To think many people prioritise perception over reality when it comes to status, jobs, finances

[Loucille]

This just struck me listening to an Adolescence inspired phone in on LBC about why men don't teach.

I currently live in the Eurozone and have adjusted currency at existing exchange rates.

I worked in a financial services career prior to doing.a stint in teaching. I currently run my own business.

I hated my job in FS, averaged about €80k inflation adjusted to today's money, no employers pension contributions. I worked ca. 2400 hours a year so €33/hour

In my decade in teaching I averaged around €70k, with the cash value of pension €85k and worked around 1950 hours a year, ca €43.50 an hour. I didn't like this job, but on balance found it prefesbke to FS.

I currently have about the same financial circumstances as I did in teaching running my own business. I now live in rural northwest Ireland where I bought a house for €80k.ma. few years back that'd probably be around €150k to buy now.

My BIL is a teacher here in Ireland (20 years experience, no extra responsibilities). He earns €75k for a 990 hour year, around €10k pension cash value so €85.5 per hour. Tax and non housing cost of living roughly balance out with the UK.I would be earning the same as him were I to contract teach here in a shortage subject. This is my plan B if the business environment worsens.

What I don't quite get is this. When I worked in FS people reacted to me as if I were, or was about to become, wealthy. A strange mixture of unearned respect, jealousy and opaqueness, possibly brought about by a perception of income.

In teaching when I was in the London area, with the exception of an 18 month period around the 2008 financial crisis I got mostly patronised and asked "how I was finding the salary cut".

In the EU & Ireland I got mostly positive or neutral reactions to being a teacher, and now running a business.

Given the above figures and the massive additional impact of being able to live in locations with cheaper housing (most of the"better"fs jobs were in London or similarly priced cities it is hard not to conclude that people (especially those in SE England) ha e a very skewed perception of financial realities, and perhaps in some cases actually want to deduct perceived status points from those who have freer or better lives than them.

Teaching used to be poorly paid but it isn’t so bad now but there’s still that perception. Dbil teaches and earns well above average. I think the reality with teaching is you probably actually work the same as a full time equivalent with 5 actually weeks holiday due to planning and if teachers saw it line that they’d feel less hard done by working late and during their “holiday” time.

Friends who are teachers rarely complain about the pay per se: they complain that for the hours they are expected to work, when it comes to admin, planning, extracurricular cover etc, the pay is not commensurate; and that standards of behaviour and the ability to discipline poor behaviour are so poor in many schools that the physical risk teachers are at sometimes, and the toll on their mental wellbeing, is also not appropriately reflected in pay. The status of teachers may well be different in countries where these things are less commonplace.

On reflection there are probably a few key questions.
One is, if people say teaching in the UK isn't well paid, what would they define as well paid?
Also, why don't people take into account local coat of living and non salary benefits when assessing a jobs financial status?
Then there, is the Greater London/SE England emphasis on gross salary and perception of financial status at odds with the reality of different locations, trajectories etc? Do those trapped in high cost low quality of life locations want to prevent others from escaping?

I think it’s generally teachers who talk about how terribly paid they are and how much they could earn elsewhere, not other people

If somebody were to say “I decided to go into teaching and leave London because whilst the pay is lower than my previous job, the cost of living is cheaper here” I imagine most people would fully understand that as a reasoned position.

If somebody who previously had a decently paid and successful career in one sector announces they’re going to train as a teacher, my immediate thought is “god, why??” - because teaching in much of the UK has had its status eroded, as it just seems to be such a thankless, exhausting, sometimes dangerous career for relatively low pay commensurate to what the job actually entails. I get that impression from the teachers I know, many of whom are actively looking for a way out. It’s not connected to some sort of jealousy that they’re “escaping” - I might work long hours in my career, but nobody has thrown a chair at me and called me a cunt in it, and I don’t have to deal with parents screaming me out for confiscating their kid’s iPhone.

Men have historically chosen not to go into teaching for all kinds of reasons. Money may well be one of them; there will also be the challenges of working in an environment that’s predominantly been female; a society which thinks that men wanting to work with children must have ulterior motives; and that many men still don’t actively expect, or expect their partners to want, for them to take on the majority of childcare in the household and therefore see a career with school holidays off as the big bonus that many women do when they choose teaching.

Teaching in England is not well-paid. You said you averaged EUR70k when you used to teach, working 1950 hours per year. Pension cash value was good.

Let's start with the salary.
At today's exchange rate, that's £60,000. Outside of London (I'm not sure about inner London weighting), the top of the pay scale is £49,000 without additional responsibilities (and in reality, to reach UPS you are required to take on additional responsibilities). That's the very top, where you have had many years of jumping through hoops - the main pay scale is worth £43,000 at its highest point, which you reach after 7 years of service. So we have an 11k difference from the off.

Your hours worked are way lower than those in England. We have 1265 hours directed time (unless you are in an academy, which 81% of seconadry schools are, where directed time can be endless). Note that directed time does not equal hours worked - those are easily double. So now we have less pay, more working hours compared to Ireland.

Now, pensions. When I started teaching, pensions were great. Final salary-based. Now, that pension value has gone down significantly; it is career average based. I've done 25 years of service and cannot give you a current figure, because the TPS website refuses to spit one out and the form to access that information in writing is unclear at best. But it will be a lot less than what you got. So now we have less money, more hours, less pension.

And then let's talk about contributions. Because all of those are higher now than they used to be. I pay more into my pension to get less out.

I just did Easter revision with my Y11s today. I don't even get paid my hourly rate for that, because the school is too skint. I get paid a flat rate that is just over half of what I normally earn in a day. I turned up because, owing to the current cost of living, I need the extra money, and trust me, I don't live it up high.

So no, teaching here, in England, at least, is not well-paid for the hours, stress, responsibility and also the job insecurity, and the pension, while still okay, is worth far less than it once was.

Thanks for your post. I should say my UK average salary was in outer London private schools. The work was intense, quite possibly less harsh than in many state schools, and I didn't really enjoy it. I am aware the national pay for non free paying schools is lower.

Irish teacher salary scales are published on gov.ie. I work slightly fewer hours than some colleagues simply because as a contracting teacher expectations are lower. I know British colleagues who relocated here for personal reasons and were pleasantly surprised at the effective hourly rate differential. This is also partly due to the fact that Irish government schools are 34 weeks a year and there are relatively few extra curricular activities or rhe email hell I experienced in the UK.

I guess I feel there's a bit of judgemental comparative opportunism in reactions to your.choice if career in the UK. These are partly justified by the poor circumstances in many schools. However, elsewhere as I've discovered the working conditions are far more preferable. And yes my figures don't take.account of pension contributions.

I think a massive overhaul of teaching conditions in the UK is overdue.