To think midwife’s get a rubbish deal compared to teachers?

[Midwifeacher]

Both should earn more than they do, obviously. My sister is trying to choose between midwifery and teaching. Both seem so different but she wants a guaranteed career and is trying to decide which route to take. I’ve been running comparisons with her.Whats shocked me is what a shoddy deal midwifes seem to get. Before taking into account that obviously, sadly, it carry huge emotional weight when things go wrong. Not entirely comparable in profession but why would anyone do this job?

Starting salary:
Midwife - £29,970
Teacher - £32,916

Highest salary without going into leadership
Midwife - £42,618
Teacher - £45,321

Holidays:
Teacher - 13 weeks plus term time bank holidays (though some unpaid, this is included in above salary) major holidays off, no flexibility to take term time off
Midwife - 27 days plus bank holidays, often work major holidays, can book time off when needed, though hard to get approval.

Pension (employer contribution):
Teacher - 28.6%
Midwife - 23.7%

Shifts:
Teacher - 6.5 hour shift mon-fri daytime (student facing) lots of reported overtime
Midwife - 12 hour shift inc evenings and weekends (patient facing) lots of reported overtime

AIBU to think midwives are getting a crap deal? Is it because they’re not as unionised?

also she’s obviously not basing which career she goes for on the above factors, but it has to be taken into consideration!

You had me until the 6.5 hr shift!
My husband is in an NHS job at the equivalent banding. I'm in school.
He works full time but does fewer hours than me and I work 0.8 so four days a week. He can also still function at the end of a working week. He gets lunch breaks and he doen't take work home.
If the teaching package was so attractive, teachers wouldn't be leaving within a few years of qualifying or within a few years of taking their first maternity leave (reported on the news this week).

Teacher's directed time works out around 6.5 hours a day. During term time.

I've worked in 3 large secondary schools and can't think of a single teacher who only worked 6.5 hours a day. Usually 8+ hours in school each day then planning and marking in the evenings/weekends/holidays. Often double the directed time overall, if not more.

Midwives work longer shifts but fewer of them, get paid overtime/unsocial hours and can take leave easily (compared to a teacher). They can't take their physical work home with them so their downtime is exactly that.

In a primary school I've never seen a TLR above 4k

Teaching is not a family friendly job. You'll never be able to take your child to/from school, see a school play, go to sports day or cover an inset day.
You'll also be so exhausted at the end of the day you won't have any energy for your own child.
This is why teachers either leave or go part time once their children are born.

In many cases, yes

I’m not sure this is a genuine post as I find it hard to believe someone is debating training for two very different careers with the only similarity is that they’re underpaid and stressful.

I’m a teacher and I couldn’t be a midwife as I don’t want bodily fluids on me. Likewise my mate (NHS not midwife though) couldn’t imagine teaching teenagers all day.

I don't think teacher training colleges have existed for about 30 years. My PGCE was at post-graduate level - I could have paid to do an extra few credits in the years immediately following to receive a Masters.

I agree there’s much better allied health profession roles other than midwifery. Better hours, better/different workload, more chance to work privately or even set up your own business down the line.

Interesting that nurses/midwives and teachers pay for parking - predominantly female occupations. Does anyone know if firefighters/police/prison officers pay for parking at work?

Yes but the kids in the midwives case are cute, cuddly and haven't learned to talk yet and there's a maximum of three at a time usually. Teachers get more because little Susie in class is a choppy bint and she has 29 friends with her! 😁

midwifery is a very important job and really hard. So is teaching but in a very different way so it’s absolutely pointless comparing them. Depending on your subject or age range you can be doing an extra 3 hours of marking and planning every day so your comparisons of hours are incorrect.
Better pay for midwives - sure. But that doesn’t mean teachers get too much.

You're right, they haven't. No such thing.
It's all training in schools now, sometimes back to a uni for some theory.
It's only one of many, many inaccurate claims on here.

I used to be a teacher and gave it up for several reasons (one being that I never had any time for myself, and definitely wouldn't have had time for a family). I see a lot of other people have commented about teachers taking work home, so I'll comment on what I saw when I was in hospital for a couple of weeks before having my baby.

The midwives on the antenatal/postnatal ward were completely understaffed and babies didn't count as patients. They had to do observations on the babies, but they weren't actually allotted time to do these because the babies weren't patients. They often had to share out other patients between them because of staff illness, and had some difficulty with bank staff who were drafted in and didn't know how things worked on the ward. I had a lovely young midwife who had just come off maternity leave herself, and she never finished her shift on time because of having to do so much paperwork she didn't get time to do during the shift.

Things to note:

Pay:
Midwifery starts at £31,049, not £29,970, but crucially, there is unsocial hours in top of this, a 30% uplift for weeknights and Saturdays, and a 60% uplift for Sundays and bank holidays.

Midwifery also progresses to Band 6 immediately upon completion of the preceptorship (average is 12 months, but can be anywhere between 6 and 21-ish) depending on the person) which increases their base salary to £38,682. Top of band 6 is £46,580 which would still not have any management requirements, and plenty of band 7 roles (£47,810 -£54,710) won't have people management as a key component (other than perhaps being midwife in charge for some shifts, but would still very much be clinically based)

Teaching starts at £32916 and top of upper pay scale (which I believe doesn't have to include management) is £51,048. Although my basic understanding is that you need to do each pay step in turn up through the main scale (so 6 years to get to M6 which is £45k) and then apply to cross onto ups, but a teacher may know more than me on that!

Holidays:
keep in mind that full time midwives are only working 3 shifts a week (with one 4 shift week every 4 weeks) so need far less annual leave for routine stuff like appointments, sports days etc due to the flexibility - most areas allow you 4 requests a month of shifts you particularly want off to help accomodate these things without having to touch annual leave, so annual leave lasts quite a while in my experience, and obviously it's subjective and dependent on areas but I work closely with midwives in my nursing specialty and I've never had any issues getting annual leave when I want it and to my knowledge it's not an endemic for them either (and even last minute requests will be accommodated where possible, and the teams I work with will all try and cover each other for these where needed)

Pension:
Both schemes are DB so looking at employer contributions isn't a useful indicator, you'd be better looking at accrual and employee contributions

The accrual rate is better in the NHS pension, but the employee contributions climb quicker (both schemes contributions increase with salary, if you took a midwife at the top of band 6 they would be paying 9.8% into their pension and a teacher at the top of the main pay scale would pay 8.9%, but in turn the midwives pension will be higher as a result of the better accrual rate.

Shifts:

See holidays, midwives work long shifts but fewer of them. In my experience most wards/units are also fiercely protective of making sure they each get a break, and nobody stops them going for a wee when they want to!

I know you said these aren't her deciding factors, but I don't think midwives are getting a raw deal compared to teachers, no. They are getting a raw deal compared to what they deserve, absolutely, but so are teachers. I wouldn't say midwives are being disproportionately screwed over any more than any another public sector role to be honest, least of all teachers. If anything I would probably say it was the other way round (as someone who seriously considered teaching for their career change but pumped for healthcare instead!)

But if her heart can think of nothing better than being a teacher, she will be hard to sway, likewise if midwifery is what makes her light up, teaching won't make her happy even if she managed to rationalise it being the 'better option'.

And if neither of them seem like something she couldn't dream of not doing I would honestly urge her to look at other careers as both will be exceedingly miserable if you're not loving it at the outset,
even if the passion wanes!

And any other time required to fulfill the requirements of the role (off the top of my head ... that's a contractual term fir teachers (or very close wording.).

Yes I used to find I had quite a bit of admin to do after hours as a community midwife but much better now with Badgernet as not having to write everything in the notes during appointments and then all into a computer system later anymore plus has made the referral
process much more streamlined and quicker. Where I work the caseload numbers are not too bad generally but I have friends who work in areas where the workload is ridiculous and if there are alot of social issues etc then that is incredibly time consuming. I have quite a few friends who are teachers and both of us would say the safeguarding/social care side of the job can be a huge workload/headache. I definitely enjoy my job more than most teacher friends I know but I’m lucky to have fairly decent working conditions which is unusual in midwifery. It’s a shame as midwifery is an amazing job, it’s everything I hoped for and more and even after 15 years each day is interesting and flies by. However the working conditions in midwifery in many places can be absolutely dire and bordering on unsafe, both in the hospital and community. Not good at all when such a lot at stake, this does take the joy out of the job and I admire those midwives who continue to work under such conditions, is awful to see them scapegoated in the media when things go wrong

Teacher - 6.5 hour shift mon-fri daytime

😂😂😂

6.5 hour shift???? Never done one of those in my life!!!! (Teacher here) the rest is true, although the differences you list aren’t huge are they? Your post also sounds like there is no emotional toll for teachers - when you’ve heard some of the stuff kids have disclosed to me over the years I’d beg to differ.
You also haven’t listed how much time and money it takes to train to do these professions. I don’t know about midwifery, but teaching is a 3 year degree (about £40k) plus a year training plus 2 years to fully qualify, so 6 years total.
I actually thought midwives were paid a lot less - I advise your friend to go down the midwifery route all things considered.

😂
Someone else said that we can use the same lesson plans year in, year out "with only minor tweaks"!
It really is laughable 🤣

I work in a support role at a secondary school so (rightly) earn less than a teacher and I certainly don't work a 6.5 hour day.

I also have a second job!

I agree putting these 2 different jobs is too difficult
However, 6.5 hour shifts for teaching?

No way would I recommend going into teaching - stay away!

I trained for 4 years to qualify as a midwife although they do the degree in 3 years now.

I’ve worked in both areas and imo, teaching hours, holidays etc are far better
Midwifery is very intense and physically demanding.
There are pros and cons to both. Maternity units are, rightly, under a lot of scrutiny at the moment and this must be so stressful for midwives who are working very hard but due to under staffing are unable to offer the care they know women need
It must be very hard to be a midwife in a unit which has been found lacking in basic care and where babies have died from lack of care/missed opportunities for appropriate interventions.

If you do a nursing degree first, it’s then 2 years for midwifery training on top. So 5 years in total.

https://www.cerebralpalsy-lawyers.co.uk/site/our-cases/3-million-compensation-for-young-man-with-cerebral-palsy

There's an example here, admittedly as a sales pitch from the lawyer, but most real life examples are obviously confidential. It's not uncommon for parents not to have known it was an option, or do feel like they 'couldnt' do it for any reason, and the child to feel differently. Or for the full impact of the damage to become known as time goes on, then to realise the child/young adult is likely to never live independently/need full time care whatever, and then decisions need to be made to safeguard their future. It's far less about things like heart conditions, and almost always about brain injuries, and there are ways and means of demonstrating the damage was acquired and not congenital quite easily which is why the records all have to be kept. It does happen and it's not as in frequent as you may think. 21 years is obviously far less common, but birth injury claims often resurface somewhere around primary school age when it becomes more apparent how much additional support is needed as their peers are becoming more independent and they aren't.

Things may have changed since I left midwifery but just to say breaks really weren’t guaranteed- quite often I didn’t get a break on a 13 hour shift and you didn’t get to pee when you needed to. Crash section, looking after too many people who all needed something urgent etc.

Holidays - you don’t get them when you want / need them. You have to request and if someone else wants them they can’t all be granted. Most people want school holidays to help with child care - not everyone can have them.

You will be working Christmas Day, NYE etc, if you are rostered on for a shift and it’s your child’s school play you won’t be able to attend.

Yes you have to pay for parking and you may not be able to park on site. In my area you had to factor in an extra 25 mins to travel to and from the hospital staff car park (they provided a bus) on top of your shift time. I was so tired after three long days it wasn’t worth the extra days off.

You don’t spend your days cuddling babies. You work with people who are tired, stressed and frightened. There’s no such thing as a normal delivery until the labour and delivery is over so you are constantly on alert. Some people are vulnerable and are misusing substances etc. You’ll be involved in a lot of safeguarding babies, children and women and that takes a toll on your emotional health.