Teacher pay

[Maddie05]

Seeing a lot online at the moment about teacher pay increases being unreasonable. I think teachers do a lot in society and a lot of what is expected of teachers appears to be out with their paid hours.

Am I being unreasonable to think they deserve a pay rise in like with inflation?
(FULL DISCLOSURE - I am not a teacher but I have children in a school and I volunteer on a PTA)

So a secondary school English teacher in his or her first year might have a couple of Y8 middle sets, Y10 bottom set, Y11 top set, a Y12 or 13 class (A level), a Y7 top set, a Y9 middle set. In addition the teacher might get roped in to teach one or two lessons in another subject not their specialism. RE for example. A physics teacher might be asked to take on a maths class. Most humanities teachers I know have been asked to teach Y7 English at some point.

These classes from the teacher's first year will have different lessons from the completely different group of years and sets they will have in the their second year of teaching. And probably their third year. After about 5 years you will have a lot of lessons that you can recycle but you still need to plan for the progress of each individual class. Ability ranges vary from year to year. A GCSE class that only has kids aiming at A or A star equivalents will be different from a top set that has kids whose work goes down as far as a D for example. So you have change how you approach topics.

Behaviour and personalities also impact how you can teach a topic. Some classes might be well behaved and can manage group work or lots of discussion. Others might have challenging behaviour that would mean you have to really keep a lid on how often you let them interact with each other (or you!).

I had two well behaved Y9 top sets one year with similar ability ranges (according to scores). I thought great I can repeat lots of things across the groups. But no: one class was really chatty (in a good way), great at debates, happy to stand up and do talks, always wanting to read their work out, or read aloud. Many of them had handwritting that was terrible and they were really sloppy about handing work in and they did the bare minimum on paper. The other was the quietest class I have ever taught. If you spoke to any of them they looked at their desks, went red and mumbled, they hated anything where they had to speak to each other or me. Their written work was out of this world, way ahead. They wrote loads - the marking work load was huge! I had to teach these classes completely differently. this makes teaching interesting but damn hard work.

And finally probably during that 5 years where you have built a bank of lessons you will either change school (different exam boards, different expectations) or the government will revise the curriculum and everything you've taught has to change significantly.

So basically your planning changes fairly significantly all the time. I quit after a few years. I watched OH wreck his health doing 20+ years.

Also nowadays, teachers don't just teach. When I started in 1982 that is exactly what we did. No interference from parents or unworkable curriculum.

Now pupils come to school in nappies, have poor social skills, can't listen etc. We even had to be responsible for teeth cleaning.

Every time something happens in society, schools are expected to address and solve it with no extra staffing or funding.

I'm a teacher and have never done this. I am aware some do, though. Working this much is clearly not sustainable. You need to find ways to get all planning and marking done in less time. There are ways of cutting this, for example, pupil marking, teacher marking and oral feedback in class, a day using worksheets that aren't marked. Focus on reading, writing and numeracy and having more "down time " lessons the rest of the time.

Because we’d like to keep up with rising costs so we can pay our mortgages, buy food etc. If pay goes up in line with inflation we won’t be better off just no worse off than the previous year. I’m not sure why we can’t have better working conditions as well? Why one or the other?

If you include public sector pensions their compensation is pretty good, one problem is that the only weighting is around London, somewhere like Sunderland it's such a good wage but somewhere close to London it's pretty awful. The system needs an overhaul which may be unpalatable.

I think the poster is looking at take home pay so is therefore paid less per hour than her sister maybe?

Would really love to know how a teacher can 'dial it in' standing in front of 30 eight and nine year olds, as my OH does every day.

I don't think pay was her focus – she was complaining about her sister getting an "astounding" amount of holiday by comparison to her. And yes, on paper, it looks like teachers get a lot of holiday. But seven weeks of it is unpaid.

I worked out as a part time teacher working two days a week, I got paid just above minimum wage for the actual hours I put in. I was at the top of the pay scale too.

I quit two months ago. Teachers should either get paid double, or have massively reduced workload and better working conditions for the wage they do get.

I have taught in primary in the same year group for the last 5 years. Every year there are huge changes in terms of school priorities, government/Ofsted changes and the children themselves.

The first year, there was a big overhaul in Maths and a focus on comprehension; then an overhaul of the wider curriculum subjects in response to Ofsted requirements and move to a “knowledge-based curriculum” which meant every single lesson needed rewriting; differentiation was out in favour of adaptive teaching; the focus on comprehension changed to Reading for Pleasure; then science needed an overhaul to be more practical and evidence required in multiple forms (data, photos of children’s work, teacher assessment in multiple areas of learning); and in the meantime, the number of children with SEND/SEMH needs ascended rapidly requiring an increased amount of scaffolds and strategies to be implemented.

Additionally, my school is very hot on regular testing so all scores must be inputted, analysed for trends and then we must write/demonstrate how we are responding to the data in our lessons (e.g. the Sp2 grammar test showed a weakness in using speech marks so we are reteaching in Sp2 Wk2 lessons)

All positive changes in their own way but it has meant that it has rarely been possible to reuse lessons in the way one might imagine. My school prefers a bespoke approach but even in those subjects where a curriculum provider (eg Oak) is used, the lessons must be adapted to fit the school’s very specific requirements.

That’s why I am sitting up for the third night in a row planning for next week! (Well… with the odd Mumsnet break…)

As for having pupils mark each others' work - my son had his answers wrongly marked as incorrect by another pupil so that was pointless.
We tried not marking every single thing but the parents were up in arms about it.

You're right, it's not sustainable at all. And lots of teachers do compromise on quality in order to survive. Some teachers rarely look at their pupils' books, for instance, and have no idea how theyre actually doing in their subject. Some schools have feedback policies which have minimal teacher marking, and rely on general whole class feedback. There are lots of ways to 'cut corners'. But ultimately, once you've cut all the 'easy' corners that don't have much negative impact, eventually you get the point where the education of the children suffers more and more, and there are no more easy corners left to cut. You end up cutting out too much.

I'm speaking from a secondary English perspective, where I teach English to over 100 children (am I correct in assuming from your post you're primary, and have maybe one class of 30?). The pupils I teach write essays... hard for them to mark themselves. Higher up the school they don't do much in the way of worksheets - a lot of it (quite rightly) is extended writing. If we are expected to mark at one piece of written work per fortnight per pupil (which isn't unreasonable, as I'm sure many parents would agree), with say 100 pupils (which is a very small amount), that's still around 50 pieces of written work (including full essays) per week (with the majority of their work being unmarked and even unlocked at). If each piece takes just 6 minutes to mark (ambitious for GCSE and A Level pupils!), that's still 300 minutes. That's more than 5 hours straight away of marking time per week. So, say an hour a day, Monday to Friday, on top of teaching and planning time... just to give each pupil a measly 6 minutes of individual attention to their written work a fortnight. And in reality of course, many English teachers teach far more than 100 pupils. Maybe double. So then that would be 2 hours of marking a day just to give each pupil 6 minutes a fortnight. (I'm using a rather arbitrary example of 6 minutes of marking, but you could apply this to a number of things teachers should be reasonably expected to be able to do for the children they teach.)

The issue is not that teachers are making martyrs themselves, and doing work they don't need to do. I detest that sort of gaslighting actually. It's that the job is simply to big for the amount of available hours. Teachers in secondary schools in England teach too many pupils, have too many classes, and, crucially, have a poor non contact to contact ratio. It's interesting actually- here's an article if you want to know more: https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/teacher-workload-how-teaching-time-varies-around-the-world

Yeah we've had this problem as well. Even if I mark just one thing for each pupil per fortnight, parents and pupils freak out that I'm not marking everything. They don't realise that it's LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE and that even one piece of work a fortnight is causing me endless evenings working.

Yeh I do wonder about this. As an English teacher I do feel like I am marking waaaaay more than teachers in other subjects. I guess it's easier to do peer and self assessment in some subjects. Plus my pupils do a LOT of writing! I knew one English teacher who tried to limit how much extended writing her pupils did as she was sick of the marking, so her solution was to stop the pupils from generating marking for her... and results plummeted that year 🤦🏼‍♀️

I teach Economics. You need to update stuff. And essays have to be marked. It's an essay subject (although AI marking systems are already in beta testing).

The only effective way to keep the workload in check I've found is to work less than full time and spend the spare day(s) marking. Or sometimes I take a mid week day partly off (as in work 4 hours not 8 unpaid) and work part of the weekend.

It does balance out somewhat over the year, but I do feel that I disappear into some kind of twilight zone in September, emerging blinking around Easter.

My colleague does that. She is part time (but basically works full time). I'm going to consider that in the future (mortgage dependent!). If I can afford to have a part time contract, even if I'm in school all day every day, that might be my solution. Shouldn't have to be like this!

I'd imagine because teaching in the national curriculum / mainstream school involves working hours of 70ish hours a week. Work life balance is shit. The only real way to have any proper life outside of work is to work part-time and unfortunately, part-time work is hard to find as a mainstream teacher. Great if you can get it though.

Workers in the publuc sector get proper pension contributions, which I for one don’t get (3% is hardly anything). Plus they get long holidays. So whilst I recognise their job is demanding, I think they get a decent overall package. STEM teachers often supplement with private tutoring, too.

I don't know one that does tbh, including my xdh and best friends. Perhaps it depends where you are.

I’m a STEM professional who actually recently considered moving into teaching. The pay per se wasn’t what made me decide against it, rather pretty much everything else. I know from teacher friends that the hours are horrendous, and the pupil (& parent!) behaviour has declined markedly. Additionally, my kids are teens now and I don’t want to be stuck only being able to take holidays during school holidays for the rest of my life.
Of course, there’s a price for most things, so with current conditions I’d consider it for significantly more money! Or I’d consider it for the current money offered if annual leave were more flexible and hours more constrained/realistic - or I suppose if you just filled in a timesheet and got paid for time worked.

Certainly in a lot of industries there is a lot more flexibility on contract terms and conditions - so if teaching is trying to compete for these same workers, I think it needs wholesale reform.

Despite teachers repeating these facts ad nauseam, there are always non-teachers who insist it isn't the case. Teacher workload is one of the key reasons for the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

But carry on nay saying. Changes nothing.

I can’t comment on teaching but I guess my area is comparable.
I’m a Social worker- Adolescents.
I earn 37k PA
Im contracted to do 37.5 hours a week but obviously that’s ridiculous with our case loads and I work around 52/54 hours on average with a Sunday morning for admin and mileage etc as a given,
Also, of course more hours if moving a child to an emergency placement on other side of country. With many extra hours settling in if they are a flight risk
On this basis DH worked out my average working week is around 58/60 hours.

I get 5 weeks holiday and 8 bank holidays PA.

I have seen a gazillion teacher threads on MN but not so many SW ones. Covid was a strange one for this as teachers were so vocal and I wondered why there wasn’t more of a rallying voice amongst my colleagues - myself included - who carried on business as usual- despite the massively increased risks.

I think we are just too busy getting out heads down and on with it.

Not sure why I’ve posted tbh-context I suppose. For a comparable public sector role, with a similar salary , but with alot more hours, arguably alot more responsibility and a lot less annual leave.

@Wheech
Well you’re in a minority then! I was a teacher for 20 years and I certainly did as did every single other teacher I have ever worked with!

Covid was a strange one for this as teachers were so vocal and I wondered why there wasn’t more of a rallying voice amongst my colleagues - myself included - who carried on business as usual- despite the massively increased risks.

Because I posted threads and was crucified for it. People literally campaigning for me to be banned from MN.

You could have done that yourself, I guess. Why didn't you?

Yes they should but unfortunately we can’t afford it.

It’s interesting maths. In the business world we factor 220 working days (weekends minus 25 days holiday (I think)) for 7.5 hours a day to work out salary. Of course a lot of people do more but to follow the below thats the comparison. I don’t know anyone I work with that ever does less than 50 a week and yes there are always people that do 40 and some that will do 80.