In demand teachers should be on a higher pay grade

[Winterday1991]

Teachers who have high level degrees from good quality universities and teach in demand subjects such as maths, physics, chemistry etc should be paid at a rate equivalent to what their peers would earn in the private sector. For example starting salaries of £50k.

As I understand it, the current teacher pay scale means that drama, music teachers and low quality graduates are paid the same as high quality teachers. As teaching has low barrier to entry for graduates, and there is a shortage of teachers for certain subjects surely salaries should be treated as they would be in the private sector and paid the market rate. Why does the government not implement this to get more high quality graduates into teaching?

Come into my non-STEM classroom and I'll poetry you until you understand the true ways

Poetry is boring tho.

Science Grad of fabled good University and (now ex) teacher of Sciences including 2 at A level, plus psychology, for nearly 20 yrs.

Mixture of challenging inner city and very rural maintained schools with diverse range of needs in both. Loved working with all my kids and was pretty damn good at my job.

Relentless, pointless paperwork and so called initiatives, re-inventing the wheel over and over again and the constant scrutiny over irrelevant things that took me away from teaching and supporting the well being of my students drove me to leave in the end, not the money.

Oh, and just for the record.

Our young people need the Arts in their lives and deserve to be taught by passionate, well qualified staff. All subjects are equally valuable. We need to be raising well balanced, healthy, happy young people. We don’t have enough time for the Arts and PE in our curriculum as it is.

Primary teachers are super human. Teenagers can generally be relied on to at least walk in a straight line, get on a chair without help, tie their shoe laces, cut their own food and do up their own coat - and that’s before you try and actually teach them anything 😁

Rude!

Why not up the pay of all teachers. Teachers of non shortage subjects in my experience tend to be much better as there was more competition for the training place in the first instance. If STEM teachers get even more incentives then that will be an absolute kick in the face for those other teachers.

Engineering is applied Physics and Maths and I should know because I hold two masters degrees in Engineering and a doctorate in Physics, all from top 10 Russell Group universities. Britain's heavy engineering industries have either gone bankrupt or have been sold off to companies in foreign countries like India and China. Sorry to say this but Physics and Engineering subjects are not going to make a come back in the UK. Physics has been dying in Britain and British schools for the last 12 years. Last year was the worst year in Physics teacher recruitment in UK schools. A mere 17% of the total number of Physics teachers required was recruited nationwide. All the tax free bursary incentives from the government over the years of £26,000 hasn't been helping and as a Physics doctor, I can safely say that it won't make the blindest bit of good in future. Britain was once a major industrial power and many great British engineers and physicists have made tremendous contributions to the subject in Britain's past. But today, it's over for Britain, industrially. You have my condolences.

Last year was the worst year in Physics teacher recruitment in UK schools. A mere 17% of the total number of Physics teachers required was recruited nationwide.

25% this year, which is down to the £10,000 international relocation payment for physics and MFL teachers.

Teacher recruitment difficulties are not just about the poor pay. It's the huge workload, awful funding for schools, challenging behaviour of pupils and long hours. Fix the last 4 things and we'd have a lot more people wanting to go into teaching or staying in the job beyond the first few years.

Superb qualifications! I am also powerfully educated with two masters degrees in Engineering and Applied Physics and a doctorate in Solid State Physics all from Russell Group universities and several first author publications and conference articles.

That's a bit rich coming from a Brit to talk about human rights abuses in India! Don't you know your own history and the abuse that Indians faced from Britain and the abject poverty that India was dumped into as a consequence of British rule? You should be applauding India for the economic strides it has made since freeing itself from British looting, plundering and abuse in 1947. Your nation's engineering industries have failed because of the incompetence of senior engineering managers in your country's industries such as steel, semiconductor and automotive as well as the incompetence of a series of governments and ministers across a range of political parties in Britain. It's been a team effort between these two groups of people to wreck Britain's physical sciences and engineering industries. India and Indian companies have merely capitalized upon your own failures and negligence. I think you should be on your hands and knees thanking Indian companies like TATA, Infosys and Mahindra Tech for saving failing British industries and keeping British workers in employment so that they can feed their kids and put a roof over the heads of their families.

Physics is one of the least popular A-level subjects across UK schools. It's ranked 7th or 8th on the A-level popularity list. Britain is educating more university students in physics but they're mainly foreign students. The number of homegrown students studying Physics and Engineering disciplines is rapidly diminishing. Speaking to you Physics Dr to Physics Dr, I'd like to see how you solve the UK's current physics teacher recruitment and retention crisis! Maybe try trebling the £26,000 bursary to Physics and Engineering grads and see how you get along.

In private schools teachers who teach the subjects they have first and advanced degrees in get paid more than teaching grads. It should be the same for State. The generalist teaching degree should be scrapped imo and all teachers be forced to have an expert subject.

I think you should be on your hands and knees

I know it's just a turn of phrase but I find that quite an unpleasant choice in this context. Again, not everything is a battle to be proven and won. Why so combative and aggressive about this?

Physics and Engineering ARE making a comeback. My husband works in a senior role in engineering - all Uk engineering companies prefer to hire in talented people at GCSE / Btec level (because it’s understood A Level calibre students aren’t always suitable) and then go through work grad schemes that end with a degree from a Russell Group. And the number of places on these schemes are increasing.

There was data a while ago wasn’t there that teachers with 2:2 or lower are more likely to drop out of teaching in their first 5 years - I guess because they’re less motivated overall. But this is a trend only found here. In India and China teachers or tutors with lower grades are more likely to succeed as they don’t have another option.

Physics is one of the least popular A-level subjects across UK schools. It's ranked 7th or 8th on the A-level popularity list.

How does that make it one of the least popular? It's in the top half of the table...

Eleganz started it with the comment about "human rights abuses in the sourcing of raw materials" in India. Yes there are human rights abuses in sourcing raw materials in India, even today (not as much as say 50 years ago), and India is trying to tackle these problems however if Eleganz was knowledgeable enough about the 200 year period of British rule in India, how India became a poor country by 1947 because Britain spent 200 years sucking out its wealth and the underlying causes for why human rights abuses in mining for raw materials. Would you and Eleganz care to comment on Britain's failing Engineering industries today or why Britain has struggled to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of Physics teachers for the last 12 years?

Because people such as you tempt them with the potential mega earnings in the bomb making industry?

The state sector teacher pay scale is often more generous than the private school pay scale. It is a myth that all private schools pay better. In fact, I know many have a policy of employing a lot of young recent graduates who earn little.

Are you able to share an example of a private school where pay and conditions for those with a first or advanced degree is more than a qualified teacher?

If it helps I can show you plenty of private schools where pay and conditions is worse than state schools and getting worse with more and more private schools leaving TPS.

@Physicsgrad1984 No, because that particular aspect of science doesn't interest me very much.
And plenty of people have made suggestions addressing the lack of STEM teachers already. I disagree with the premise of the thread regarding pay.
I'm personally not a STEM teacher because I would be dreadful at it. How about you?

If that's the case then you certainly don't need powerfully educated Physics and Engineering grads like me to become school level physics teachers and you can make do with biology grads (most of whom don't even have A-level Physics themselves!) for the majority of kids across UK schools today and the companies can then take on the kids and train them in these specialist subjects :). I can assure you that's not the model that the Chinese and Indian governments take! Furthermore, if that's the attitude that you take with education then I would advise you to not even bother sending your kids to school at all. Just let them sit at home and watch TV all day long. I'm a hindu Indian. We worship knowledge, wisdom and education. That's why Indian kids are the second highest academic achievers in British schools and white British kids are somewhere near the bottom of academic league tables. That's why 24% of NHS doctors are Indian whilst Britain is only 3.5% Indian, whereas Britain is 75% white British and only 38% of NHS doctors are white British! Why do you think that is?

But coming back to your point, I think you're wrong. I've done Masters degree dissertations and work in the steel industry in Teesside in Britain. It's a big joke. The UK steel industry is playing a game of pass the parcel in trying to avoid going completely bankrupt. It's going nowhere which is how the Indian multinational corporation, TATA, came in and bought it out for peanuts to atleast make it break even and save all those British jobs in Scunthorpe, Port Talbot and Teesside. India is the world's second largest steel manufacturing nation with companies like: TATA steel, Jindal Steel and Accelor-Mittal. My PhD work was semiconductor focused. Again, another waste of time industry in Britain. The UK's semiconductor businesses like Dynex which develops Power Electronics is Chinese owned. Most of the UK's semiconductor businesses in Newport have gone bust over the years and being bought out by Chinese companies like Huawei. There's only a handful remaining making a meager existence.

Engineering in the UK is about more than steel which you would know if you were really who you claim. My husband is an Indian educated engineering grad - the calibre of courses and grads in India outside of iit is poor. Which is why Indian companies do the blunt work but not the design. The UK and Europe and US always, always does the design. He’s currently designing machines for plants in India for all of the companies you mentioned.

Physics is one of the most important core subjects in the world. It's importance lies in the fact that countries who have highly skilled graduates in this subject and Engineering disciplines can hold leverage over other countries, however in the UK today at A-level it's popularity below Sociology, Art and Design and Business Studies on the popularity list. That should worry you.

One of the most useless teachers I ever worked with had a maths PHD from Oxbridge. Ran the maths dept at our (private) school. Most of the best teachers have been ones from universities you’d look down on. Your uni has no bearing on your ability to teach in a way that is engaging and accessible.

Physicsgrad1984

We can swap stories about our respective degrees if you like but it does not make engineering or technology subjects that are valued by schools or the government.