Teacher Shortage Crisis

IronGiant

I was always massively sceptical about how well that would pan out.

nheather

By my calculations certain types of teacher (such as English and Maths secondary) are the lowest paid of skilled civil servants.

I pick on maths and english because every child must do them so they have the biggest class numbers and there is much more homework, testing and assessment because of the focus by the Department of Education on attainment figures.

Teachers get lots of holidays, but they have to do a lot of work outside school hours including in the holidays.  They get paid a fixed annual salary for everything - no paid overtime.

My wife (a maths teacher) does about 60 hours per week in term time and at least 10 hours per week in holidays.

On average that means £12 per hour.  I doubt that any civil servant, nurse, policemen, fireman doing 60 hours per week is earning that little.

Cheers,

Nigel

rustybin

Teachers don't get any holidays. They're employed for 1,265 hours over 195 days a year.  The other days aren't holiday, they're times that teachers are not required to work.

nheather

There are teachers and there are teachers.

Looking at secondary, there are certain subjects (I won’t suggest any) that are lightly loaded.  The subjects rarely sets homework, rarely do assessment tests, have a low takeup in years 10/11 and are not in the government crosshairs for attainment metrics.  The teachers of those subjects have a comparitively easy life with little extra work required out of school day hours.  And yet the unified pay scale rewards the same as a Maths teacher having to do 60 hours per week.

And like any other walk of life, there are less-conscientious teachers who put in the bare minimum if that.  Again the unified payscale does not do that much to discourage that.

Cheers,

Nigel

IronGiant

You are debating with a Teacher, Nigel He knows more about it than you do

nheather

Didn’t think I was debating, just adding some observations picked up from discussions with my wife, who is a teacher.

If any of what I have said is wrong would be more than happy to be corrected.

Cheers,

Nigel

IronGiant

I just wanted you to be aware

rustybin

Outside of the few remaining true, 'pure' State schools, the Unified Scale has all but disappeared, although it has been replaced with something pretty much identical in most cases. There is a bit more room for manoeuvre now though - less rigid, more fluid banding and, most importantly, absolutely no automatic increments (which was the most contentious part).

It's easy to criticise it, but the fact is that 99% of Private Schools and Academies, starting from scratch, have gone with a Unified Scale of some description. There's just no other practical, fair way of doing it. If there was, these Private schools would be doing it.

nheather

My wife works for a state school so pretty much follows the published pay scales - I say pretty much, because the LEA, being short of money, have decided to pay less than the pay scales but chose not to tell any of the teachers - just let them spot it in their pay slips and enquire about the shortfall - NICE.

As for fluidity and suppressing automatic increments - my wife has seen very little evidence - if it is happening at her school then it is under very exceptional circumstances.

Cheers,

Nigel

rustybin

A teacher can only increment if they've met their performance management expectations. The process for them to increment automatically simply don't exist anymore. Leaders have to actively fill out a form to increment a teacher.

In my team, I incremented 6 out of 10. Of those 4, 2 have left the profession and the other 2 have upped their game.

The downside of getting rid of under-performing teachers is that there's a massive teacher shortage, so who do you replace them with?

As a parent, I'd rather have my child taught by an under-performing teacher all year, than 5-6 different utterly crap supply teachers throughout the year.