Portability - ds's school on strike for 3 days

[Feenie]

Our governors eventually voted to go the the LEA/union agreed policy to honour portability. Ds's school want a 'may' honour portability, which imo erodes the entire meaning of 'honour'.

Both the NUT and NASUWT have been in and upshot is 3 days of strikes. Parents are divided, mainly because management couldn't wait to Tell us that the unions are going to pay the teacher's salary, which I'd never heard of before. I am fully in support of the teachers; reading between the lines, I think this is probably the last straw in a long line of things that have upset them.

Is this happening elsewhere?

I don't understand what you are saying. What's portability?

I've looked up portability. It seems to protect teachers' pay when they move between schools. I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't heard about it before. Surely it's a good thing? It means all the experience you have gained and the pay based on that is protected?

I'm not sure how you could encourage good teachers to come into a school, while at the same time telling them that their pay will/ could be cut. I know I would only look at working in a school where my current pay would be honoured.

It smacks of Gove again and trying to cut pay.

I think the teachers at Feenie's DS's school are striking in support of portability, thinking it is a good thing. Which it is, if you teach an oversubscribed subject and can convince a selection panel that you are worth the extra over an NQT.

Exactly, SummerSummer - quite how ds's school expect to attract quality staff, I don't know. Who would work for a pay cut? Definitely recruiting on the cheap.

Teachers in state schools (NOT academies) are paid the same wherever they are, so if you are on a mainscale post at School A and apply for a mainscale post at School B you will be paid the same. Academies have similar payscales I believe (I work in a state school) but there is no portability - if you move from Academy A to Academy B you could be hit with a significant pay cut despite doing the same job. Gove wants to scrap portability throughout - this is one of the reasons we are striking on the 10th July.

Good on them. how are schools supposed to a. recruit and b. retain decent teachers if the salary is held down? Their fight is our fight. With them all the way.

The management is apparently 'bewildered' that the staff are showing such strength of feeling over an issue which doesn't actually affect them and their pay directly

They seem totally out of touch with the staff.

Schools recruit and retain high quality staff by paying them fairly. If they choose not to, they will get whoever is willing to work for less, or who does not expect more (NQT, although Maths NQTs can demand a premium in some areas). That has a bigger impact in some subject areas than others.

This is primary, FallenMadonna.

It's a school which is already in RI and needs to work with its staff, not against them.

Just a parent here.

In other professions you aren't guaranteed to keep your current pay if you choose to move jobs. Generally of course people tend to be looking for pay rises, but sometimes people are looking for a change of direction or working environment, or level of responsibility, or to more physical location eg from Hampshire to Newcastle which may be a cheaper area to live in. In those cases they maybe would be willing to take a pay cut. Also if someone is out of a job, they may accept a paycut to get themselves back into employment.

Can someone explain the argument in favour of portability of teachers pay and why they are a special case? Are there other professions where this occurs?

(Genuinely interested, not trying to start a bun-fight in your staffroom.)

A national pay system existed up until 5 minutes ago, and whatever Gove thinks it won't take 5 minutes to destroy it. The LEA agreed a policy with the unions recently, and a school who chooses to ignore it cannot be surprised at the uprising this has created.

I would not choose to apply to a school whose pay policy ignored portability - this school will have problems, therefore, attracting experienced qualified staff. As for the suggestion that someone who has had a career break should be willing to take a pay cut - why? Surely that penalises mothers - that cannot be right.

As a parent, I cannot see how this school hopes to attract quality staff by going against a locally agreed policy.

Feenie - As for the suggestion that someone who has had a career break should be willing to take a pay cut - why? Surely that penalises mothers - that cannot be right.

But in many professions, someone who has been out of work for whatever reason may well be out of date with new methods, standards etc. Often that may mean taking a pay hit, at least initially, to get back into work.

If schools want quality staff (which I maybe naively assume they do, maybe you think they just want staffing on the cheap, though that would presumably later be reflected in results) then they will have to pay well to attract and keep them (as happens in other industries). Doesn't dropping pay portability just go hand in hand with performance related pay?

Would you really not apply to a school that doesn't promise portability? Or just not accept a job that offered less than your current pay?

Apart from the fact that teachers have had portability until 5 minutes ago, do you have any good reasons why it should exist that don't equally apply to other graduate jobs that don't have it? Or examples of other areas where it does exist?

The difference is, that other jobs generally advertise a salary - so you can choose to apply for one that's a pay cut with fewer responsibilities, or aim for a higher salary with more responsibility. In teaching, they're just advertising for a teacher. If you had 10 years of experience, they'd still expect you to take on all the responsibilities that you usually would, but would like to pay you the very lowest amount possible . Then they would never progress your salary, so in a graduate job you'd be stuck on £21 000 for ever.

If every school did this, the profession would struggle even more to attract new teachers, and anyone with the ability to get a different job, would. So it really would become, 'If you can't do, teach,' because it would be the job of last resort for most graduates. How would that help our nation's children?

It's how the NHS works now. Your job is banded. A qualified nurse starts on band 5. If you get to the top of band 5, the only way to get a pay rise is to get a promotion to a band 6 job.

Portability should not be automatic. Neither should increments. Performance related pay has removed standard increments.

My fear with the removal of automatic portability, however, is that poor teachers on the UPS who are coasting will stay at a school because they know they'll go down if they move and good teachers will move around to get promotion.

The other problem with losing portability/ introducing pr pay that nobody seems to mention is the amount of time that will be spent on negotiating every individual teachers salary on an annual basis. Time means money. It will be endless. Before, salaries were negotiated by a few people centrally with unions there for checks and balance etc. now each school will have to buy in hr/ legal support to resolve disputes. There might be disadvantages to the old system, but I see no advantages to the new one. I really object to the whole - that's how it works in the private sector argument, because it is not the private sector. Introducing privare sector type initiatives without the funding/ flexibility to back it up will not improve things - only for some who shout loudest and are opportunistic (parents and teachers). It certainly won't give good value for money or make things more efficient.

Lougle. Many teachers on UPS, 'poor' or otherwise, are either not moving as no-one's hiring at that grade or moving into management. At our school practically everyone who's leaving/ retiring is being replaced by an NQT.

I don't think it would be a problem, if they introduced different pay bands of job. E.g. band 1 = class teacher, no subject responsibilities. band 2 = class teacher + run a club, band 3 = class teacher + club + non-core subject etc etc. But there aren't such bands - there are just thousands of 'ordinary' teachers who run a class + 2/3 subjects + a club or two. All that for (potentially) £21,000 (£17500 take-home pay, when to put one small child in nursery is £14500 for the year...). No thanks.

I can re-train (and will, when both of my DCs are a bit older) for the grand total of £4500 and get a job that pays £40 per hour, has little take-home work at the end, is satisfying, rewarding and has pleasant customers. I could work 8 hour days at weekends and earn over £30,000 pa, or just one day a week and earn half that. So why would I teach?

Not that teaching isn't rewarding and the children aren't fab - they are, but there's less and less time for their wonderful selves, and more and more for paperwork :(.

But why should they take on more and more responsibilities? You do realise that the more they do outside of the classroom, the more time it takes away from planning, teaching and assessing the actual lessons.

This wouldn't have mattered so much, except for the fact that the paperwork overload is already detracting from the teaching in the classroom.

You do realise that teachers are only paid for a certain number of hours per year? Anything above this is unpaid (and those hours get used up very, very quickly):

So,
Clubs
The holidays
Parents' evenings
Events evenings
Open evenings
School fairs

Are all done extra and above the job and are unpaid.

Removing portability will mean no teacher will leave their school where they have a decent salary. Schools will stagnate - not good for children.

You will end up with a lot of staff on a high salary in the same school, because no one will want to move...

Are you sure StrangeNewLands? Open Evenings and parents' evenings are in my job description and as such are part of 1265. (State maintained school)

They are directed time. So paid in that they are part of this time, (but my 1265 hours are used up way, way before July.)

I should have been more clear that for parents' evenings there is no additional payment (ie no overtime, some schools will finish by 5 pm, others by 9pm. There aren't many other jobs where you could work a double length day and have no additional pay or overtime).

We are paid for 195 days per year. My 6 nights of parents evenings (approx. 9 hours each time - 27 hours spread over 6 evenings). Takes me over the 195 days (yet officially it doesn't).

I'm not sure I'm making myself clear. In my head it makes sense!!

My school seems to have lost internal 'portability' from year to year. A few teachers who have deemed to not be doing enough to warrant the increment they have risen to have been busted down.

Another has said that they don't want to keep a responsibility, and whereas previously they would have held their pay point, they are also going down.

sovery Why do you think that schools will go for the cheaper NQT option rather than more experienced?

I know schools have to balance budgets and that these are very tight.

But the whole raison d'etre of a school is to teach. Surely the Head and the Governors know this? They won't want to have a whole bunch of inexperienced teachers will they? Surely they want a mix of youth and experience. Just like happens in other professions. Too many 'old hands' and you miss youthful enthusiasm and new ideas, too many youngsters and you haven't got the steadying hands of wisdom.

Generally. I do get the fact that teachers are generally very dedicated and work very long hours in term time. And that they run clubs etc which 'add value' to the pupils without extra renumeration. I would be happy as a parent and a tax payer (and a relative of a teacher) if these could be sorted out, by increasing school budgets to pay for general pay rises, time for clubs and more PPP(?) time or whatever.

I just don't get as an outsider why teaching is so different that it needs pay portability, or why you think schools should want to shoot themselves in the foot by always going for the cheap option. I haven't found an argument on here yet that convinces me.

Either that or they will want the more expensive teachers, but will want to pay them much less. Teachers who need a job might face the choice of massive paycut or no job. Yet they'll still be expected to do the work they did on much higher pay.

Yes I'm sure this happens in other jobs, but why 'race to the bottom'? What's wrong with fighting to keep those terms and conditions that were good.