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?

I agree. Schools used to have a whole raft of support staff who don't exist anymore. Other supplemental services such as school nurses, ed psychologists, school counsellors, parent support staff, social workers, SEND services, community NHS services, careers services, etc. etc. are all disappearing too. Now it's all on the teaching staff to sort everything out... And still teach! Most of them don't even have a full time TA ffs.
It's shit. And I'm not a teacher.

I remember one of the saddest comments was when I was 28 and retrained as a teacher after working in marketing/editing etc. I went to a top uni and someone who had gone to uni with me said, "What a waste of your degree..." I mean he worked in banking so not exactly curing cancer...
I remember thinking his comment was ridiculous and insulting. You want bright people to teach your kids but they get leeched off into management consultancy, law etc because of the pay... so yes, more pay would be beneficial...

love this. This post is like an 8 year old saying ‘I wish that nurses were paid footballers salaries, cos they save lives and all footballers do is kick a ball’ of course we all bloody do, but we are also now aware (as we have grown up) of how money is generated and consequently distributed in our economy and why. What a naive, pointless post.

That's a long list - do you think it's all nonsense - do you think teachers should not be held accountable? If a teacher gives out a punishment you think a parent shouldn't be allowed to challenge it - or should someone else deal with your judgement on your behalf? I get that you only wanted to teach and have well-behaved robotic kids but maybe that is the problem - it's totally unrealistic. Maybe we should be more realistic about what teaching is really like so we recruit people who want to do the actual job and not a fantasy version of it. And pay them well to do the whole job.

drinkeatsmile
I rest my case. 😂

If teacher pay was significantly increased, arguably the same should apply to other public sector jobs which are valuable to society and difficult for various reasons e.g. social work, police, nursing. Social work, for example, has many of the issues which teaching has - people leaving due to stress or burn out, high case loads, dealing with difficult people, ever changing government targets etc, high level of responsibility.

And if you were going to make all those roles very highly paid it would be difficult to fund it. Law, finance etc. are paid highly mostly because the work generates a lot of money (and even then at many smaller firms trainee solicitors are paid about £28k or sometimes less).

More money for teachers might help a bit but if it did help teacher retention, it may just result in teachers who are burnt out and stressed feeling pressure to stay in their job because they can't get the same pay elsewhere. They are unlikely to be the best teachers in those circumstances. The money itself won't make it an easier job.

I think also that selecting those who will be brilliant teachers must be quite difficult. Obviously you need to know your subject and be passionate about it but that is only part of it and some of those who come top in their subject at university would probably make terrible teachers. I was very academic and I like children but wouldn't have been suited to teaching at all.

I suspect you would get much better value out of making the job more attractive, as people have suggested, as many of these measures also directly benefit children e.g. smaller classes, better specialist SEN support.

Not to say teacher pay shouldn't increase at all but suddenly paying teachers £100k wouldn't triple the quality of education.

Well, regardless of the people you know, there's been a massive surge of professionals retraining as tradesmen in the past decade or so - especially as plumbers and sparkies. Teaching on the other hand is most definitely not seeing a surge of new applicants.

But my point is that 'entry requirements' don't really determine salary. You can get a hgv license in four days and companies are so desperate they're taking on new passes. You could go from minimum wage to over £50k in a month.

Hello, I have returned. As I am now PM, I will respond:

• weird offence taken about the smartest people being in accountants / lawyers.
• DH is a Maths teacher and I am very biased towards STEM, ok?
• as a few have pointed out, the long term expenditure on the current system is far more than the cost to reform

DH is leaving teaching because it is toxic. But I said “if you were paid £100k would you do it” he said yes, he’d be miserable, but he would.

plus you’re assuming ALL factors stay the same - top talent, competitive market, investment in schools and MORE TEACHERS. You have big classes because there’s not enough schools and teachers. A recruitment crisis will ruin your child’s education if you allow it to.

And to the person who said it’s coincidental about poling day tomorrow. I’m in a strong hold Conservative area.

drinkeatsmile

The problem isn't parents challenging teacher's sanctions.
Its parents that don't believe that their child has done anything wrong.
Or even worse those that know that their child has done something wrong but refuse for them to be sanctioned at all.

And that many children have unlimited access to the internet and social media is a major issue that some parents want to abdicate responsibility to schools and teachers.

I cannot read any more comments that mention teacher holiday!

1. Teachers do the most unpaid over time of any profession in the UK
2. If you took away all the overtime from the holiday, it works out as getting less holiday than the average person

IF you agree to send your child to a school, you agree for your child to abide by that school's disciplinary procedures. If you don't think your child deserves to be punished, that's fine, not a problem, find another school.

If only that was enforceable

See, I am all supportive of teachers until this kind of rubbish pops up and then I seriously struggle.

Why is it rubbish?
You seriously believe it's possible for state schools to turf out kids because their parents won't comply with the home school agreement, do you?
News flash - they can't. It's incredibly hard to PEX a student who violently assaults another, much less to move on someone who "just" won't comply and is supported in that.

In any secondary school there is a significant range in terms of quality of teachers- relates to academic ability, motivation, ability to plan interesting lessons that help children learn the right things and engage their curiosity, ability to manage individuals and groups, willingness to put in time marking/preparing, willingness to promote ethos and values and be professional and to work as a team. The best teacher in the last department I taught English in was absolutely gifted- academically in English literature and language, in her ability to unpick a syllabus and turn it into schemes of work, her understanding of how to teach skills, her lessons were fascinating, she was fair, astute about students, managed them brilliantly - they worked hard, got great results and loved her.
In the same department was a teacher of a similar age who did the absolute minimum she could do. Her lessons were mundane, she wasn't very able academically in the subject and had little passion for it. She managed students well but they made poor progress because she wasn't a good enough teacher- and wasn't bothered enough to want to change. It was not bad enough to be able to address formally .
They were paid the same.

There is no incentive for teachers to improve as practitioners. Good or bad at their job they have the same pay structure and conditions. I understand why - the whole thing is subjective, someone's opinion. You can't base it on exam results or behaviour of children- they are individuals with very varying abilities, habits, background. Unions have fought against teachers being 'graded'. There is no basis for differentiated pay.

I've no idea what PEXing is, but of course schools can and do off-roll kids for all kinds of reasons.
Many parents don't get a say in which school their child goes to.
It's unclear whether you're talking about about behaviour policies for children or for parents.

I think this is rubbish because all teachers, like police cannot all be trusted - we have to be able to challenge them. Maybe if you don’t want to be challenged you should have chosen a different job.

I think there is a cyclical nature to this idea - if teaching salaries and conditions improved massively other industries and professions would start to lose out on the incoming talent and so improve their own salaries and T&Cs to compete.

We’ve all been to school - we know there are good teachers and crap teachers - yet we keep pretending there no way to tell.

You can think it's rubbish all you like. It doesn't change the fact that PEX in incredibly hard to achieve, and off rolling is not allowed unless you're off rolling at the request of the parent, or to AP... which requires dual roll anyway. Ofsted are rightly all over schools which off roll.

Where have you invented the idea that I don't want to be challenged from?

We don't have behaviour policies for parents, although we do prefer them not to threaten us or their kids with violence.
You cannot permanently exclude a child because they won't comply with the behaviour policy, and their parents won't back the school. And you can't off roll them for that either.

They should change the rules to make it easier for schools to expel pupils.

Maybe. But then where do they go? Because there's a dire shortage of alternative provision too.

And who taught the talented scientists that are developing cancer cures and vaccines the skills and knowledge required for their role?

Would there be any talented scientists without teachers?