Teachers demand 10% pay increase - Thoughts?

philjohn said:
My wife regularly works 60-70 hours per week, and even now in the Easter Holiday is sitting down planning lessons.

She's getting to the point where the job is causing too much stress for her and she is looking at other careers - and I suspect a decent majority of the "good" teachers are thinking the same thing. What will then happen is that the schools will be left with the losers who got into teaching for the holidays and put in zero real effort. A 10% pay increase (seeing as they in effect had a pay cut with below inflation rises earlier this decade) may help.

Of course the morons who write for the Daily Fail are sensationalising this to whip up yet more anti-teacher sentiment (you'd think they were all abused as children by teachers they way they go on) ignoring the fact that this 10% is simply the opening salvo in the next set of pay negotiations and is a high-ball figure that will be worked down to something that is mutually acceptable to all parties.
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Agreed.

I also agree with the previous sentiment posted that those spewing ill-advised vitriol regarding how "easy" it is to be a teacher obviously don't live with one.

Also, you people do realise that this "average" £33,000pa wage for teachers is only achieved after around 8-9 years of service? By that point, a large amount of teachers have left the profession. Believe it or not the country is crying out for NQTs as most barely last longer than a year in the thick of it.

My wife's school finishes at 2.30pm. The earliest she will EVER leave there is 4pm, and then spend roughly 3 to 4 hours at home each night, including weekends, marking and preparing lesson plans.

You people bitch on about how many holidays they get, and while it annoys me too, I realise that I can get home, put my feet up, crack open a bottle and watch a movie. She can't.

The last week or two of summer holidays are spent lesson planning and getting work from before the holidays marked, reports done, not to mention general admin **** which teachers aren't even supposed to do.

The complete lack of respect they have to deal with on a daily basis -- assaults, verbal and physical abuse, complete and utter contempt from not only children but their useless bloody parents and even the school administration is an environment that I, in a million ******* years, could not stand to be in.

For the record, my wife thinks the NUT are a bunch of arses for continually threatening to strike over pay - but seriously, a lot of you need to wind your ******* necks in.
 
platypus said:
This isn't strictly related to the topic, although its certainly connected.

Do most teachers do a good job? Sure government targets have contributed a lot to falling standards, but the state of our current education system is appalling. Granted teachers cannot be held responsible for the intellect of their pupils on an individual level, but doesn't some level of responsibility lie with them?

I know quite a few teachers. Some love their job, love teaching kids, and put an awful lot into it. Others do the bare minimum required by the legislation and constraints of their job to get by because there is so much **** connected with being a teacher. Yet pay is consistent across the scale bands. Is that fair?
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That certainly is true about there being good and bad teachers, but I don't think it would be possible to implement a system where pay is based on effort.
 
philjohn said:
Of course the morons who write for the Daily Fail are sensationalising this to whip up yet more anti-teacher sentiment (you'd think they were all abused as children by teachers they way they go on) ignoring the fact that this 10% is simply the opening salvo in the next set of pay negotiations and is a high-ball figure that will be worked down to something that is mutually acceptable to all parties.
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Exactly, it's an opening for negotation, I think people would be up in arms even if they went in at a 5% pay increase. Stupid.
 
philjohn said:
She's getting to the point where the job is causing too much stress for her and she is looking at other careers - and I suspect a decent majority of the "good" teachers are thinking the same thing. What will then happen is that the schools will be left with the losers who got into teaching for the holidays and put in zero real effort. A 10% pay increase (seeing as they in effect had a pay cut with below inflation rises earlier this decade) may help.
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As my brother was told during his teacher training when complaining about the hours of marking - "you don't still do that do you, just give them the mark you gave them last time".

I'm glad there are good teachers, but the above 'grade by reputation' does happen - I had an english teacher who did the exact same thing, it made life easier once you worked it out I must admit :)

I wouldn't like to be a teacher because I can't handle horrible kids - but for the money there are worse (and yes better) jobs they could be doing, and at least it's a 'safe job'.
 
Unless anyone has actually done the job (and done it properly) they will not realise how much work a teacher actually does. If it was just a case of being about during normal school hours then that would be fair enough but as already has been said there's so much to be done outside of the classroom. Teachers are meant to be given time to prepare for lessons in schools but this 'free' time is taken up covering for other teachers because there's not enough funding to always get in subs or dealing with other duties. This means that all this work is done outside of working hours in preparation for the next day.

Planning a lesson is no easy task, it's not just a case of throwing a few worksheets together. A good teacher needs to think of innovative ways to deliver the curriculum which will engage all the pupils and you would not believe how long it can take to put an activity together! On top of this there's marking of hundreds of homeworks/pieces of coursework and writing school reports etc. It really is a stressful profession. Although it is an own-choice profession someone has to educate young people and the sad thing is that although many NQT's enter bringing new life to a school it's not long before the job takes its tole and the job gets done half heartidly.

As for the holidays that everyone seems to go on about, in reality teachers aren't getting many more weeks off than the average job gives. Many schools are off now for Easter though teachers are working away trying to fix/mark hundreds of pieces of GCSE and A-Level coursework and prepare lessons for the rest of the school year. Most holidays are spent doing work like this and considering the amount of hours worked outisde of the normal working day it is only fair that they are given one or two weeks extra!

Whilst the pay rise being requested might seem a little high the average teachers wage is higher because in addition to what I have mentioned above many take on extra responsibilities to boost their pay. You don't hear such an up-roar over the amount of pay received by politicians, bank managers etc so I don't see what the big problem here is. It is a very, very tough job and there needs to be some sort of incentive there to make people do it properly.
 
No offence, and what im about to say may end up getting me flamed, but if the jobs that bad, quit and get another. I think a lot of people moaning on here about the time it consumes after so called "work hours" to be a teacher are probably in the minority. I know a number of teachers socially and they while jokingly moan about it like anyone else moans about a "job" but they appreciate the benefits of the vast amount of holidays balance the negative and the pay is pretty decent.

Way too many teachers imo recently have gone in to teaching because they wanted decent pay with the idea of a ton of holidays and those golden hello deals the government had going and are in the job for the wrong reasons.

It seems in today’s society way too many people think it’s their god given right to be paid more because they think their job is tough. There are plenty of tough demanding jobs out there that get paid a hell of a lot less than Teaching.
 
I have always liked the idea of teaching....... then I think about the brats that live near me and think I'm not sure I could deal with that.

Some teachers I had at school was fantastic if they are still there they deffo need a pay rise. However there was a lot of lazy ass teachers that didnt give a damm.

I feel the pay rise might be an insentive for more people to train to be a teacher. Then again you might get an influx of people training purely for a good wage long holidays and then do bugger all.

In the end I became a Technician..... Maybe after a few more years of this I might pursue a career in teaching.
 
Pestilence said:
Also, you people do realise that this "average" £33,000pa wage for teachers is only achieved after around 8-9 years of service? By that point, a large amount of teachers have left the profession.
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That doesn't make sense. If the majority of teachers have left the profession before earning the average wage then the average wage would be lower as there wouldn't be as many people earning the higher wages.
 
RDM said:
That doesn't make sense. If the majority of teachers have left the profession before earning the average wage then the average wage would be lower as there wouldn't be as many people earning the higher wages.
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"A large amount" does not mean the majority.

Call me cynical, but when "facts" such as this are bandied about, I take it with as much real-world truth as I do the "THE AVERAGE IT SALARY IS £40,000, SO PAY US TO TRAIN YOU NOW!!!" ads on television. When you're on the front line, directly involved, with the facts - it's horse**** in any usable sense.

The sad things is, figures like this are not contested, which has allowed the public mindset that all teachers are lazy, overpaid, workshy crybabies who should be happy then get half of the year off to grow. It isn't true, but it's what most people in other industries think -- and this finds its way right into their own kids' mindsets, and even school administrations as they bow down to ignorant parents who simply don't understand, and don't WANT to understand, what the life of a teacher is like.

Not that I don't think there are a huge amount of teachers out there without two brain cells to run together -- have a read of the TES forums for evidence of that -- but blanket tarring like this is unacceptable.
 
I also think we should target slaries differently at different graduates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7478302.stm

Its pretty obvious why there are so few physics teachers relative to other subjects.

Similarly, I went to a top grammar school which didn't have an economics graduate to teach economics.

I believe this country had a similar problem with Maths teachers (maybe it still does, haven't checked) and fairly large incentives were needed.
 
The schools\colleges need to change their approach when it comes to recruitment. They won't support training of new staff and assistants, they expect everyone to be magically experienced\qualified with no junior posts or training funding available. I think the money would be better spent on "NHS-style" bursaries to encourage fresh input.
 
All for the pay raise :)

a lot of people don't appreciate all the hassle and extra hours that teachers put in, they just see them as doing an average 9-3 job, and having lots of holidays. Idiots.

I think as I think with most people that provide a service they deserve to be paid more.
The same applies for NHS staff / police / firemen / armed service.
 
Spuderoony said:
Here's an idea then, genius: become one. What's stopping you? I mean, after all, we're all on 33k here...
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....but on the flipside...

rojones said:
if the jobs that bad, quit and get another
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In other words, all those who think being a teacher is cushy, start your training tomorrow. All those teachers who think they are underpaid, hand in your notice tomorrow (don't forget that they've had rises well above inflation in recent years, so the salary is currently better than it was when they first started their training).

Yes, it's not quite that simple (people don't like to ditch their careers as it feels like a wasted investment) but in general the principle is sound.

latercomer2 said:
for what its worth I dont think anyone can justify a 10% pay rise at the moment.
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Plenty of people can justify a 10% pay rise. This is part of the problem, everyone always likes to think in terms of %age rises, rather than what people are actually getting paid to do a job.

Or to put it another way, if I don't get a pay rise this year, I'll be happier than when I got a 5% rise a while back. Why? Because at the time I got that 5% rise, I felt I was heavily underpaid and knew that there were others doing the same job and getting 20% more than me. Whereas now, while I earn below the market average for my job, I'm not overly dissatisfied with my wage.

A 10% rise is easily justifiable if you're earning rubbish money. A colleague of mine recently got offered something like a ~60% pay rise despite there being a general pay freeze in place, because he is leaving to join another company. Our current employer knows that he is underpaid and that they would need to pay a lot more to bring in a new member of staff to do his job.
 
HangTime said:
don't forget that they've had rises well above inflation in recent years, so the salary is currently better than it was when they first started their training
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Sorry, rubbish!

Over the last 3 years (remember inflation has hit 5% and was high for a while!) teachers have had 2.5%, 2.5% and 2.45% each year.

Yes, Im a teacher! and what you need to remember is that our pay rises get sorted in 3 year lumps, so 10% will be just over 3% for the next 3 years and if inflation skyrockets like it has we get tied into a below inflation pay rise.

Fluffy
 
How do they actually deserve more because they are teachers ??????

I think cleaners who wipe your hit off toilets deserve more money than teachers......not that I dislike teachers, but it takes more strength of spirit and determination to know you're gonna be cleaning peoples doo doo's all day than programming kids with rubbish.

I'm trying to put into perspective what teachers do and get paid at the minute, compared to just as other important jobs.
 
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