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?

Not factually incorrect at all.

Some people are using "private sector" to mean "private schools." Some are using it to mean "the whole private sector, i.e. companies." Both uses are common, but in education, "private sector" tends to mean just schools, so the teachers here are reading it like that.

So I think that some of these posts are being misunderstood!

This bit stood out to me as being a whole load of bollocks...

c) Those that work in public sector automatically get pay rises to the next level, especially in teaching, and they usually exceed the rate of inflation. This is not always the case in the private sector. However, in the private sector, what happens is that people move jobs and then the role is re-evaluated as to whether it is competitive on the market when no one applies.

And this bit

"b) Schools are becoming academies now. At some point pay will start moving in a more private sector direction. So you'll get what you want to some extent, but there are good and bad points."

Pay in academies, just like in LA schools, is limited by school funding, which is decided by the government. All schools are desperately cost-cutting, and the likelihood, as many teachers know, is that rather than paying good teachers more, expensive teachers will be managed out and replaced with cheap teachers, and progression up the pay scale is limited by a PM system designed to keep down pay.

I have a first in medicine from an excellent university. My music teacher was incredibly skilled and had a degree absolutely at least the equivalent of my own. Why would I want her to be paid even less?

I believe the misunderstanding were from people who have no knowledge or experience of the education system believing they are experts and talking utter nonsense.

ivd never met any teacher in twenty years who would refer to private schools as the private sector.

Private schools are private schools. No teachers would think private sector refers to schools. Private sector and public sector go together.

My DH has obviously fucked up massively along the way. He has a phd in a STEM subject from a “good quality” university. He’s 49 and is on more than £50k now but it wasn’t that long ago that he wasn’t (and he’s now at director level). Sound like the savvy thing would have been a few years ago to look out for graduate entry level roles and go for them. I don’t think he realises the new entrants that he recruits in his company are earning nearly as much as he is.

Of course you're right on both counts, for some reason my brain lurched from the two "sectors" of education to public/private, instead of maintained/independent. I think I need more coffee. Sorry!

Another teacher who absolutely didn't read it this way. I'd imagine most teachers have worked in the private sector at some point, even if when at university. Many of us had jobs in the private sector before career changing into teaching.

Teaching SEN is the most difficult from my experience. You definitely deserve to be paid more! Teaching A-level maths is far easier.

Doggytastic - I think your post just shows how impossible it is to say what is easier or harder to teach. I am relatively confident with teaching children with SEN and, while it's definitely one of the harder parts of my job (for me), I can do it. I would never be able to teach A Level Maths in a million years. I wouldn't even have been able to pass A Level Maths! That doesn't mean it's harder to teach per se but it's harder for me. So, as long as teachers are teaching to their strengths and have the right subject and age range (not always the case at the moment, I know!) then nobody should really be having a 'harder' job than anybody else. We're all just doing the 'right' job for us.

I do however, think the type of school can make a job objectively harder. I mentioned upthread that I am paid less than colleagues in state education. That's not going to make me move into state. I am less stressed and don't work as hard as I would in state school because the classes are so much smaller and, by and large, the children are more amenable. So I don't mind being paid less. It seems a fair exchange. I wouldn't be averse to teachers in large schools in difficult areas with no resources being paid more than teachers in delightful, 'leafy' schools with more resources and budget. That seems a lot fairer to me than doing it by subject. It already happens with headteachers, doesn't it. A head of a small, rural primary school isn't earning anything like what the head of a large, inner city comprehensive is.

Says who? Do you know how tough subjects like maths, physics and engineering are? These aren't easy subjects to understand hence fewer and fewer students in the UK are taking them. Furthermore, these subjects are more useful for any nation's economy. You want to build a thriving steel industry in a country? Then you need graduates of these subjects. You want to build a thriving electronics and semiconductor industry in a country? Then you need graduates of these subjects. You want to build and maintain a nation's nuclear deterrent? Then you need graduates from these subjects. You want a booming financial services sector in your country? Then you need graduates from these subjects who are clever enough to do really complicated maths and computer programming. I'm sorry, but that's capitalism for you! Some subjects are worth more than others.

@Physicsgrad1984 RTFT

If you want a creative industry worth billions to the UK economy (which we have) you need creative degree graduates. Creative degrees are incredibly tough to do well in because they require a lot of skill and many STEM grads would not do well at them and find them difficult. The creative industry is certainly much more economically important than the steel industry in the UK.

The reality is that to have a successful economy we need lots of different skills that work together in a regulatory and legislative environment that promotes the creation of sustainable businesses. STEM grads can't do that on their own.

Aaah there it is, someone from the private sector with no understanding of the profession assuming they have superior knowledge and the answer to everything. "The best" grads aren't necessarily good teachers. It is a different skill set, it's why you will see in universities there are two tenure tracks, teaching and research. Academically gifted people can often be the absolute worst teachers, they do not modulate their knowledge to different abilities to get the best out of all students, they can get frustrated quickly, they don't see the investment in the pastoral elements of teaching as important all of which can be damaging to students that could thrive in other environments. This is a generalisation of course, and there are many academically gifted people who are brilliant teachers, but the answer is not as simple as "pull the standard up, get the best, listen to me, I know best"....you don't, listen to the experience of teachers. And pay them all more, they deserve it, so do the civil service.

That's fine then. You can hold onto your creative industries as being your main source of income and let subjects like physics, maths and computer science die away in Britain! I don't anyone in Britain will notice or even care! You can create generations of British people who are illiterate in these subjects whilst other countries like India and China storm ahead!

As a Solid State Physics PhD grad, one other point that you should be aware of is that subjects like maths, physics and engineering are highly important for British national security. Not just to have highly skilled scientists to maintain Britain's nuclear deterrent but also Britain's greater weapons manufacturing industries which is still big business for Britain! If you kill off these subjects in Britain then you'll be at the mercy of other countries like China who do have booming engineering industries, to import these "goods" into Britain and develop Britain's telecoms systems. The choice is yours!

As someone with a PhD in chemical physics, postdoctoral research experience and coming up to 20 years professional experience as a chartered professional in STEM in industry doing lots of outreach work in the time, especially encouraging women I to STEM fields I am well aware of the importance of varies technical and scientific disciplines in our economy.

However, trying to act all superior and doing arts and humanities down will not advance the preservation of STEM education and skills in this country one bit. My point was that there are sectors that contribute hugely to our economy that are not fuelled by STEM graduates.

Also the reason India and China are stealing ahead in heavy industry is not a lack of STEM skills in the UK but because it is cheaper to produce in those countries with as stringent health, safety and environment legislation and toleration of human rights abuses in the sourcing of raw materials. Indeed we are educating more people in physics at university now than we were a decade ago, between 2010 and 2018 the IOP reported a 30% increase in physics students.

You are making a fundamentally flawed assumption that teachers who are 'low quality graduates' make inferior teachers. There is way more to teaching than the academic component, you know, like emotional and social competence. Furthermore, the damage we are doing to children by conditioning them to think they only have worth if they perform well in subjects like maths is inexcusable. My life is enriched beyond measure by music, drama, history etc and I am grateful to all those 'inferior' teachers who have enabled this enjoyment.

@Physicsgrad1984 eh??Nobody wants to "kill off" any subjects (well, maybe P.E....*). It's not a death match of Sciences Vs Arts. What a strange, narrow and unproductive way to think about things.

*this is a joke, before I'm jumped on by a phalanx of PE people

Am I the only non-STEM subject teacher thinking eh?!

Trying to get kids to study none-STEM subjects at both GCSE and A Level is increasingly an uphill struggle. If there is a gap in STEM industry then it isn’t coming from within schools. Industry might need to have a bit of an inwards look, perhaps?

@Baconisdelicious no, it's the Non-STEM-Teaching Brigade and their covert campaign to demilitarise the UK and turn us over to communism, through the medium of...books...and...knowing stuff...and things...erm...

How dare you?!

My campaign is NOT covert.

@MrsHamlet whoops, back to school for me...

Physicsgrad1984

I'm not sure if you are aware but Engineering comes under Technology and Technology is nested under the creative subjects in the curriculum.