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.

Oh, I agree that nurses, etc are also worth a great pay scale

You are right that PS workers are all being frozen atm ... I am going to be over £100 a month worse off with a pay freeze + a pension payment hike ... and I am sure that other PS workers are being hit in similar ways

When I started teaching in 1997, I felt very underpaid compared to the graduates I was house-sharing with. It was a long time before my take-home pay hit £1000 per month (I remember celebrating!)

Then I moved to London, and couldn't have coped at all had I not qualified for key-worker housing (I think it's crap that it's not the same any more) However, once I went through threshold in 2003, it seemd to go up quite quickly, and now, having taken 3 years out with my DTDs, and then returned to work as a Head of Dept (not in London any more) I actually feel like I'm pretty well paid and certainly have no complaints. DH is a management consultant, and earns pretty much 3x what I do. But he is just as likely to be working into the evening as I am, plus his client-facing hours are longer than mine, and he doesn't get the holidays.

Of course I'd like to be paid more - who wouldn't?? But I don't think that my pay is unfair.

Nappyaddict - they give you a small bursary towards the cost of the Masters. Anything else is down to the school or the LA. Otherwise you pay the rest. I can't afford to do it at the moment, even if I had the time!

I had half my MA fees paid by the TDA the rest I had to pay myself

The TDA paid all but £70 of mine :)

I have never had a problem with my pay. I have a lot of flexibility in the sense that I can leave at 4 on occasion if I want and catch up later in the evening or next day, I get 13 weeks holiday (albeit I do spend a lot of that workign at home), I am now fairly senior so lots of things on top of normal wage.

You are right. Many front line important jobs are not especially well paid. That is how it has always been and probably always will be. Most people in these jobs are people whose main motivation is not financial.

I still say other jobs are overpaid. The person who gets paid 4x the pay of the midwife or teacher, does not deserve to earn that great a multiple.

I think there are a lot of people out there who think they are worth more (not just new teachers) but unfortunately economics don't match hopes.
I do think it is obscene when you hear footballers are earning £8 million a year no worries about cut backs there...

I suppose it comes down to the fact that as a teacher or nurse, police officer, midwife, etc you don't actually make money for a business/company - therefore you're not worth a lot.

My husband who is some form of engineer gets paid 3x what I do. His job is skilled in a different way to mine but I wouldn't say he is anymore skilled than me. He spends 90% of his working time sat infront of the computer, gets to work from home a couple of days a week, it all seems nice and relaxed, tapping away on the keyboard with a cup of tea in his hand. But he makes a shed load of money for the company he works for, so they pay him well.

@WillowFae, The hourly rate is usually stated at the bottom of the payslips and is about £17 an hour.
The unpaid overtime worked is the same as in many industries and the amount of time you actually spend varies as some schools give more PPA time than others.

I'm not taking anything away from what you're doing but the percentage overtime and goodwill is a similar proportion to people who work in retail, law, medicine, banking etc. not a lot of people get paid for nearly all the hours they work. I'm paid for 37 hours a week and I work a minimum of 60. 20 when i'm on leave. I have friends in retail banking who work 45 hours on average and are paid for 35hours. more with accountants, nurses, social workers etc. If we look at teaching in relation to other professions, then it's good pay.

If we analyse each job for what it's worth, that's a different thing entirely. Perhaps the real argument is who pays for the additional salary and how do we demonstrate the value.

I think it comes down to bottom line profits like VivaLeBeaver says. I haven't quite figured out what the seismic consultant cousin of mine does but he has a GPS device and is extremely well paid. His girlfriend who works as a finance assistant in an oil company is paid three times what a finance assistant in a college get paid and there isn't a lot of difference in that role for sure.

It does come down to that, but what a shame that only making money is valued. I know which services the average people on the street would miss first. I think most people in public service accept that they won't make bucketloads of money and it's not the point.
I have to disagree with finefatmama though. I don't know anyone who routinely does lots of unpaid overtime - in all walks of life. The only few I do know are paid such monstrous salaries, that I think it is fair enough. I think it is disgusting if people who are not highly paid are having to work over the hours they are paid for - they are not a charity, their time is valuable and the business is plainly understaffed!

How about paying teachers twice as much but in return for the salary increase make it much easier to sack them for poor performance.

So you make teaching a more desirable, rewarding (in all senses) profession and you weed out the rubbish ones. I'm sure all our dcs would benefit from having a good teacher - I know many do already, but many don't too.

Dh works for the civil service, he gets well rewarded for his ability to do the job well and his hard work - not the qualifications he obtained 10 years ago, he knows that if he slacked off or started treading water he'd be shown the door - how many teachers have been sacked in the past 20 years?

We have had people dismissed at school, but generally they move on as soon as capability proceedings are started. And I know that happens in the private sector too. My school is pretty ruthless with underperformance.

"I think there are a lot of people out there who think they are worth more (not just new teachers) but unfortunately economics don't match hopes"

If society (politicians) valued the education of our youth more, economics would suggest that we paid teachers more - to attract the more dedicated, more talented graduates - economics is about building incentives into a system to encourage people to behave differently.

I wonder how much more we may, as a society value state education, if the movers and shakers had to face reality and send their kids to state schools rather than the elite schools.

I do wonder if you paid more would you get a better quality of teachers. Everyone thought I was mad for wanting to be a teacher and a perception of poor pay was part of that. Swayed by people's perceptions of what was a good career I did follow a more lucrative career for a while. I went into teaching because my husband earned a six figure salary and I thought I did not need to earn the money. I wonder if in different circumstances I would have entered teaching.

I do agree it should be easier to sack poor teachers though.