AIBU to be confused about how teachers' salaries are paid?

[Mayflower282]

My friend is a teacher and I said to her the other day something along the lines of “I miss that long stretch of freedom in the summer”…she replied annoyed that “teachers are still working during the summer, prepping for next year etc, and we don’t get paid for the time off”…I’m confused by this. For example a teacher job advertised as £30k, they get 30k split over the 12 months right? Or do they only get £30k equivalent for the actual weeks they are working and this is split over the 12 months?

For the ease of complications I’ve not included tax, NI etc:

YABU - teachers only get paid for what they work, eg £30k equivalent for only 40 weeks split over the year (£30,000/52 weeks =£576 per week, and then 576*40/12 =£1,923 per month

YANBU - teacher gets £30k spilt over the year, £2500 per month

You could say that about almost any professional job, to be fair. We're all working past our hours, it's a pretty normal state of play.

Working about 2,000 hours a year is entirely normal for most salaried, professional jobs paid at the same salary as a teacher.

I'm pretty sure the contract is for 1265 contact hours plus the work around this necessary to do the job. A contract for 1265 hours a year would a) be ridiculous for a salaried, professional job (£43 an hour!) and b) not make any sense (when do you think teachers would do the prep, marking and admin aspects of their job? It's clearly in the non-contact hours that are expected to support the 1265 contact hours).

We have to pay the teachers for doing PE, drama and music outside of normal school lessons, it's not something they do as part of their teacher jobs (as our primary school, anyway).

Not exactly. Contact hours are typically 900 per year. The other hours within 1265 are "directed time" Eg. Being asked to do a specific task, planning or training.

On top of those, teachers must do "any additional work required to discharge their duties" Which can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the school, and can lead to entirely unreasonable workloads.

All the 1265 really does is protects standard class teachers from a phone call at 2am from their boss.

Teachers are paid for 195 days of the year , 1265 hours of directed time split into 12 monthly payments
Yes they will be working far outside of that.

@MyLimeGuide There is also a difference IMO between primary and secondary.

https://michaelt1979.wordpress.com/2020/06/12/are-teachers-paid-for-the-holidays/

This is quite an interesting read that goes into the details.

I’m paid around the same as a teacher, my standard working day is 7.5 hours. I work extra time relatively regularly due to overrunning meetings, paperwork needing completing when days have been nothing but back to back meetings (eg I just did an hour of accounts checking to ensure my suppliers are paid on time, I don’t start work for another half hour in theory)

It’s a myth that other equivalent roles don’t require extra hours. I get 25 days annual leave. I would never say that my friends who are teachers don’t work hard or deserve their salaries, but they aren’t doing anything outside the ordinary at that level.

I would strongly encourage all teachers who can take a bit of a pay cut to go into tutoring.
It's been transformative for me.
Do I get paid any holidays? No.
Sick pay? No
Teacher pension? Also no.
Is it one of the best decisions I ever made for myself and my family? Absolutely.

DH swipes in at work. At the end of the year they get data of their working hours. He does 140% on site. He also takes phone calls at home and answers emails.
His pay has been comparable to a teacher without the holidays, which is why people in his profession try to make the switch.
He doesn’t get overtime. When he has cancelled a/l or gone in on a weekend he sometimes gets a voucher 😂

How do you know what the teachers across the road are doing? Are you solely referring to when you see them at home, as opposed to being in school?

Teachers work at home, y’know 🤦‍♀️

This is so not true for vast numbers of employees. I have a set 2 weeks in the summer I have to take, I have to also take set days at Christmas time and I am left with 4 days leave a year I can take when I request it but it has to be approved by employer in advance, and they aren't the most obliging in giving approval. My dh has a set 2 weeks in summer too but they don't co-incide with my two weeks so for years we didn't get a summer holiday together. He also had to work during the Christmas/NY period so again no holiday together. We were not unusual either.

But you're just describing a normal professional job. For everyone in professional roles the work is literally never done.

That's a bit disingenuous, because 1,265 + 780-1,000 hours is roughly what most people work in professional roles paid at the same salary as teachers. So it's a fairly equivalent deal.

And the teaching contract says 1,265 plus the other hours necessary to do the role. You are not doing these "other hours" for free, they are part of the normal job role and in your contract.

To be fair, not getting a day off to yourself because you are using your holidays to mind the kids is the absolute norm for all parents, no? We use our leave to mind the kids during the holidays.

If your husband would like so time off to himself, I would suggest signing the kids up for a summer camp. That's pretty normal.

It’s badly paid for the amount of work you do. Factor in no toilet breaks or coffee breaks when you fancy and missing weddings, children’s school events etc if they appear on school days. I’m an ex teacher and, even though I work 48 weeks a year now, I’d never go back to the bone crushing exhaustion I felt working in inner city secondary schools. Not least because I’m in my 50s now. God knows how other teachers cope.

£20 an hour is a good rate for a salaried job. A cleaner will only be paid for their hours of cleaning, not travel to and fro and work admin. And they won't receive holiday pay, sick pay, or a pension. So you are not comparing like with like.

“teachers are still working during the summer, prepping for next year etc,"

Are they? Are they really? Not the teachers I know.

Me too - but don’t encourage them - the market is becoming oversaturated!

You are absolutely clueless. I taught for over a decade. I’ve been in corporate for over a decade (corporate with income targets). Teaching is never done to next level wild. Go teach for a year and come back to this thread then.

But teacher workload is compressed into fewer weeks. There will be work in some of the holidays but not every day so term times can have a very heavy workload

Absolutely, yes! A £60k salary would put someone almost in top 10% of earners in the UK.

Find me a teacher that only works their 1265 hours .

And if you think they are the equivalent of £60k, how many people earning that salary put up with being sworn at, chairs thrown at them, spat at, shouted at (and I’m not just talking about pupil behaviour here, parents can be horrendous), deal with awful safeguarding issues, provide a number of resources from their own pockets etc