Should new teachers get paid more?

[nappyaddict]

My sister is in her 2nd year of teaching. She teaches Year 6. It works out that her take home pay is only 70 pound more than her boyfriend who has no qualifications and works as a chef in a small pub, on 6.20 an hour and works 48 hours a week.

A PhD is irrelevent in teaching really. It's not necessary to have one, and therefore using the fact that some teachers have one to argue that we should be paid more is a non starter. Ditto an MA really. It's not required, and therefore it isn't taken into account.

As for comparisons with other professions, my direct line of comparison is Engineering (DH is a chartered mechanical engineer). We have similar qualifications me - two BScs, a PhD and a PGCE, DH a BEng, an MBA and the CEng status. DH earns more than I, but I took 5 years out, and now I work full time again the gap is narrowing. I have more stress day to day, and work longer hours (DH would agree wholeheartedly here), but I have the holidays and he doesn't. He has the stress every few years that his company will run out of money. My job is more secure (although my school is v tough, and brutal, on underperformance). So it's swings and roundabouts really.

And if you think teachers whinge, you should read the letters pages of Professional Engineering magazine...

I am a teacher and I don't feel underpaid.

I don't agree that an MA or Phd is irrelevant at all. It is evidence of greater knowledge in your subject area and where you don't teach the subject which you studied for your MA or PGCE, it is still evidence of study at the next level. I can't see how, in education, that could ever be irrelevant. The texts and ideas that I considered for my MA have been profoundly useful in my teaching. Obviously it makes more difference if you teach A Level. With everything else being equal I'd rather have a teacher who is better qualified teaching my kids.

I'm not necessarily saying that teachers are underpaid by the way but I am arguing with the poster earlier who was implying that they are not better paid because they are ill qualified.

As far as the pay goes I think teachers exemplify the 'squeezed middle'. DP, also a teacher, is just over the limit for child benefit so we will, in effect, have a significant cut to our family income. We will also be subject to full tuition fees for our kids at university.

Ha, when I left uni and went into my first marketing job 8 yrs ago I started on £27k+benefits totalling around £5k p/a. By the time I left at 28 I was earning £40k plus.

I retrained as a teacher with a starting salary of £21,588. So I wouldn't say that there is nothing else out there with a 'decent' starting salary.

I certainly didn't give up a very comfortable and prosperous career for the money or holidays!

Oh, and teaching is moving towards being a masters level profession.

I think the point though MrsC is that are many professions which also start low ish. As one poster said earlier up, within 12 years she was earning 45k, another has just stated her husband is a higher rate tax payer. These are not badly paid people, perhaps they feel undervalued but that is not the same as being badly paid.

MrsC it might be moving towards it but it is not currently a requirement. I honestly think that the level of qualification is irrelevant to this argument. 45k after 12 years service is quite a well paid job, whatever way you cut it, in the top 15% of earners in the UK

We've disagreed about this before I think fivecandles . I teach two subjects to A level - one in which I have a PhD, the other in which I only have a degree. I don't find there is a difference.

And the point isn't whether they are desirable anyway. It is whether they are necessary. And they aren't.

If you teach full time and your DH is a higher rate tax payer then you are a high income family my most definitions.

"In inner London they make what I would consider an excellent starting wage (27K) and in a large part of the country 21K can still stretch reasonably far."

You may consider it an excellent starting wage, Bue, but teachers are eligible for keyworker housing, which suggests that the powers that be disagree with you.

Recruitment and (moreso) retention of teachers in London is a huge problem; without access to keyworker housing, most teachers would not be able to live in the city in which they work, particularly once they have a family. There are many schools which are heavily staffed by young NQTs who live in shared housing and move away to start a family and buy or rent a house.

I teach part-time. DP teaches full time and is £500 over the limit. If he opts for a pay cut of £500 we will be better off because we will continue to get child benefit.

MAs and PhDs are not necessary YET but a PGCE IS and this is a POST GRADUATE qualification.

Yes, yes, I know you can go into teaching with a BEd but you'd find it much harder and I think I'm right in saying you don't start on the same point of the scale.

You also get to start on a higher salary if you do have an MA or at least I did.

When I started teaching you started on point 2 if you had a 2:1 hons but 0 if you had a second class degree or BEd.

I started on point 3 because of my MA and I had a couple of years relevant work experience but not teaching.

Yes Teth , a teacher on say 22k living in south east with a family will get housing benefit . Look at TES website when its recruiting month London and surrounds will have loads of positions for Maths , English Science teachers. The extra living allowance doesn't cover the cost of living there, its a massive problem

I started on the lowest level in the dark ages despite my MA. Even then I was earning more than any of my peers at the time.
At my last school BEds started on the same level as any other NQT.

You won't have clem if it was before they changed the pay scale like me. You will have started on point 2 if you had a 2:1 Hons. If you didn't you started on 0 like my friend with a BEd. May be different now and you climb up the scale quicker.

An NQT teacher earns about £17 an hour. They work less weekly hours for less weeks in the year. If they worked a 37 hour week full time like the average person, they would earn about £32k per annum. It's a well paid profession already.

"I think teachers must be amongst the most highly qualified because of the field you work in. You're learning all the time to keep up with developments in your subject area, in pegagogy, in specifications, government policy, technology... There can't be many jobs where change is so rapid."

Try medecine (and related areas, a huge field), law and accountancy for starters.

fivecandles, I forgot to mention that if your DP puts that extra £500 into his pension before tax then you will still be eligible for child benefit (yet another way in which the whole proposal is farcical)

But you are right about the scales - I started on point 2 because the scales were different. Now, every newly qualified teacher at my school (whether BEd, PGCE or PhD) starts on point 1 of the new scale.

"I think teachers must be amongst the most highly qualified because of the field you work in. You're learning all the time to keep up with developments in your subject area, in pegagogy, in specifications, government policy, technology... There can't be many jobs where change is so rapid."

agree with senua. As the daughter of a GP and a psychiatrist who has worked in banking, facilities management now in education, nothing could be further from the truth. I find that a number of teachers hold that opinion of themselves usually because they haven't worked in other professional areas. other professions change a lot faster (medicine, pharmacology, accountancy, HR, law, Actuarial science, logistics, Engineering, Social work, psychology).

It's noble profession and I won't take anything away from that but even at it's busiest, it's a fewer hours than the average doctor, accountant or lawyer would end up working in a week.

finefatmama. DD1 ia an NQT teacher. She certainly does not work less hours and less weeks than other people. Yes she may be in school for less than 37 hours a week, But her evenings and wekends are taken up with leson planning and marking. She also often has to stay late at school for staff metings.parents evenings and other things.
She quite often starts at 8,30 ( that is starts teaching she is usually at school well before that) and does not finish teaching until 5.30pm.
She is not the only teacher who does this god teachers will always ne doing a lot of planing and marking in their own time.

They will, and the early years are very heavy. Tell her it gets better mumeee because it does

I actually gave up teaching to become a doctor. I am currently on a year out from medical school because the workload was more intense than I had anticipated. But it isn't as simple as "which job deserves more?" Teachers get paid a decent wage and have plenty of scope to earn more. What other people earn isn't really relevant unless you really don't enjoy teaching.

(Clem thinks wistfully of an imaginary time when everyone would be paid the same no matter what job they did...)

I think one of the stresses of teaching is that you are up there in front of your audience all the time. In many jobs if you really need to have a day where you aren't doing as much, you can organise to some extent to have a less demanding day.

I was a primary school teacher and then trained as an accountant. Overall I probably worked a similar amount of hours in both jobs or at least at the beginning. Harder exams for accountancy but the feeling of never being finished, that I always felt while I was a teacher, was never there.

Starting salaries probably comparable - maybe accountancy a bit more. And within three years my pay had doubled - that wouldn't have happened in teaching I don't think.

Of course there are special stresses to do with teaching. But then there are special stresses to do with other jobs too.

Dh works in a job that requires both a BA and hard manual labour: most of his colleages are not in physically very good shape by the time they get to their sixties. Academics are hounded by the need to produce original research in ever-increasing quantities at the same time as keeping students happy- and as I mentioned in an earlier post, many academics have to wait several years (and publish!) before they actually get a real job.
Nurses have to wipe shit.
And I imagine being an investment banker involves a certain amount of stress. At least as a teacher, it is easier to go back and undo a mistake you have made: you can get the money back from Iceland by just apologising to a parent.
Unlike a doctor, you don't have to live with the thought that one momentary lapse of concentration makes all the difference between life and death.
Unlike the seafaring professions (which includes people with degree qualifications), they very rarely lose their lives at work (and if they do, it gets enormous headlines).
They do have to be cheerful and work hard consistently, but they are in the warm and they do not have to do night shifts.

Yes, teachers work hard and we should honour them. But if they believe they are the only ones who work hard, then they reveal their ignorance about the rest of the world. Which doesn't really seem a great professional qualification for a teacher.

On all threads about teachers there is always the assertion that although their contracted hours are x, the teachers actually spend more hours working at home, in holidays etc.

Well, yes, that is what happens in every job in the real world. I don't know any professional who works their contracted hours. Everyone I know has their work phones on at all times, works in the evening and at weekends, and is contactable in their holidays. So teachers ar far from beeing the hardest working professionals around.

I have not seen any teachers claiming to be the most hard working group. They all acknowledge that school holidays are great, but some work has to be done. Nor do they say that no other groups ever work after hours. Personally i do not know any other person who works every evening and weekend as many (but not all)teachers do, except some barristers. No, what happens is that more than other groups, I think teachers are often forced into a somewhat defensive position through the comments of others (on another thread, a patients relative claimed a nurse sniggered at her, and there are dozens of people supporting the nurse, which they would not do for other professions, teachers included)

As for pay, I think it is broadly correct. It is misleading to make it seem as if it is normal for teachers to earn 45k. Most do not and there are limited numbers of senior management posts. I think the issue is differential of pay among groups. It is silly to argue over the different numbers of minutes worked by people. The average wage in the UK is about 25kish. Therefore an employee (not an employer) earning 100k is doing very, very well. There is no way they are working four times harder than someone on 25k- there are limited numbers of hours in the week! Even accounting for different qualifications and responsibilities. While someone is working for their Masters degree, others are working in a job, not holidaying! Similarly, someone earning 11k for a full time job is very underpaid. They are not working nearly 10 times less hard than the person on 100k. We need people to do all these jobs.

I haven't got time to read all the responses right now, but I'm not saying only teachers should be paid more. I think nurses, midwifes, social workers, paramedics, TAs, police officers, firefighters etc should all be paid more as well.

I know people in managerial positions who are only on about 5k more than my sister, but they have the incentives of large bonuses for working extra hard which people in NHS and teaching careers don't have. I actually think this would be a good idea.

My sister's boyfriend could progress to a managerial position, but I wasn't really comparing their salaries like that. Obviously she gets better holidays and a good pension but surely if they are advantages of being a teacher they should go on top of salary, not in replacement of some of it. It's not like they choose to take that many holidays. I disagree about the job security though.