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?

That situation doesn't occur in other parts of the UK. Assuming you're in England. Elsewhere only a qualified registered teacher can teach a class on their own. The job would not be suitable for a TA to do. If you were offered a few days supply as a teacher you should have confirmed the rate of pay for teaching rather than assuming they will pay you extra. I agree it's a shambolic situation. I can't believe it's even legal to have people 'teaching' in schools who are not qualified and registered teachers. This couldn't happen in Scotland. Main grade teachers get £48.5k and support staff around £12k.

@PTSDBarbiegirl I was taken on originally as a 1-1 TA for EHCP children but school won't use me for that much at all any more. I'm more often used to cover full classes (for both planned and unplanned teacher absence).
I agree. I've been a qualified teacher 20 years so the parents appreciate it when their child has me in, but I bet they have no idea re the pay situation. The other teachers I work with that do know are appalled.
I also am very concerned that in England anyone can now be put in front of a class unsupervised, no formal qualifications needed. And it's happening often.

@Sooooootired01

Do you think it's school specific & would it be slightly better elsewhere? Your school sounds like they're really taking advantage.

I'm in Gloucestershire & all the 'full class' lessons I teach have been planned by the teachers, although I do sometimes tweak/adapt as I go & I mark/feedback as much as humanly possible!

(I also plan, deliver & assess my own smaller group intervention lessons but obviously only get my usual HLTA rate for that.)

You're in such a difficult position. Balancing teaching & family is incredibly hard. ♥️

@BusyMum47 If you're happy doing it then of course that's fine, but no TA/HLTA should be expected to plan or mark. I was doing it at first...then checked with my union and they said to stop (unless I was being paid my qualified teacher rate).

I'm pretty sure TAs up & down the UK are teaching classes! I'm not a qualified teacher & REGULARLY teach. As do most of the TAs in my school.

It used to be just to cover emergency sickness but now it's long term absence, pre-planned training courses, weekly PPA, absence for meetings, etc.

Schools are skint & there's no budget for expensive supply teachers anymore. 🤷‍♀️

Cover Supervisor: 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.

It's a weird situation.
You are told not to "teach" but some staff are told to leave (within reason) the lesson they would themselves teach.
You are told not to "teach" but often, you'll be left a PowerPoint to "deliver".
You are told to manage the classroom, monitor the work and give verbal feedback only and so it is frowned upon to sit down. You're meant to be walking around.
You are told to try to level up/teach to the top but are rarely left scaffolding or extension to do that.
You should be getting work a non-specialist could deliver. It's meant to be quality work so the kids don't see it as a paper plane/doss lesson. The teacher knows they may need to reteach it. That means a balancing act between setting something meaningful/challenging that's also accessible.
You are told not to spoon feed the answers and to encourage independence but that also means a balancing act, as left to their own devices, many will choose to do feck all as an outcome/the bare minimum or without scaffolding, will struggle.

Your choice is the following:

1. Insist on silence/page X/work independently on answering questions/copying notes. Marking at the end (if you have access to the answers).
2. Insist on indoor voices and let them tackle the tasks in pairs.
3. Try and deliver the lesson as best you can, reading texts/slides out with them, cold-calling, going through the material, clues/sentence starters etc
4. A mixture of the above

Crowd control - it won't ever be just that - because if their books are empty/outcomes are crap or they spend the whole hour procrastinating then you'll be dubbed as shit supply/sub.
You do spend a lot of time preventing silly behaviour, of course you do (chewing/chatting/bants/goading/making spitballs/paper planes/turning around/rocking on chairs/making silly noises etc) but it's not a case of "Here you go. Get on with it!" with no input. If some could, they would. If some don't want to, they won't. It's not just invigilation/glorified babysitting.

But maybe I'm doing it wrong still.
Good luck with your interview OP!

Planning no.
Marking, it depends on the school policy. For example, if as a TA working with a group you'd be marking those books, then when you cover you would also be expected to mark the group you worked with . Obviously, they'd want you to mark ALL the books, but they can't expect it or tell you off for it.

I have to say , your hourly wage is very low for aN HLTA. Our TA's get paid more than that and hour.

Hopefully someone will agree to it otherwise who will wipe your arse when you can't do it? Snob.

My husband is a TA. I worked out if I worked full at my shitty minimum hospitality job I would earn more than him. Utterly wrong.

CofE Academy chain around here appears to have high costs for all it's execs while they have oversized classes and shedding TAs...

All the HLTAs in our school and a lot of schools I know of are qualified teachers. It's because teaching is not a family friendly job if you have children of your own. Not worse the hours and stress. It's why schools are losing teachers.

YANBU. I know tutors who are paid £25 ph. Maybe it’s time you consider a change to teach outside the classroom if possible.

@BusyMum47 not in Scotland, as I said it's an entirely different system. We don't have 'TA' staff. It's support staff and they NEVER teach a class. They work under teaching staffs direction and supervise groups or work 1:1.The head teacher could not have a member of support staff in a class all day. I can't believe this was ever endorsed by teaching unions in England. No wonder there are problems.

I supply and earn between £110&130 depending on school. No way anyone is getting £186.

Saw this in the news yesterday.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/26/teaching-assistants-deployed-to-routinely-cover-lessons-in-england-and-wales

I think @PickledWilly has a point that I think you have miscalculated your hourly rate (although I am sure unwittingly rather than deliberately).

You have told us that you take home £1400 each month. I assume your pay is spread over 12 months?

You are taking home (after tax/NI/pension) £16800 (the 1400 x 12 months).

You are in school 7.25 hours each day I believe, 5 days each week. We can calculate 7 hours paid each day although it is probably less than this that you are contracted as your unpaid break is probably half an hour or more.

7hrs x 5 = 35 hours each week
Schools operate 39 weeks each year
35 hours ×39 weeks = 1365 hours.

You get paid £16,800 (after deductions) for 1365 hours.
16800 % 1365
= £12.30 an hour AFTER paying tax/NI and pension.

Also holiday pay - presumably 5.6 weeks?

@Winter2020 As I'm sure I said, I also teach one day a week elsewhere.

@PickledWilly We only get statutory holiday pay. No more than anyone else.

So the 1400 includes 1 day teaching elsewhere? Is that at qualified teacher rate?

@Winter2020 Indeed. The "paid" school day is 9-3.30 with half hour break so 6 hours.

I do think you should know what your annual gross salary is. Perhaps it would reassure you that your hourly calculation is wrong and you are paid more per hour than you think.

@PickledWilly Not the point of my post tbh.

You can't compare teacher's pay per hour with everyone else's pay per hour because of the holidays. It's an easy concept to grasp - and anyone who can't grasp it isn't fit to be a teacher.

@LindorDoubleChoc What do you mean here?
My issue is I'm teaching on my hlta rate!!