One in three young teachers in England skipping meals to make ends meet
NEU survey also finds one in five teachers aged 29 or under have taken on a second job as pay fails to keep up with cost of living
Median salary’s about £33k. Entry level teaching salary – the minimum – is £28k. Teachers aren’t doing badly then, are they?
“NEU survey also finds one in five teachers aged 29 or under have taken on a second job as pay fails to keep up with cost of living”
Or to put it another way – long summer holidays make it easy for teachers to earn some money on the side……..
Twenty eight grand minimum and 12 weeks a year off (plus all the end of term pressies from the primary classes kiddiewinkies)? By golly, they do have it rough.
What Jim said – they must get bored of the beach after the first month.
Also, marking external examination papers counts as a second job so this classifies as a “deliberately misleading statistic”
Are these the same ‘young teachers’ that journalists in the dear old Grauniad constantly tell us are buying food and toiletries and clothes for their impoverished charges?
*innocent face*
After all those choccy biscuits at staff meetings they probably need to skip some meals.
Mind you, they aren’t usually as gross as those nurses using food banks.
However I do someone who dropped out of uni to become a semi pro single mum.
She lives in house worth £500k – hard to afford that on a teacher’s salary.
(According to take home pay a newly qualified teacher would take home £1,877.86 pcm rent for a one bed flat where my friend lives is £1300 pcm.
Not massively better off after travel etc that a semi pro single mum working 16 hours a week who of course unlike a teacher can get a cheap council flat.
I know a teacher who always complained to be working long hours what with all the marking and lesson prep she had to at home. Then she got a boyfriend and now also manages to work full time in the fitness business he started. I suspect that she now does all the extra school work in the staff room during those long hours between lessons. She doesn’t seem to have a problem funding time for two jobs.
Know someone who was a teacher in the US. He taught Summer school one year and complained a lot about how he never got a break. I didn’t ask what he called the 2 weeks at Christmas, one week around
Easter, one week before Summer school started and 2 weeks after Summer school and before the next school year started. And, of course, he was entitled to up to 10 days of personal leave during the year.
I also wonder how trustworthy a survey is when the subjects know their response will be used to argue for higher salaries. Can’t imagine a lot of teachers are going to respond “no, I’m fine actually, don’t need to claim poverty”.
Median salary’s about £33k. Entry level teaching salary – the minimum – is £28k. Teachers aren’t doing badly then, are they?
As you’re always telling us Tim, lets look at the overall package, or the main part and those holidays which is the big attraction for most of the teachers I know and have known:
£28k / 40 weeks worked = £700 PW
£33k / 48 weeks = £695 PW
OK, those are rough approximations, but close enough for government work.
Ah, but teachers work very hard and need that break they keep telling us. I’m happy to accept they work hard in term time and have even witnessed it. The arrogance of that argument is that they assume nobody else on that level of salary works just as hard, if not harder. They should talk to my DiL, for starters, who is always complaining about the hours our son has been putting in on a similar salary, and then I can point to any number of people who have worked equally hard.
And that’s before we get on to pensions, to which I must declare an interest because Mrs BiND gets a small teachers pension which is quite generous for the number of years she did qualifying work.
Those poor teachers probably don’t even have an overwhelmingly taxpayer funded inflation proof final salary pension to look forward to.
Oh, apparently they do.
Teachers are contracted to work 1265 hours per academic year, which is spread over 195 days. Average worker doing 40 hours a week over say 46 weeks, (allowing for holidays etc) works 1840 hours.
1) £33,000 pa divided by 1265= £26 an hour. Starting rate.
2) 1265 hours divided by 195 days=just under 6.5 hours a day in work, including breaks.
3) 365 days minus 195 days=170 days spare to do other work and get paid for it.
As Tim says, fuck off.
(Not being a teacher, my maths are lousy. Please feel free to amend as necessary)
I went to high school with some girls who later became teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. They have all retired by now, and their average pension is $89,000 per year, plus health care. USA teachers aren’t living in poverty either.
ZT
I have been told that there is a considerable earnings and benefits gap between the heavily unionised public school teachers and their less fortunate sisters employed by private schools.
“per academic year, which is spread over 195 days.” Jesus, so just 39 weeks. It can’t have been like that when I was a lad. We broke up in early July and went back in mid-August. Call it 6 weeks. 2 for Xmas/NY and (could it have been as many as?) 3 for Easter. Total 11, leaving 41 weeks for classes. (No sissie half term hols for us.)
Our day (at secondary school) started a bit before 9:00 – say 08:50 – and ended at 15:50 unless you stayed on for sport, drama, debating, and whatnot. Lunch break was long enough to give the lucky ones time to get home, eat lunch, and get back. We had a morning break too. I don’t think we had an afternoon break.
The teachers gave no impression of being knackered by it all. In summer the Geography mistress expected to be on the First Tee by 16:30. I can vouch for that because I sometimes beat her to it.
I hope this doesn’t sound misogynistic or anything, but I have yet to meet a primary school teacher who isn’t a fat cow.
Steve, all the primary teachers I know are svelte creatures. I suspect the headmaster recruited based on attractiveness. Makes the kids pay attention, I suppose.
To the original point, it’s meaningless without a comparator. Has the rate gone up or down over time? How many non-teachers on similar wages are working a second job?