I have to say that I agree with creatureretorts
I am not a teacher, though I know many, and I have spent much of my working life working in and with Schools as an outside agent. I have all the makings and skills to be a teacher, and yet I'm instead middle management in a charity. Why? Because having seen the workings of schools from the inside, I know that there is no way I could do it. I love children and I've worked with them and volunteered with them for half my life. But I could never be a teacher.
We should give a little more respect to our teachers, they do a fantastic job. Imagine your work (if you're not a teacher), being a constant meeting or training course, between 8:30am and 3:15pm. In the "breaks" you're preparing for the next bit of the course, and at "lunch" you're looking after the delegates outside (who are of course, running, shoving, screaming and fighting)- doing conflict resolution, running a gardening workshop (which you know nothing about) and administering first aid. Then at the end of the day, you have two of the delegates lawyers who want to talk to you about how their client has been misrepresented during the previous day's course. After that you are running a short extra workshop for Poetry (which is not your specialist subject). After that you have a meeting with the other trainers (whilst eating your lunch), then you must collect up the work from the day, and mark it, whilst preparing the sessions for the next day. Some of the sessions will be repeats from last year, some you will have to alter because of the makeup of your group (including three new people, 6 who don't speak english very well, two who are disruptive and one with special needs), and two of the sessions you are in the process of entirely re-writing as the course outline has changed from last year.You realise you have not had a wee or a drink since 10am. It is now 10pm and the caretaker is locking your building. The Boss calls you into her office for a chat about your behavioural management during the previous week's inspection.
Ok, so that might not be every single day, but yes it's a stressful job in which teachers are pulled in too many different directions, and placed under a huge amount of pressure.
Schools are often quite unplesant environments to work in. Sad to say but large groups of women (particularly in primary schools) who can be particularly nasty to each other, especially when under pressure.
The benefits are long holidays, which are especially handy if you have children yourself.
The reason the general public feel like teachers are "paid for their holidays" is that they are paid a salary every month, even on those months they are on long holidays. The UK minimum holiday allowance is 5.6 weeks paid leave per year (can include bank holidays), whereas teachers have 13 (?). This is fixed as to when it can be taken.
Starting salary for teaching is £21,588 pa (according to Department for Education, outside of london), which if it's Pro Rata'd (i,e you're NOT paid for your extra holidays above and beyond 5.6 weeks) would be £18,515 per year.Which it's not. So actually the salary, pro rata (i.e £21.5k if you worked a full 52 week year, but you are only working a 44 week year plus 5.6 weeks holiday) would be more like £24.5k (? I question my own dodgy maths!). But even if my maths is hoeky, you get the point!
I for one want to see teachers (especially good teachers) rewarded for their hard work. I want to see educations standards rise, especially in deprived areas and in communities that typically don't achieve well academically. And I think teaching is a very important job, that we are all too quick to do down, or complain about with no experience of what it's like to lead a classroom of 32.
At the same time, I would like to see teaching time rise, support for teachers increase and teachers being able to work the number of hours they're paid for. If you work in the public/private/third sector and get paid a 37 hour week but work a 50 hour week- good for you, have a bloody medal. However, just because you do it, don't expect other people to do it, or think you know anything about the pressures on other people in other jobs.