuse, and I say ‘I’m sorry, that’s not my job’, I am not only breaking the law - I have a statutory duty to report safeguarding concerns - but am failing a vulnerable child, and the guilt of that is as difficult as the burden doing something brings.

Equally, a teacher’s job is to ensure children make progress in their learning. If a child has SEN affecting their learning, despite the fact that it ‘should’ be a specialist who advises, I am not going to stand by and do nothing to help.

And if a severely distressed child starts speaking to me, I can’t say ‘it is not my job to be a counsellor, go away’.

It is in the nature of teachers to try to meet the needs of the children in front of them, and society at large is taking advantage of this.

We know how much vilification teachers who are found to either not have observed abuse / neglect or observed it but it did not lead to action receive following high profile case reviews. Imagine what would happen if all teachers said ‘not my job’ to everything that should fall under social services / health / specialist mental health / family support remit? I suppose it would make the extent to which teachers are propping up all these provisions at the moment, but the fallout would genuinely be appalling.

t is in the nature of teachers to try to meet the needs of the children in front of them, and society at large is taking advantage of this

Then they are perpetuating and exacerbating the problem - an untrained person is more likely to make matters worse so they should not collude.

Greenwich, so you think that all teachers should let the children in front of them visibly suffer? Really?

Utterly ridiculous hyperbole.
Either accept all the tasks heaped on your that you are not ‘trained’ for or refuse to do them.
Pointless to bleat and and moan that you are not valued, then and demand more money for those tasks which should be done instead by trained professionals.

I am interested in which part you think is ridiculous hyperbole?

The mere fact you think it IS hyperbole makes me think you are very out of touch with the realities of today’s classrooms.

Let us consider a child with significant mental health difficulties- uncommon to find a class without one of these.

The child shows very visible, and extremely disruptive to the class as a whole, behaviour as a result of these difficulties, and requires full time observation to keep themselves and others safe.

Referral to the professionals (CAMHS) has a waiting list of 2 years.

GP says ‘school must help’.

School used to have the money for a few referrals to a counsellor each year, and a MH trained TA. TA has long since left and the school has no money for counselling.

EHCP process is delayed through lack of Ed Psychs and long delays in accessing all the specialists to submit reports.

The teacher can ‘refuse’, if you want them to BUT the disruption in the classroom is nevertheless real, and harms both the child in question and others. What would you suggest?

I do find vocabulary like ‘bleating’ useful on threads such as these for an insight into a certain type of person who has very Strong Views on the subject.

If I may, I’ll give an example of what it looks like to support a child with their mental health at the moment. Many people probably know that CAMHS waiting lists are so long as to be effectively closed to new referrals, as so many children will age out of the system before they are seen. It used to be the case that if a child made an attempt on their life they would be seen urgently and this, however dangerous and desperate, would at least get them some help. For the first time, however, we are becoming aware of cases that have been rejected for urgent support because the attempt on life was not considered ‘serious’ enough. In other words, there are people rating children’s suicide attempts to decide whether or not they get any urgent help. When these cases are rejected we do absolutely everything we can to support the families, who are in absolute crisis, to try and get some support. We are not mental health care professionals and we do not claim to be but the alternative, of doing nothing, is genuinely unconscionable. The support systems around schools and families have been systematically hollowed out since 2010 and things are only going to get worse.

I am sorry if any pp finds this hyperbolic, and I am also sorry if this is distressing. It is distressing to write, and even more so to live.

I agree, Thanks. I was going to share the experience and impact of having a (primary) child self-harming in class, but was afraid I would seem ‘hyperbolic’.

Well a nice idea. Lovely in fact.

But we'd have to move to a much higher tax economy to do that. I think Finland is an example of a country that pays teachers very highly, but they pay lots more tax to do so.

Well many are doing what PP have said - they're voting with their feet.
Same with other underpaid professions like nurses and social workers...

We need to disentangle all the various post-1985 Social Policy theories from directing, rather than just informing, Education and just let Teachers get on with teaching. (also applies to many public services).

And get rid of whatever career-progression pathways that have enabled so many bullying incompetents to attain the SLT roles when they should have been kicked to the curb early on in their careers instead.

It is.,For people of similar ability.,

This.
Management is dire. They only pass on down -never push back to the people above then.

We need to disentangle all the various post-1985 Social Policy theories from directing, rather than just informing, Education and just let Teachers get on with teaching. (also applies to many public services).

And get rid of whatever career-progression pathways that have enabled so many bullying incompetents to attain the SLT roles when they should have been kicked to the curb early on in their careers instead.

Very well said!

I dreaded opening the responses, thinking to myself 'THING, you've yet again managed to piss off even more people, just shut up and keep your thoughts to yourself'.

But being a bit brave I had to look and was very pleasantly surprised to find that PPs agreed.

Unfortunately, my thoughts were a thread-killer....so bumping.