To teach all day for £11.90 p/h?

[Sooooootired01]

I'm a qualified teacher primarily working as a SEN HLTA. Pay £11.60 an hour. OK I guess.
Last week I covered for a teacher who had gone on residential. This meant teaching all day from Monday - Wednesday, a full and routine curriculum of English and Maths etc. 30 kids in a class, no supervision, completely left to own devices. Again, I'm qualified so fair enough. Lessons preplanned but of course still needed delivery.
AIBU to think that paying me rate of £11.60 p/h for this is not OK?

How true!

Thats insane and your normal rate of pay also is, I’m a pupil support worker (so basically a HLTA) in Scotland, I make £14ph and get paid through the holidays!

Irony here is that £186 is just what the company gives you. They receive £300+ for providing you. You still pay all your tax on that rate plus holiday etc.

That’s a low hourly rate. I work in sen as support staff in the south, local authority school, our hltas are paid between £14-16 per hour.

To be honest OP, if I were you, I would work in supply for three days a week, ideally with a part time contract and then if you need to earn more spend the other two days a week working in a different, non stress profession. With your skills and obvious ability you need to look after yourself and maximise your earning potential.

Thanks all. I'm looking for a part-time teaching role but with budgets as low as they are, who wants an experienced teacher?!!

No, I don't think so either. I was teaching full time (SEND school, I had my own class, had to plan, do parents' evenings and write reports - everything a qualified teacher would) and took home just under £1600 a month (HLTA rate).

Hahaha where have you read this. Join a supply teacher fb group and see how much they’re being paid. £100 a days isn’t uncommon in some areas on day to day. Longer term they’re supposed to pay the minimum of the salary point divided by 195 as the daily rate but not guaranteed to get the salary point you’ve previously been paid and often end up with the lowest.

edited here as I missed the first sentence saying she’s actually a qualified teacher in an HLTA role or sen support role. If she’s paid as an HLTA she’s being paid as unqualified and should not be expected to teach j less given a teacher rate for those days. If she was not qualified then I don’t agree she should be paid a teacher rate as teachers are qualified after several years of university and a couple more years of supervision. The teacher doesn’t just deliver the lesson but plans, assesses and report it. It sounds like the OP was left to deliver everything they was already planned. I do believe she have been paid more.

I also don’t agree with how the HLTA post has turned out as schools are basically using unqualified staff to teach (including planning) lessons on a regular basis. As a supply teacher in school many years ago I was covering the class teachers’ PPA also my with an HLTA in another class and an NQT in the third class. The HLTA was actually the subject leader for both PE and PHSE and provided me with the plans to teach the sessions as I was supply and being paid £105 a day when at the time my daily rate to scale should have been at least £165 a days as a teacher of 15 years experience at the time. The main problem I had was that the plans I was given weren’t actually very detailed and if I had have delivered as given my lessons would have been over in half the time. But as a qualified teacher with experience I was able to work with the plan given and expand on it . In another class I covered for management time I taught French and history and for both those subject was just given the learning objective for the lesson and a pile of either work sheets or vocab cards. Again, I had to use my experience and knowledge to turn this into a lesson. The HLTA wasn’t given this role. But in many schools the HLTAs are being expected to plan and teach without having been through teacher training. As I think this is wrong. Intervention group work I don’t have an issue with but really it should be planned by someone qualified or a very detailed scheme with lessons plans should be used.

Secondary schools are similar but they use the ‘cover supervisor’ role to do the same thing. But the role has an explicit expectation that the person delivering cover should not actually teach. They deliver what is left or basically hand out the sheets and ask students to get on with them without input. They’re there to crowd control.

What is also happening is that supply agencies send in a qualified teacher but pay them as an HLTA/cover supervisor on their job sheet but then the school are expecting someone to teach.

Erm... ring in sick whenever you can get supply?

It kind of depends on what you want to do moving forward. I was in a similar position covering for a teacher on long term sick leave. After a few months I became a temporary teacher and moved onto the teacher's pay scale and P & Cs. Now I'm permanent. It was a way for me to get back into teaching after a long period of being away. Helped boost my confidence knowing that I could still do it. I did spend 3 months being a teacher on a TA pay and conditions tho. If you really don't want that or are not that happy in your school then you have every right to refuse.

The 17 year olds working at the local Pets At Home have started at £12.50 an hour....

Tesco pays more.
Aldi pays more.

And they wonder why teachers and support staff are leaving in droves.

Grossly unreasonable for them to think this is acceptable for a HLTA (qualified teacher no less) to provide cover and not pay cover/supply rates at the very least.

Horrendous. Teachers are professionals who need to study for years and dedicate their own spare time to marking and lesson planning.
London living wage should be paid to someone who cleans toilets, so teachers should be on at least double that.
My mum was a non salaried lecturer on £30 p/h but it worked out about £10 when you factored in her time at home. This was 20 years ago!

Know your worth OP.
Definitely NOT ok.
You are accepting it , so they are loving it. Getting a member of staff and bargain basement price. Join teaching agencies and get £140 a day or more.

Hi OP,
If you want a teaching role but are finding it tough because you are too expensive you could try academies or private schools as they can set their own pay scales and you can specify in your application that you are happy to negotiate pay.

This is what the NASUWT site says about pay in academies:
"new employees who join after a school becomes an academy can be employed on different pay and conditions because academy schools are not in any way bound by the national pay and conditions framework nor by any agreements negotiated locally with your local authority."

Anything I could find about pay in Local Authority schools suggested that someone can't move down the payscales.

Or would you like a TA role in another school. Apply for another 1:1 role, tell them how much you love your job and working 1:1 or small groups but that you would not like teaching whole classes to be a part of your role and that is why you are looking to leave your current role. I think anyone could recognise that you are not unreasonable to not want to teach whole classes regularly for a TAs wage.

If you loved the 1:1 support aspect of your role and found it rewarding you could consider jobs supporting adults with learning disabilities. Loads of transferable skills from your teaching/TA work. This is what I do and I love it.

Yanbu, when teaching you should be paid teacher rate. It's so unfair when HLTAs replace teachers but don't get the same rate of pay. I'm a teacher and this is so upsetting, TAs in primary are amazing and need to be paid their worth. Really not on, you have the same responsibility amd clearly do the job well, things need to change! Xx

Absolutely not OK that they use you as a teacher and pay HLTA or TA rates,

Absolutely not OK that TAs and HLTAs get paid such a low wage. As a teacher, I really could not do my job properly without fantastic TAs.

I absolutely agree that TAs and HLTAs are not paid highly enough.

Yanbu, when teaching you should be paid teacher rate.

If schools paid support staff a teacher salary for doing cover though, I think huge swathes of teachers would choose to do that instead. Being in class with the children is the nice bit!

OP I think you are being disingenuous. What is your actual gross annual salary, and how many hours per week do you work? How many weeks per year?

Are you an NJC employee? Presumably you have an excellent sick pay package and your employer is paying 24% LGPS pension contributions?

Thanks so much for your support on here!
Update...
I've been invited to look around a school next week for a 2.5 day a week class teacher post! Sounds ideal but unsure if it's a bit if a Fool's Errand because they are advertising pay scale of ECT - M4. School is, however, an academy school and C of E so might be in a better position re funding?

@PickledWilly Confused what you mean re the sick package and pension? I come out with just over £1,400 p/m.

What is your annual gross salary. It will be on your pay slip. Are you deliberately not saying?

What is your sick pay policy? If part of the NJC agreement it may be as much as 6 months full pay 6 months half pay depending on how long you have worked there. Are you opted into the pension scheme? All of these are benefits that you wouldn't get working in Aldi.

@PickledWilly I'd have to login to stupidly convoluted system but have told you my monthly pay (net) is £1.400.
Sick pay policy kind of irrelevant? I'm incredibly conscientious and think in five years' service I've had about 2 weeks and 5 days illness. 2 of those weeks were doctor signed-off after emergency surgery.
I get the same normal pension as all support staff. I don't get a Teacher Pension on my HLTA contract!!!

What do you class as unskilled?

@Sooooootired01

Hi,
Fellow HLTA here & I think that's outrageous! What area of the UK are you in? I get paid significantly more per hour just to do my 'normal' job. When I teach the class (regularly - no budget for supply teachers these days!), I also get a small 'uplift' on top for those hours.
It's so difficult to survive in the 'lower levels' of the teaching profession these days & shows no sign of change anytime soon. Breaks my heart how little we're valued. In general, people have NO CLUE what we do or how much difference we make to vast numbers of kids - educationally & pastorally.

@BusyMum47 East Midlands.