Teachers Getting Militant

[dremmler]

The NUT has been putting in claims like this to the pay review body for years.

As for the SATS boycott, they ballotted on this a few years ago - the ballot was a failure not because it was voted down but because not enough NUT members could actually be bothered to vote in the first place.

I'm happy enough in teaching- the work is hard and the money, rightly so, is reasonably good. I never really thought too much about the pension provision but I now regard my entitlements as a very important component of my employment package.

The best thing, without a doubt, is the 14 weeks annual leave; time is a very important commodity indeed. If they offered me an extra £15,000 pa to give the holidays up I'd refuse.

I find the self righteous indignation displayed by some when they attack teachers posters very amusing - especially when I realise most of it is motivated by plain old fashioned jealousy.

[Jester]

yep,14 and we're still going

The thing that makes me laugh is.......if teacher's are over paid and lazy why isn't there a queue of people waiting to do the job?

I admit that I'm a teacher because it's a well paid job, the hours are short and the holidays long. I wouldn't do the job otherwise.

It's the best job in the world. You get paid to go on school trips all over again - marvellous! But woe betide you should anything be not done properly or should something go wrong.

My take on it? You're all jealous.

If anyone can do the job then come on in and join us.

[Pericles]

The thing that makes me laugh is.......if teacher's are over paid and lazy why isn't there a queue of people waiting to do the job?

I admit that I'm a teacher because it's a well paid job, the hours are short and the holidays long. I wouldn't do the job otherwise.

It's the best job in the world. You get paid to go on school trips all over again - marvellous! But woe betide you should anything be not done properly or should something go wrong.

My take on it? You're all jealous.

If anyone can do the job then come on in and join us.

I agree. There have been too many theads attacking the public sector on this forum. By all means attack the government for having a too large public sector, but please don't abuse the people who work in it.

[Injin]

I agree. There have been too many theads attacking the public sector on this forum. By all means attack the government for having a too large public sector, but please don't abuse the people who work in it.

You mean the public sector exists without any people in it?

Plato would be proud. Everyone else thinks you are a loon.

[bagsos]

Timing of this is interesting - its not being done to order to make Gordon look strong on the domestic front shortly before an election is it?

My son told me that when the NUT last went on strike it was all the cr@p teachers who were on the picket lines at his school. That tells you all you need to know about the NUT and its membership. I would proscribe it if I had my way.

[ImA20SomethingGetMeOutOfHere]

The trouble is the teachers in some ways like a direct link to the state. Most are ideologically attached to 'state' education. The trouble is you cannot have schools as child-prisons and schools as places of learning at the same time.

Unruly kids shouldn't be forced to sit down for hours bored out their minds in French and History and Maths. Send on a motorcycle maintenance course, let them do something in the community, find something that captures their interest.

Friends that are interviewed for teaching jobs complain that even in 'middle of the road' comps it's all about discovering your track record in 'classroom management' - ie. being a prison warder. A Doctor doesn't have to have elaborate strategies for dealing with unruly patients - he accesses security, he refuses to give treatment.

The idea is to try and trick them into learning something when they're not looking. But yes, in general it does end up seeming kind of pointless sometimes. I'd be quite happy for compulsory education to focus on maths and english as a priority and be finished by the age of 14. After that, give people vouchers or something that they can use to access additional education as an when they feel they need it.

Fine. Let me select a school to send my children to. Give me the money that would have been spent educating my kid and I'll donate that to my school of choice. Better still, don't take the money in the first place (one can dream..).

I was lucky enough to attend a grammar school which "played along" with the curriculum but allowed the teachers a lot of freedom. The teachers there were certainly not attached to the state, probably because New Labour tried its hardest to shut the school down.

If an "unruly kid" doesn't want to learn because its parents haven't bothered to provide an upbringing then that's a damned shame. I wouldn't want it disrupting the classroom anyway. Pandering to these imbeciles is what makes them think they can leach off the state for their entire crappy life.

No problem with that at all.

Can I just point out that the NUT represents only a proportion of the teachers in England and Wales. They are frigging useless as well. Every year they bang on about pay, when the real issues are conditions (behaviour, crazy exam reforms, league tables, SATS).

Just ignore them, most teachers do.

The NUT, like all teaching unions is a total waste of space. As far as I can see it is largely in bed with the Labour government.

Didn't you get the memo? Every job is a doddle except for theirs.

I'm with you on the teaching being a great job. I enjoy the teaching part but I am one of the lazy people you describe. I'm out by 4 every day and take very little home with me. All my lesson plans are in my head and the kids do a lot of the marking for me.

That said I get very good exam results so I'm left alone and not asked for copious amounts of paperwork.

I get hacked off that I get paid the same as a PE teacher who has 17 in his only GCSE class while I have to have 32 in each of my three classes.

I also get hacked off that the only thing I'm judged on is my exam results and my value added score. Data! Aagh!

Wouldn't touch management with a bargepole though.

+1 for AFL! You can even convince OFSTED that it's a good thing.

You sound like a very similar teacher to me. In fact, don't you teach physics too?

Bottom line though, if you're smart about it and are good, teaching isn't that hard a job, as long as the school isn't a complete nightmare. I'm inclined to agree with you about management though.

At the risk of sounding like I'm defending PE teachers, I've been doing a bit of supply lately because I've been away traveling for 6 months or so and I've been lumbered with a couple of PE lessons. I've actually seen some quite good PE teachers who really get into the skills/coaching side of things and who clearly know their sport. I've also seen some pretty rubbish ones. On the whole I think it's an easy subject to teach though. PE's not just having a kick around with a football now either. Have a look at this.

[Danny Deflation]

I wonder how many teachers they would lose if they had to take a 10% pay cut. I suspect not so many and most could be replaced without serious difficulty.

Depends on the subject. I am sure some teachers could be replaced easily, but it would have a devastating effect on those subjects for which there is a shortage of good teachers: for example, maths and science.

I do not believe teachers should take a pay cut. But I do believe they should be happy with their current 2.4% pay rise and I wished the unions would shut up.

[ImA20SomethingGetMeOutOfHere]

Depends on the subject. I am sure some teachers could be replaced easily, but it would have a devastating effect on those subjects for which there is a shortage of good teachers: for example, maths and science.

I do not believe teachers should take a pay cut. But I do believe they should be happy with their current 2.4% pay rise and I wished the unions would shut up.

I don't see any problem with teachers getting together and asking for better pay.

I don't see any problem with the rest of the country telling them to fook off.

I don't see any problem with good teachers leaving and the education system taking a hit as a result.

[tricksters]

I'm a teacher basher for the following reasons:

Pretty much every teacher at my comp with an 'enviable reputation' was lazy. The seemed to see sick pay as free holiday so some days were hardly worth being there as we were short-changed with supply teachers giving us busy-work. Again and again.

Not one teacher was inspirational. Not one taught me anything I didn't read in the textbook. I could read. Give me the books. Give me the syllabus. Give me the test. Cut out the prison warder, the middle man, the sarky ***** - oh and some were sick in the head, with weird personal dislikes of certain students.

My Uni had PGCE students who were almost all, 'Yeah, had to work in M&S knickers department 'cos there's no jobs so decided to teach'. The people complaining about 'low pay' in teaching would for the most part not be able to access s*****y private sector jobs. Like most graduates they'd be employed in non-graduate low-paid work.

Teachers do not have special skills other than a load of meaningless ***** learned from pedagogues in ivory towers. Do you really think you'd learn, say, French better from a teacher than an 'unskilled' French graduate or French speaker for the most part? No. Why pay a big premium for the doss-about PGCE year. Teachers know it's a naff qualification but still rail against 'unqualified' teachers entering classrooms in a typical Emperor's New Clothes game of make believe.

Teachers get superannuation no matter how poor their performance. Watch the years tick by. Do the bare minimum. More dough. In the private sector you get grueling appraisals where you have to provide evidence that you've been god's gift to your employer and thus justify some measly raise.

People would hero-worship teachers if they could see more young people that have solid literacy. Its sad t see so many bright youngsters that do not know how to formulate a letter or even write coherently. Teachers seem to think that despite wasting kids' time for umpteen hours a week they don't need to offer any end product. Blame paperwork. Blame parents. Blame anything.

My, you've got some issues. Careful you don't make yourself ill. You say no-one taught you anything.

Who taught you to read and write so passionately - wouldn't be some teachers would it? I bet you were a difficult, pain in the ass pupil who always thought he was hard done by. The sort that makes teaching so difficult and frankly a cr@p job. Resentment like yours usually kicks off because of anger and jealousy at perceived advantage, but your generalisations are crass.

Your jealousy is misplaced. Teaching is dull and monotonous and singularly uninteresting for the most part, unless you are in a good catchment area with motivated kids and motivated teachers. If you're not, and the kids are disruptive and don't want to know, it's a tedious, stressful nightmare of a job. Yes the holidays are good. If your job offered the same, you would be quite happy, no doubt. And if you feel the superannuation and the dough and everything else are so blooddy good, be one! We all have to make the best life we can.

OK. Then there's the other side of the coin. It sounds like you went to a pretty poor school, and God knows there's enough of those. Successive governments have fuked up education; the curriculum is dull, in my experience a lot of teachers are time-servingly dull (and I mean FUKEING, infuriatingly dull) and de-motivated (or what you would call lazy, although it's actually difficult to be a lazy teacher simply because of the stuff that has to be done whether you can be bothered or not). I remember having useless teachers too, but you cannot simply write them all off in one fell swoop. A lot of them are dedicated and tireless, and no doubt some are inspirational, and you would be surprised how many of them really do have the kids' interests at heart.

Some of them (a small minority) play the "off sick" game shamelessly and get away with it for years.

Some of them are just bad at teaching. Some of them are a bit thick and there are people in education who you would definitely not want influencing or teaching your child. So what about some balance?

You complain that children cannot write coherently, but I notice that you certainly can. Did you have a private tutor?

You complain that teachers waste kids' time for umpteen hours a week, and you are certainly right there in some measure, but remember that there are thousands (yes thousands) of teachers out there who, on the contrary, would love to work in an environment where surly and disruptive children didn't waste the time of teachers who genuinely would like to go into school each day and actually teach them rather than do crowd control. But the dynamics of a classroom are such that if the disruptives have taken over (and it only takes a couple to sour the atmosphere) there's not a lot of learning going on and it becomes very difficult. Successive governments have taken away the power of schools to deal effectively with learning disruption.

So you make valid points, Crashed Out, but a bit of balance instead of naked anger might make your case more effectively.

Having said all that, the institution of the school starts going wrong at the Primary stage, in my view. I have a problem with compulsory institutions anyway. We incarcerate young children in a room all day, sitting them down for more than an hour at a time as much as 4 times a day. It's too much and it's plain wrong and it amounts to child abuse and it p'sses me off. They get ten minutes break morning and afternoon and their lunch break hour, the rest of the time they're largely sedentary.

If teachers are being militant, perhaps they should look more closely to what they are being militant about.

[Jadoube]

What's so annoying about that is that it is so elementary to fix, so simple.

Behold the ivory tower.

In the real world it is rare to find things elementary or simple to fix. The difficulty usually increases with the number of people to whom the fix will be applied, and the variety of circumstances in which those people work.

[Guest Steve Cook]

Could you take a class of thirty 5 year olds for a year and teach them to read? Could you spot the signs of abuse in a child and help them? Could you teach a class of 30 teenagers for a term - some of whom can't speak english, some who have various SEN and demonstrate that they've made progress...

I bet you couldn't, I bet you're the kind of tw@t that young kids hate and teenagers would make mincemeat of....

Yes

I am a teacher and most of the donkeys on here spouting off ignorant nonsense about teaching would get eaten alive in the average secondary classroom environment.

I wasn't always a teacher. I started out as a woodsman. I later moved into construction. Eventually, in the early 90s I embarked on a degree and went on to become a teacher in the late 90s (Secondary ICT). I can categorically state that teaching is a uniquely demanding career quite unlike any other. There is a reason teachers have such long holidays and it's not for the children!

Here's some practical evidence of how demanding teaching is;

Firstly, the modal average professional lifetime for teachers is approximately 10 years. That is to say, over 90% of teachers leave after a decade in the job. If teaching is such an easy profession, one does rather wonder what is driving them all away from this cushy number.

Secondly, assuming a teacher works all the way up to the statutory retirement age, the mean average post-retirement life expectancy for retired female teachers is four years and is two years for retired male teachers.

Apparently, it's the last 10 years that kill you........

Edited April 14, 2009 by Steve Cook

[Jester]

there is a queue of people waiting to bring down your wages.the problem is that the Unions and the govt are too happy picking your votes up come election time.

I agree it's a good job,the market should be freed up though and made more transparent.some of the young techers here are annoyed as they do more hours than more time served people for less money..........????

Not round here there isn't. The jobs vacancies in my school end up with no one applying for them. In fact I was promoted because no one applied for the job - I didn't want it either.

[Guest Steve Cook]

Not round here there isn't. The jobs vacancies in my school end up with no one applying for them. In fact I was promoted because no one applied for the job - I didn't want it either.

You don't work in Hull do you? Always lots of teacher vacancies in Hull......

[medusa]

It's not even that good. It takes 40 years to accrue half final salary.

The days of retiring at 50 are long gone as well.

It was changed from 1/80, to 1/60 accrued for each year worked recently, I think in exchange for increasing the age of retirement (65 instead of 60).

They did this as very few workers were able to achieve the "full" pension (many women worked/work part-time for years whilst raising a family), I know when Bucks

LA changed from 1/80 to 1/60 the average "gold-plated" pension was about £2.5k p.a. (all LA workers). I saw the figures for teacher pensions recently and if I recall rightly the average pension

taken last year by retirees was around £9k for females and £12k for males.

[porca misèria]

My son told me that when the NUT last went on strike it was all the cr@p teachers who were on the picket lines at his school. That tells you all you need to know about the NUT and its membership. I would proscribe it if I had my way.

Some things don't change. That was the same when the NUT - and many of the incompetent (and frankly thick) majority of teachers at my school took various disruptive actions. That was in the 1970s.

The decent teachers continued doing a good job and ignored the NUT idiots. The two teachers I recollect as positively good both got well-deserved promotions not long after my time.

[Guest absolutezero]

Secondly, assuming a teacher works all the way up to the statutory retirement age, the mean average post-retirement life expectancy for retired female teachers is four years and is two years for retired male teachers.

Apparently, it's the last 10 years that kill you........

They'd like that on here.

Means they don't have to pay out all those "GOLD PLATED PUBLIC SECTOR PENSIONS"!

I agree with others. Most of the teacher bashing is inspired by jealousy of the decent pay and pension, short hours and long holidays.

Teaching is pretty much a closed shop, but the entry requirements aren't that hard - after all anyone can get a degree these days...

I'd be really interested for some of the posters on here to put their money where their mouths are, but it'll never happen.

[Guest absolutezero]

It was changed from 1/80, to 1/60 accrued for each year worked recently, I think in exchange for increasing the age of retirement (65 instead of 60).

They did this as very few workers were able to achieve the "full" pension (many women worked/work part-time for years whilst raising a family), I know when Bucks

LA changed from 1/80 to 1/60 the average "gold-plated" pension was about £2.5k p.a. (all LA workers). I saw the figures for teacher pensions recently and if I recall rightly the average pension

taken last year by retirees was around £9k for females and £12k for males.

You are right, but the change was only for 'new entrants' from 1st January 2007 onwards.

I hope you don't believe they did it because most people don't get a full pension! See Steve's earlier comment about teacher lifespan if you work until 65...

It'll cost them a lot less in pension payments by changing the retirement age!

[Guest absolutezero]

The two teachers I recollect as positively good both got well-deserved promotions not long after my time.

I wish it worked that way these days.

In the current climate, its all about being a yes-man and licking bum.

[Springveldt]

Not round here there isn't. The jobs vacancies in my school end up with no one applying for them. In fact I was promoted because no one applied for the job - I didn't want it either.

I take it you work in a secondary school?

I don't know the situation now but I know around 6 years ago when my wife was looking for her first post (primary school) there were over 100 applicants for every single job she applied for. Dunno if it's still the same now.

Oh, and her "gold plated pension" yearly advice came in the other day. Apparently her pension is on course just now to pay her 700 quid a year. Fantastic stuff, I'm sure that will bring her a life of luxury in retirement.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Springveldt

[Jester]

You don't work in Hull do you? Always lots of teacher vacancies in Hull......

no not Hull.

[porca misèria]

Firstly, the modal average professional lifetime for teachers is approximately 10 years. That is to say, over 90% of teachers leave after a decade in the job. If teaching is such an easy profession, one does rather wonder what is driving them all away from this cushy number.

My girlfriend appears on those "out after ten years" statistics. She left teaching (in the UK) when she went to teach in the Far East, which she much enjoyed.

Now she's stuck in an office-based job she hates, and wants to get back into teaching, as something much more rewarding (both financially and in terms of job satisfaction).

Many of her colleagues have featured on those left-teaching stats for the even more obvious reason that they started a family.

Secondly, assuming a teacher works all the way up to the statutory retirement age, the mean average post-retirement life expectancy for retired female teachers is four years and is two years for retired male teachers.

Hmm, that seems surprising. On the other hand, how many people spend an entire 40-45 years in *any* single occupation?

[Jester]

I take it you work in a secondary school?

I don't know the situation now but I know around 6 years ago when my wife was looking for her first post (primary school) there were over 100 applicants for every single job she applied for. Dunno if it's still the same now.

Oh, and her "gold plated pension" yearly advice came in the other day. Apparently her pension is on course just now to pay her 700 quid a year. Fantastic stuff, I'm sure that will bring her a life of luxury in retirement.

Yes you got it - inner city secondary.

[Guest Steve Cook]

My, you've got some issues. Careful you don't make yourself ill. You say no-one taught you anything.

Who taught you to read and write so passionately - wouldn't be some teachers would it? I bet you were a difficult, pain in the ass pupil who always thought he was hard done by. The sort that makes teaching so difficult and frankly a cr@p job. Resentment like yours usually kicks off because of anger and jealousy at perceived advantage, but your generalisations are crass.

Your jealousy is misplaced. Teaching is dull and monotonous and singularly uninteresting for the most part, unless you are in a good catchment area with motivated kids and motivated teachers. If you're not, and the kids are disruptive and don't want to know, it's a tedious, stressful nightmare of a job. Yes the holidays are good. If your job offered the same, you would be quite happy, no doubt. And if you feel the superannuation and the dough and everything else are so blooddy good, be one! We all have to make the best life we can.

OK. Then there's the other side of the coin. It sounds like you went to a pretty poor school, and God knows there's enough of those. Successive governments have fuked up education; the curriculum is dull, in my experience a lot of teachers are time-servingly dull (and I mean FUKEING, infuriatingly dull) and de-motivated (or what you would call lazy, although it's actually difficult to be a lazy teacher simply because of the stuff that has to be done whether you can be bothered or not). I remember having useless teachers too, but you cannot simply write them all off in one fell swoop. A lot of them are dedicated and tireless, and no doubt some are inspirational, and you would be surprised how many of them really do have the kids' interests at heart.

Some of them (a small minority) play the "off sick" game shamelessly and get away with it for years.

Some of them are just bad at teaching. Some of them are a bit thick and there are people in education who you would definitely not want influencing or teaching your child. So what about some balance?

You complain that children cannot write coherently, but I notice that you certainly can. Did you have a private tutor?

You complain that teachers waste kids' time for umpteen hours a week, and you are certainly right there in some measure, but remember that there are thousands (yes thousands) of teachers out there who, on the contrary, would love to work in an environment where surly and disruptive children didn't waste the time of teachers who genuinely would like to go into school each day and actually teach them rather than do crowd control. But the dynamics of a classroom are such that if the disruptives have taken over (and it only takes a couple to sour the atmosphere) there's not a lot of learning going on and it becomes very difficult. Successive governments have taken away the power of schools to deal effectively with learning disruption.

So you make valid points, Crashed Out, but a bit of balance instead of naked anger might make your case more effectively.

Having said all that, the institution of the school starts going wrong at the Primary stage, in my view. I have a problem with compulsory institutions anyway. We incarcerate young children in a room all day, sitting them down for more than an hour at a time as much as 4 times a day. It's too much and it's plain wrong and it amounts to child abuse and it p'sses me off. They get ten minutes break morning and afternoon and their lunch break hour, the rest of the time they're largely sedentary.

If teachers are being militant, perhaps they should look more closely to what they are being militant about.

Excellent post and one with which I find myself agreeing with many of the points made

[HAMISH_MCTAVISH]

I have no issue with teachers getting paid more. Or nurses, policemen, etc.

Pay for it by sacking all the 5-a-day coordinators, diversity monitors, special advisors, PR hacks, etc, and making everyone else in government work as hard as those in the private sector have to.....

If they stopped wasting so much of our money, they wouldn't need to employ so many PR consultants to sell it to us, as we wouldn't be so bl00dy annoyed in the first place.

Simples.

[medusa]

You are right, but the change was only for 'new entrants' from 1st January 2007 onwards.

I hope you don't believe they did it because most people don't get a full pension! See Steve's earlier comment about teacher lifespan if you work until 65...

It'll cost them a lot less in pension payments by changing the retirement age!

That's probably true, but do you know where I could access "teacher mortality" research? I've seen Steve's figures before, and they are fairly well-known "facts" by teachers, however the DCSF believes that life expectancy for teachers is higher than the average for the general population (see response commentary to "life expectancy of teachers on retirement" : http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/downl...port%20rev4.doc