To assume teachers will leave private schools

[BagGreen24]

I'm a teacher and looking at new jobs. A job in a local independent school has come up. When I looked in to it the salary is the same as the local comp but the pension offer is much much lower as they are no longer in the teacher pension scheme.

Am I being unreasonable to think it'll be difficult to attract, recruit and retain staff now independent schools? I get behaviour will probably be significantly better and classe sizes smaller etc but I imagine it's still a difficult job and the pressure for results will be the same if not worse.

I wouldn't move to a private school just now unless you are very certain about it's financial state. There will be closures in the next 2-3 years.

I've taught in private schools for 12 years, and I've always loved it, and never found any of the stereotypes of awful parents and entitled kids that people always go on about. But since Covid there's been such a focus on "business first" that it's sucked all the joy out of my job. I love teaching, I'm passionate about education, but I have no interest in providing a luxury experience for "customers" and expanding/promoting the business, which has become the main focus of my job.

I'm on about 12k less than I would be as HOD in a similar sized state school, our school days run til 5pm, and we have evening and Saturday boarding duties (but I don't live in). I can't make use of the 50% staff discount, because I still can't afford it, and fees are routinely going up by 2-3 times as much as salaries each year. We have a fairly standard workplace pension. We don't even get free lunch anymore.

But I don't know if I'm brave enough to leave! I've not worked in a comp for 12 years and I don't know if I could hack it these days. Probably the answer is just to get myself promoted out of the classroom (into a job I definitely wouldn't enjoy, but at least I'd get paid properly for it)

I do agree to an extent - state schools are horribly underfunded, and consequently class sizes are way to high.

I am an experienced teacher with a lot of decades under my belt, including in management. Though I am not a natural classroom manager who can just walk in and own the room, I have, as you can imagine, worked hard to develop classroom management skills over the years and now consider myself pretty decent with all but the toughest classes.

I work in a relative challenging city school in an area of high deprivation. Generally I really enjoy it, but I have one Year 9 class which has grown and grown as I have accepted challenging students into the class because my colleagues who teach the other groups are, through no fault of their own, less experienced than me and less able to cope. This group does push my limits in a way that I am not usually used to these days, and I do feel that this situation shouldn't occur - there should be some slack in the staffing timetable, so that we are not all teaching mixed ability groups of 30 or more.....

I don't even have enough chairs in my classroom!

Furthermore, a lot of poor behaviour is, in my opinion, down to students who are angry because of the appalling levels of deprivation they endure at home - angry with a life that must seem relentless, miserable and without much hope of change.

I don't blame them for being angry. I do blame the society that allows children to grow up like this......

Nontheless I consider state school teaching to be a privilege. I love my job, I love the young people I work with, I love the feeling that we are making a difference, however slight. Along with my daughter it's the best thing in my life.

And students deserve people who feel like I do about it. Not teachers who would rather be anywhere else than in that classroom.....

So yeah. Something needs to change.

Depends on the school . I have just left a private school and the salary was much higher than in state - after 5 years in the job as a mature entrant to teaching and just doing a normal subject role, was on 53k and in TPS (and incidentally accused of lying a few years ago by a notoriously chippy teacher on here).
Day school but free breakfast and lunches, longer days but also longer holidays.
Good resources and no restriction on printing/photocopying -hence why they get the pick if the best teachers as per the PP comment re Maths vacancy.

You sound like an amazing teacher @Ilovelurchers !
Teaching is so difficult these days and I don’t think it’s the fault of those that can’t “hack” the tough comprehensive or expensive private schools (not suggesting you said that, just reflecting on some other posts). Teaching has changed so much in recent years to encompass much more than pedagogy- social issues, poverty, mental health issues, drugs and parenting to an extent.
You can’t enter teaching just for the love of teaching anymore.

@ilovelurchers I've been a teacher for 30 years and have taught in everything from inner-city London comps to top private girls' day schools. Yes, state schools are underfunded, but also the explosion in social and emotional problems so many students have, plus ever-increasing levels SEND, are creating an impossible situation. I'm a pretty good classroom manager (not necessarily a natural). I'm simply not willing to put up with it any more. I want to teach, not fire-fight behaviour. I currently work in a girls' grammar school and I will not leave until I retire.

Academy trusts cannot currently opt out of TPS. If they could, they would have!

Yes I work in quite a tough school. But a school in which a good teacher can make a massive difference to a students life. All of the teachers in the school are excellent and are really supportive but unfortunately we do have issues with behaviour due to trauma, homelife etc.

I do think that any teacher from the school I teach at could teach in a private school if they wished to but I'm not sure all private school teachers could teach at the school I'm in.

The job I was looking at has longer days, longer holidays in the summer by two weeks, but the pay is the same. For me the pension is a massive incentive as someone else mentioned 28% is difficult to match, private school was offering 10%, which is good in private sector, NHS is 23% for reference.

Teaching is a tough job. I know a lot of other teachers as been teaching over 20+ years and many in private schools, behaviour might be better in private schools but workload particularly parents evening/report writing is more intense.

Teachers need to be more financially literate.

You might be the exception in having spotted how bad the deal is and stayed away.

Another thing is that private schools are increasingly disapplying their own pay scales, with a ‘more fool you’ attitude when people realise that they should have negotiated a better deal for themselves on entry.

It will vary from school to school. I think independent school teachers will likely move to better paying independents given the choice.
Some people might still feel that smaller classes, more prep time and longer holidays balance. But many won't.

I was private school educated and taught in the private sector and briefly in the state. They are quite different in environment and general working practices. We have much less paperwork, less managerial oversight, longer holidays, smaller classes, free lunches. On the flip side we do longer days, evening and weekend duties and organise many more extra curricular activities.

I don't think anyone I have worked with would move to a state school, either move out of teaching (many had careers before teaching) or to another indy. A good third of our teaching staff don't have QTS so would be limited in what they could earn in the state anyway.

I was head of science, dept of 9 teachers, and I was the only QTS holder, the others had come to us from industry save for the head of biology who is a medical doctor (still registered) who got fed up with hospital life and joined us as school GP / Biology.

The withdrawal from TPS, which we did a few years back doesn't seem to have caused much in the way of an exodus or issues in recruitment.

Its long been about negotiation, the pay scales are just something written down, and pay rises are best had by doing good work and then visiting the head for a chat once yearly and negotiating more.

Add to this if you do a lot of duties, and your spouse mucks in too many independent schools will give you a free house so you can let yours out.

It's more than just pay though. A friend who works at a private school gets enough time outside of lessons for planning and prep that she pretty much never brings work home (very occasionally she does reports at home.)

she's at a boarding school and even when she has her two long days she's home by 6.30. Plus longer holidays, use of top notch gym/pool/facilities/can go on school trips skiing and what not for free (though I appreciate that's still work) and a huge discount if she wanted to send her own kids. The smaller class sizes mean she has a real rapport with the children she teaches too.

When she worked at a state school she was always doing extra at home, burned out from behaviour and felt like she never had the chance to make a real difference, which was why she went into teaching in the first place.

i have a (SEN) child in mainstream private and one in state. The state school has a rate of kids getting 5As at scottish higher of 7%, the private school is 34%. A lot of the difference is obviously that the private school is selective in intake, but there are a lot of bright kids in the state school who would easily get 5As if in the private school but don’t in the state school. The reason? Classroom disruption take up about 25% of every lesson in the state school, and 0% in the private school. I don’t work in education but there is NO WAY I’d be a teacher in a state school. It would be soul destroying. The money would be a totally meaningless factor.

Exactly, aside from reports I have NEVER done any school work at home.

Not sure about a mass exodus but they will struggle to recruit.

But we as a sector recruit teaching staff from a slightly different pool, aside from PGCE/QTS career teachers we also take a lot from industry and other sectors and train them in house to gain an independent schools PGCE via correspondence with the University of Buckingham if they wish.

We also have a lot of staff who were independently schooled themselves and are more comfortable in our environment.

In 12 years I can only think of one teacher we recruited from state, who was really good, but ultimately didn't like it and went back after a few years.

Not sure of the stats but it used to be that most state teachers don’t stay in teaching so long (most leave after 5 years) that their pension is worth that much anyway. Also successive government have spent the money in tps so I’ll be incredibly surprised if there’s any left for teachers/ ex-teachers like me if we’re lucky to reach retirement age 😁 I loved teaching but it’s a mugs game. At least in private you’ll get nice resources and are probably not being told to fuck off all the time.

Exam results reflect pupil demographics

My DSis didn't magically become a better teacher when she moved from state to private school

I’m surprised someone said the summer holiday difference was only 2 weeks. My DDs broke up at the end of June and back second week in September. Much longer Christmas and Easter too. Staff go back earlier of course. Days were long but no Saturday school, just sport. Not all teachers did anything after formal lessons at all. Some did of course but long lunch breaks were for many clubs. Few teachers had boarding duties but if they did, teaching time was greatly reduced. So it’s not a universal picture. Small classes and well behaved dc are a bonus. Parents want good results, but that’s universal amongst well educated parents in state schools too. Always check financial stability though. Not all schools have opted out of TPS.

Longer lunch times, definitely, do even if you run a club, still have time to eat and have break. In my school teachers /teach 20 out of 30 periods a week, do there is time for marking/planning during school
hours

No it's much easier teaching in a private school. I've done both while it's kind of against my principles I would never teach in a state school again

I can assure you that "nightmare entitled parents" are not exclusive to the private sector, far from it!
I work in state schools and some of the demands from parents are beyond ridiculous.

I recently had a parent saunter into school 40 minutes late to collect his child because he had "a very important meeting". He didnt even apologise and seemed genuinely shocked to be told that he needed to organise his own childcare. He "assumed the teacher wouldn't mind". I've had parents refuse to collect vomiting children from school because they're "too busy" with work, a parent who made a formal complaint to the Govenors because their child didn't get the role they wanted in a school production, and i've even had a parent who wanted the date of a whole-school event to be changed because it clashed with a holiday that they chose to pull their child out of school for. Honestly, I could write a book.

I've had parents yelling at me that their taxes pay my wages. I've had parents threaten to take legal action against me (not the school, me personally) for reporting legitimate safeguarding concerns. I've had to deal with parents turning up at school drunk or under the influence of drugs. Some of my colleagues have been threatened with violence by parents.

I've worked with families in very affluent areas and those from socio-economically deprived areas and I've come to the conclusion that entitled twattery transcends class.

I had a parent in a private school threaten me in a way that made me fear for the safety of their young child. In state I would have referred him to CSC, but apparently threatening a female teacher is acceptable behaviour in that school. In state he would have been banned from the premises.

Jobs aren't just about the pension though. Especially young teachers in their 20s who probably aren't even thinking about the pension.

Yes I’m sure some people are be re comfortable etc. Some people from industry might not want to take a pay cut though. I live in a town with a lot of independent schools and a couple of them are struggling to fill their vacancies as they pay less than state schools and have the pension issue.