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)

Exactly. I did a lot of hours, but have a friend, moving upwards in his career so very dedicated, who frequently works until midnight and in the run up to exams was at times working at 2am. He lives on codeine and caffeine.

My mother was an English teacher and spent hours correcting essays so I know where upu are coming from. She worked 6 hours on a Sunday and 3 hours every evening. It's one of the reasons I did the primary PGDE instead of the secondary (although it wouldn't have been English I'd have been teaching).

Too busy in the trenches I guess. Too much real daily responsibility that increased exponentially in that time.
I realise simply as a social worker I don’t have and never will have same feelings of entitlement teacher friends of mine have about their own position.
We as a service don’t really have time to reflect or consider our own position. the minute you start naval gazing or take your eye off the ball the workload goes up and tips from barely manageable to dangerously unmanageable - but you know that.

Thats why despite all the union stuff we don’t strike. We know what that means for our vulnerable kids and families, and besides, the workload doesn’t just stop and will just become worse or potentially catastrophic, even with only a couple days off the ball.

I actually think it’s a class thing too.
teachers are often the children’s of teachers, married to teachers etc, in a solidly middle class bubble , hence an innate entitlement.

A lot of Sw’s and Child practitioners are from working class backgrounds, especially those in their late 40s /50s.

It’s a totally different mindset in terms of public service and your role within it.

It's "entitlement" to want safe working conditions for yourself and the children you work with? To want better for them?

I think our ideas about child safeguarding and your relationship to it may differ, when framed in the context of teacher pay , which is what this thread was about no?
Not sure how the two relate to each other ,

How are teachers pay and conditions - which I think l are quite good when related to comparable roles such as mine -‘ unsafe’

It’s crazy that FE teachers aren’t paid the equivalent of. Husband worked in secondary schools and PRUs all his life and now teaching A level biology in FE yet he’s paid about a third less than if he worked in a school. Why?

Teaching involves being in a room with 35ish students, on repeat, hourly, for 6 or 7 lessons a day. Not being able to go to the toilet. Leave the room for any reason without cover (sackable offense). Cover not really available either. Not getting breaks (duties done in breaktimes - often no time to go to the toilet as duty starts when the students leave the classroom and duty ends as the kids head back in). Lunch meetings. If off sick, required to set work everyday for every class.

Not necessarily saying the workload is harder. But the working conditions are rigid.

I'm sure the teacher admin of an additional 4 or 5 hours a day on top of teaching is probably similar to that of a SW. Taking work home, working into the evening.

OK I just imagined my husband of 20 plus years not working most evenings lol.

Why is it so difficult to appreciate people have different experiences? Bizarre.

This

This post really made me laugh, in a good way. It is absolutely true - Noble started a huge number of well written threads that prompted massive numbers of replies. I really don't think there would have been anything like the number if she hadn't. I really enjoyed and appreciated them Noble, thank you!

Im a primary teacher. At the moment I'm in y4 so I've planned all this year's y4 work. Last year i was in y5 so i planned all that. Next year I'm going to y3 so I can't just reuse stuff. Plus each cohort is different, different abilities, different needs. In the past I've reused some things but never without changing it first.
Plus we changed our curriculum a couple of years ago so we had to replan it all.
You're kind of right about marking for 4 year olds but they do other work. My DD is in Reception. Her teacher uploads work for each individual child to an app every single night. It must take her hours. Lower years are less marking but more prep, older years are less prep but more marking.

Are you in/did your DH teach in England? It is well known that conditions in Ireland/N. Ireland/Scotland (not sure about Wales) are infinitely more favourable than teaching in England. It's MN, so it is generally assumed that a thread is about X in England unless specified otherwise.

I told all my DC not to be a teacher as if you count all the unpaid evening / weekend / holidays then it would be less than minimum wage.

Seems you get paid way too much.

60 hours a week is not necessarily 12 hour days Monday to Friday. Lots of teachers do quite a lot of work at the weekend - either a bit on both days or a lot on one day. And in the holidays (though probably not usually a full half day every day). I'll have done 2-3 hours work on 7 out of 9 days this half term.

It may depend on your school- some schools DEMAND insanse amount of marking and you cant just cut it by having kids mark their own work. Not to mention places that do random drop in observation and whatnot. I wonder if you teach primary, because in secondary it's a whole new thing and especially with exam classes a loads of additional work (revision, lunchtime clubs, 1:1, speaking prep, exam paperowork) plus trips that oyu cant jus outsource by some miracle to somewhere else.I teach around 300 kids ach week and should be marking all the books once a half term- an it has to be my marking, and with shitty behaviout no way to even get some of that done in class.

We're not comparing working in on a battlefield to teaching. It does not mean that a job cannot be unsafe if you dont hold a gun.
I have felt unsafe in a classroom when I was surrounded by 6 very tall aggressive students shouting at me, I have felt vurnerable and unsafe when a student's parent accosted me in a supermaket. I felt unsafe multiple times because of behaviour during lessons and in the corridor. I felt unsafe when someone took a photo of a colleague and posted it online for kids to mock. Whatever dangerous job you do, ot does not mean that other professions are 'safe'.

You made that comment about covid, and now you're trying to bring it back to teacher pay.

Your comment about "Too much real daily responsibility that increased exponentially in that time." is pretty funny, trying to imply that teachers don't have real daily responsibility. And that you're too caring to strike. Being a martyr drives working conditions into the ground and doesn't do anyone any good in the long run.

In the context of teacher pay - the independent review body recommended that we get a 4% pay rise this year, 5.5% last year, and 6.5% the year before. The reason for this is quite clear. There is a critical shortage of teachers in England and pay forms a part of the reason for this. Substantial pay rises are needed in the sector in order to attempt to address this and bring some stability. Not because teachers 'deserve' more money (which is what people generally think this is about) but because the country needs teachers to be paid better.

Marking - Our school tried to cut marking down with more pupil marking and whole class feedback. The result was a disaster. Kids marking their work as correct even when not, kids not being able to spot spelling mistakes (why would they) and whole class feedback being pointless in a mixed ability group. IMO giving pupils accurate and meaningful feedback is a crucial part of the job. I’d do it better if I had more time. I’d have more time if I didn’t have to go to so many pointless meetings I’d fill in so many useless spreadsheets.

Back to the topic of the thread - I think I am paid well but it needs fully funding and I’d rather have smaller classes and proper reform of SEND than a pay rise.

Yep. The whole process of, give an individual feedback comment, pupil responds in writing to the feedback, you RE-MARK the work looking at their improvements, based on the feedback (meaning it has to be done same week/weekend following). The whole thing per student can be bordering on half an hours work. And when you teach the numbers mentioned by @HerNeighbourTotoro literally multiply that by each student and it's an INSANE amount of hours and requires military levels of scheduling to make sure you're only focusing on doing it for one class at a time.

There is no way on earth that amount of work can ever be done during the school day with 1 or 2 planning periods a week. And with meetings, detentions, revision sessions after school etc, it inevitably ends up being done late into evenings and at the weekends.

This. It pits teachers and families against each other too. In Ireland the teacher pay is funded centrally, not from individual school budgets.

I just think this, as ever, boils down to a few things:

1. Jobs are not handed out in a raffle. If you think teaching is easy because of XYZ, train to become one. If you are a teacher and the hours you’re doing or whatever it is is unsustainable, try to leave. (Easier said than done - I am a teacher!)
2. I literally cannot imagine looking at a public sector job and thinking “they’re paid too much and this makes me angry”.
3. Re: pay - I think we get paid a decent amount but part of the issue is you hit a certain level and then you can’t get any more pay without taking way more responsibility in a way that can essentially change your entire job role, e.g. take you out of class. I’m sure that’s the same in many other jobs and I imagine it’s also annoying there.
4. Teaching is neither the hardest job in the world, nor is it easy.
5. Every teacher works different hours.

England yes but rural north.

I’m solidly working class, Mum was a factory worker, Dad was a fitter in a factory. I worked for 26 years in schools in deprived areas. I left at age 49, single with no job to go to. I earn about £30k a year and wouldn’t go back to my previous £45k a year a job (less 9.6% pension payment) if it was £90k a year.

I don’t think it’s massively helpful to insist that teachers always work in the evenings - most of the time I don’t, and that is the same for a good number of my colleagues who I’m close friends with. I feel like it undermines the point as loads of people do know teachers who aren’t working mad hours and then it sounds like people are exaggerating how hard it is and just makes people dislike us more.