No the point I was making, if you were comparing doctors and teachers (which I've already said isn't the best comparison) is that starting salaries are largely irrelevant as far as earnings in each profession go... yes the starting salaries are comparable.. average earnings over a career are not by any means comparable between someone who chooses to be a doctor vs someone who chose to be a teacher.
To begin with the comparison is entirely valid when considering the starting salaries of teachers in respect of their value.....A Doctor is far more educated, has a necessary higher skill-set and ultimately is required to progress through further ongoing education and training to a far higher standard than a teacher, either at the onset of their career or the total career path. Therefore being as the starting salaries are directly comparable it is entirely justified to use a doctors starting salary to demonstrate the fallacy that newly qualified Teachers are as underpaid as you are claiming, particularly comparing the relative qualifications necessary for each profession relative to their salary.
When we compare the respective level of education and training required for a Teacher as opposed to a Doctor later in their career path (up to an including Registrar) it is again demonstrable that Teachers, in comparison are well paid....it doesn't matter whether a Salaried GP earns above a Teacher (which is not always the case anyway), only that the respective careers are compared and weighted in respect of their respective levels. This is also demonstrates that a Teacher is not as poorly paid as you contest.
you either didn't understand the data you presented or you're being rather deceitful...
I am being neither and that you have to resort to the latter is indicative of the flawed argument you are trying to conduct, and the former is ironic considering the issue is your misunderstanding of a valid weighted comparison.
we seem to be going round in circles here and I don't want to derail the thread too much but you were comparing a bracket that doctors will progress through at the first 3 to say up to 15 years of their career and then usually surpass with a bracket that very few teachers will reach the high end of. The fact is it is fairly normal progression for Doctors to pursue a specialty, reach the top of that bracket then move onto consultant... or for them to go into general practice, reach the top of that bracket and often become partner eventually. It isn't normal for teachers to all become head teacher and earn 50-100k... yes you can blindly put the two brackets side by side and say oh look they're similar - its a rather naive comparison...
All this simply illustrates that you clearly do not understand the comparison being made, neither have you really looked at the figures or know that much about progression within either profession. It is largely irrelevant how far a respective individual can go, for one their are more medical professionals in the NHS alone than there are teachers in the education system as a whole, and in even in a direct comparison the aver age salary of a hospital Doctor who is not a consultant is directly compatible to the average salary of a non specialist teacher, and if we objectively compare both professions and their respective levels of required skill/knowledge/working hours/training/responsibility and so on then their respective salaries are comparable insofar that they compensate the relative careers weighted against those criteria.
It is about comparing relative values, not absolute values and that is where you are making your mistake.
The career earnings are in no way comparable on average and to even attempt to do so is silly, quite frankly comparing the careers themselves is a bit silly, as is trying to make some equivalent comparison between the levels of positions of each career - the main reason I commented on this is the pointless comparison between the starting salary (which is largely irrelevant)... over a normal career most teachers won't make it to head teacher... over a normal career most doctors will reach the high end of their specialisms (often making it to consultant) or will go into general practice and reach the high end of that bracket and/or be made a partner. If you want to compare the pay prospects of either profession then you need to take that into account... Doctors will earn more (and quite rightly so tbh...).
The main reason you commented is because you haven't understood the comparison being made and even when is has been explained you still maintain the same misunderstanding. Remember you introduced GPs into the mix to begin with, you also are making huge assumptions on career progression and earnings relative to the require level of training and skill, not to mention that you are ignoring the figures that I have provided from the NHS and the DoE as regards average earnings for the respective comparable positions within the respective professions....Remember I am not comparing a Teacher to a Contracting GP partnership or their career average earnings...you are.
Ultimately the Teaching Profession is not a poorly paid one when compared to either average wages nationwide or when compared to other graduate professions....like I said earlier, if you do not like the doctor-teacher comparison as it is too complex to understand a relative comparison, then we could use a Nurse-Teacher comparison instead.....Nurses are comparable with regard to the level of training, education level and the absolute salary comparisons are more in keeping with the absolute direct comparisons that you want to use.......both at entry level and at senior level. (NQ Nurses and NQ Doctors earn roughly the same salary which further illustrates the validity of my initial comparison in the context it was made)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...viDrreBpzjOXmLVGQ&sig2=6n1bqPkB3k0txznszfv8tQ
and again these figures belie the claim that teaching is a poorly paid profession.
