how the state teachers will fare when they don’t have the luxury of being able to blackmail the govt? You’d probably find the overall cost reducing in a wheat and chaff kind of way.

I’d take that bet and dispite all the bluster and bullshit on here I can honestly say the state teachers would blow the private counterparts out of the water teaching the vast majority of kids in this country.

more than just individuals pay taxation, its simple really if you stop to think.

Which comes around nicely to the flaw in the original argument. Individuals and the private sector are paying for the teachers’ salaries. The govt wants and needs to cut costs, they are not simply reducing the contribution to the teaschers’ salaries, just trying to redistribute the the costs.
As we are living a global crisis the whole pot of money is being reduced and everyone has to take their share of the burden. Mine was a 60% reduction, I’m not complaining too much because adjusted figure would make my current salary in the region of €5k gross per month, but alas it is no longer that. 😥
As revenues decrease, costs have to decrease and part of that decrease is accepting changes to the pension for the greater good and longer term survival. If you wish, as an individual, to persue your rights, and they are your rights, you have to accept the consequences. you are lucky in that your paymaster is the govt, and the govt will not go bankrupt, but holding them to randsom neither makes economic nor ethical sense in the current climate.
My mother, a retired headteacher, often compares her decrease in income to mine, being completely oblivious to the fact that her costs have decreased too, whereas mine haven’t. Whjat it must be, to be ignorant of what reality is. 😀
Got to go now as work is calling and I now have to get the nose to the grindstone to earn less than I was 8 years ago.
Keep up the fight, it’s sterling stuff.

If you got increments like that in the private sector you’d have a very good point. I’ll accept your lack of understanding of the private sector given you’re clearly insulated from that.

Very kind of you to take that into account, however 20 years in the private sector,the majority of it self-employed, means your attempt to patronise me by suggesting teachers work in an insulated little bubble is about as valid as the rest of your statements on this thread.
A.A; Testify !

I’ve been at work for an hour

however 20 years in the private sector,the majority of it self-employed

So you got increments every year during that? 😯 How long have you been out of the private sector?

50 mins here 😀

Well I’ve been unemployed for a good 45 minutes.

So you got increments every year during that? How long have you been out of the private sector?

Yup, I was a plasterer, as word of mouth spread about doing unusual things like turning up when I said I was going to and doing the job for the price I quoted, I got busier/took on another man/was able to charge more.As such,my income rose each year,with no potential ceiling.Roughly the opposite to what the Government is doing now to teachers.
I did one day a week teaching apprentices to run cornice at local trade school. I found I loved that,retrained.

Edited due to spelling mistake 😳

state schools, on the other hand, provide a basic education for ‘free’ that is a right for everyone. Why not put the whole education system out to tender and see how the state teachers will fare when they don’t have the luxury of being able to blackmail the govt? You’d probably find the overall cost reducing in a wheat and chaff kind of way.

Look at the railways for an example of how the private sector has improved service while cutting costs…hang on

Now, back out of the classroom and not earning. 😐

Look at the railways for an example of how the private sector has improved service while cutting costs…hang on

That’s going to the other extreme, there is a happy medium, I believe.

in other news…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13772923

So, at the moment, for a school to be seen as “acceptable” the teachers need to coax a whole 35% of the pupils to 5 GCSE grade A-C

and teachers get paid for this!

in other news…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13772923

So, at the moment, for a school to be seen as “acceptable” the teachers need to coax a whole 35% of the pupils to 5 GCSE grade A-C

Half the national average!

and teachers get paid for this!

What proportion of 16-year-olds do you think should be average or better?

at least 60 % should be average or better 😉

Having had a pension on both systems and looked pretty hard at the difference when we changed (I had the option to pay more to stay on final salary) I think I understand it rather better than either you or TJ do from your comments.

So you accept that final salary schemes cost more yet the one with the lower contributions gives you a better pension. What doid i say about you and maths and your grasp. I am happy you are so ignorant you dont know how ignorant you are.

Can’t be bothered to reply to individual points – please come back when you understand why if you get increases at the rate of inflation it makes no difference being on final salary or career average,

In your scenario you would be correct [ i note you claimed earlier you were better off for being in an average salary scheme and not getting a pay rise at least now you accept that currently you are not worse off – you are confused aren’t you – its rhetorical btw though I am willing to chuckle some more about your ignorance if you want to bat on]. However almost all workers, and teachers in paerticualr as we are discussing a real scenario , . You are hypothetically true for a very limited number of workers [ not teachers obvioulsy as they get increments] who never get promoted or an increment or a wage increase in their entire working career. What opercentage oif workers do you think dont ever geta wage rise /promotion?
Why would the govt want to change it if it did not reduce the payouts?? Why would anyone care if it had no impact?
In general a final salary scheme costs more you accept this was true for you for example but you seem to think it wont pay out more. Obviously this is just wrong.

and why somebody who gets “promoted” less due to not being there the whole time actually does better on a career average scheme relative to a final salary scheme than somebody with more “promotions”.

This ijs just wrong and making your self look stupid even more so for not even relaising how stupid you are being as simple as i think I can get and for you to understand so lets do some simple maths here I have ignored inflation as it wont affect the basic maths
Column 1 = career break average salary
Column 2 – career break final salary
Column 3 – no career break and better promotion
So I am sure you can see the average salary is lower + reduced pension than the final salary ergot it is cheaper and the member is worse off
year 1 100 100 100
year 2 100 100 100
year 3 100 100 100
year 4 100 100 100
year 5 100 100 100
year 6 100 100 100
year 7 100 100 100
year 8 100 100 100
year 9 100 100 100
year 10 100 100 120
year 11 100 100 120
year 12 100 100 120
year 13 100 100 120
year 14 100 100 120
year 15 120 120 150
year 16 120 120 150
year 17 120 120 150
year 18 120 120 150
year 19 120 120 150
year 20 120 120 150
total 2120 2120 2400
av 106 106 120
salary 106 120 150
used

If you never ever get promoted/wage rise above inflation it makes no difference [ except you are btter off apparently though it makes no difference 🙄 ]but this is quite unlikely to be the case and definetly not true for the teachers striking. Cheaper versions pay out less .

What proportion of 16-year-olds do you think should be average or better?

irrelevant, the correct question is what proportion of children should leave school able to achieve the “benchmark” qualification?

OOH a post of your I like 😉

S’funny Junky – according to you you cannot read my posts as you block them… 😉

not at work you can goad me then 😉

So, at the moment, for a school to be seen as “acceptable” the teachers need to coax a whole 35% of the pupils to 5 GCSE grade A-C

and teachers get paid for this!

Nationally pretty easy locally, well you try it. As I said my current school is over 80% my last one was struggling to top 20% the first was the better run school with better resources and better teachers but it had kids from a massively different socio economic background, massively different priorities from pupils and parents and vastly inferior prior attainment. To judge a school based on this is the argument of an idiot, hence you and Mr Gove

It alarms me how many people have the attitude that teachers should just ‘suck it up’ and take the shafting because ‘it’s worse in the private sector’.

WTF! what kind of way is that to live your life? Let’s all be grateful for the scraps thrown from the big table????? Don’t forget to doff your caps when the boss walks by…

Isn’t teaching of children an important job? why shouldn’t there be good rewards in it?

I’m not a teacher.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpBN_MmX7o[/video]

Any mention of Gove deserves to be accompanied by this

As I said my current school is over 80% my last one was struggling to top 20% the first was the better run school with better resources and better teachers

And I imagine the salaries and pensions were the same in spite of the greatly differing results. Surely the vocational side of the job would push you into the challenge of getting 20% to a much higher level, imagine the personal satisfaction. Some things money just can’t buy.
How is life in the current job?

EDIT:

Isn’t teaching of children an important job? why shouldn’t there be good rewards in it?

Who said there shouldn’t be? Good rewards for good teachers, **** all for the lazy feckers, but not a blanket right for everyone.

Other than performance related conditions how could you possibly differentiate between a good teacher and a bad one, other than the good ones would be more likely to do better in terms of promotion, etc.?

You can’t use statistics for it, such as pass rates, because you are dealing with children, not numbers.

As I said, i’m not a teacher, and I don’t know how a poor teacher would be improved into a better one??

Perhaps someone who has worked with a ‘lazy fecker’ could answer that? I can imagine it pisses them off more than most if they have to work with people like that. But it’s going off on a tangent and is smoke and mirrors which takes away from what this is really about.

Also, Don Simon you said your pay was 60% of what it was some years ago. If you are self employed that is your choice and i’m guessing when times were good you were earning a substantial wedge – better than you could have earned in the Public Sector? You mentioned your pay is roughly 5k per month? is that after a 60% cut?

IMHO a spurious argument to say that Public Sector workers should accept this change to previously agreed proposals because the big money isn’t available in the private sector anymore??

Yeah, inflation has been 4+% for the last two or three years. In real terms, it feels like much more than this to me. I haven’t had a pay rise in two years and likely won’t get one this year. Doesn’t mean that because I’m feeling the pinch everyone else should.

this country is ****

p.s. because it’s not about people feathering their nest – it’s about getting what they deserve to have a decent life in retirement.

I despair about the social conscience of this country.

Also, Don Simon you said your pay was 60% of what it was some years ago. If you are self employed that is your choice and i’m guessing when times were good you were earning a substantial wedge – better than you could have earned in the Public Sector? You mentioned your pay is roughly 5k per month? is that after a 60% cut?

Rremember I’m not the one who’s complaining here. The answer to your question are in my previous post, if you’d care to look again.
My personal beef is that the public sector teachers have chosen a life, a job a vocation. They knew the deal before they signed up, long term contracts, good paid holidays and a pension. The pay off for this, imo, is a lower income in return for lower risk, long term contracts etc. Now we have teachers complaining, nay demanding, that there conditions shouldn’t change even though this could have a negative impact on the country, they want to have their cake and eat it AND try to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
I can remember my sister, a nurse, complaining when a dinner time conversation revealed my salary. How is it possible after 5 years stuying that he can earn more than me, she asked. Well, no-one put a gun to your head sweetheart. You chose the job for a reason greater than money. I don’t begrudge you that choice and respect you for making it. In equal measures I am not jealous of you either.
Due to no fault of you or me, we are in a crisis and have to work together to pull ourselves up, if you want to go off on your personal nest egg building crusade, go for it, but also live with the consequences. 😉

My personal beef is that the public sector teachers have chosen a life, a job a vocation. They knew the deal before they signed up, long term contracts, good paid holidays and a pension.

And the deal is being changed. Hence the problem.

aracer – Member

the increments you are talking about are just the same as any employee in the private sector taking on more duties and getting an increase because of it

If you got increments like that in the private sector you’d have a very good point. I’ll accept your lack of understanding of the private sector given you’re clearly insulated from that.[/quote]

I used to get increments exactly like that in the private sector- and it makes sense, after all, after 3 years in the same job I was doing more work, better, than I did after 1.

What you seem to have done here is assumed that because you’ve never seen it, it never happens. To be fair there’s a lot of that going around.

And I imagine the salaries and pensions were the same in spite of the greatly differing results

No the school with poor results from the less able kids had higher salaries as it was an academy and was free to set salaries.
I think you may have missed the point though, much like Mr Gove

Welcome to the real, post crisis, world Mike. Now why do you feel you have more rights than the rest of us to be immune to the effects of the crisis?
WTF are you going to do when redundancies are announced? And how quickly can you learn to be efficient, I mean proper efficient?

don simon you need to work on your debating skills I have no idea what the point your making is to be honest.

WTF are you going to do when redundancies are announced

redunancies have been announced at my school, I presume its the same in most other schools, seem so from conversations.

My point? See my first post. Stop f*****g whinging!
You c ould have said earlier that you have problems understanding, bless.

can you point out where I was whinging?

I thought your point was that your wage had reduced by 60% so everyone else should suffer. You seem to be the one whinging the most as far as I can see.

your first post seems like a whinge to me

Older and wiser, why not? 70 today doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to smell of wee.
I am a teacher, I work in the private sector, I calculated that with adjusted figures my salary has decreased by 60%. Count yourselves lucky and stop f*****g whinging.

WTF are you going to do when redundancies are announced? And how quickly can you learn to be efficient, I mean proper efficient?

We’ve had redundancies at our place already.

We have £400000 less next year than this, assuming we can recruit the same number of students. We’ll have a million quid less the following year, assuming we maintain numbers.

As for efficiency, we get better results than nearby school sixth forms and private schools, with considerably larger class sizes.

On top of the pensions changes, we’ve had changes to EMAs and who knows what effect tuition fees will have on recruitment to take A levels. Oh, and academies are going to be able to decide to run A levels, so all the schools that go that route will become potential competitors.

And the central government plan? There isn’t one. They launch all of this without any real consultation or planning or thought and see what happens.

can you point out where I was whinging?

I thought your point was that your wage had reduced by 60% so everyone else should suffer. You seem to be the one whinging the most as far as I can see.
I’m not going back through the whole thread to copy and paste for quotes, but turning my example and trying to use it as your defence doesn’t impress me. Re-read and think again or better still, for the umpteenth time why should publkic sector teacher not have to lose some of their pensions? There is no logical answer so you have to feign confusion and tell me I’m talking bollox, but apparently you do understand. For me this has been an interesting debate and has given me further insight into the way public sector workers think. Thanks.

On top of the pensions changes, we’ve had changes to EMAs and who knows what effect tuition fees will have on recruitment to take A levels. Oh, and academies are going to be able to decide to run A levels, so all the schools that go that route will become potential competitors.

Not sure I see anything negative here either. Pension changes reduce govt spending during a financial crisis. I hope you’re EMAs get better, why do people use abbreviations? I guess you’re learning the language of business, it’s a start… What is wrong with competition? How do you benchmark yourselves without competition? How can you improve, and in general you (all scholls) need to improve. Saying my school is performing better than average is just another demonstration of a selfish attitude.

A career average pension can be better if your wages consistently fall behind inflation. I find it shocking that teachers cannot understand this basic concept and are allowed to train children. If your real terms wages are lower at the end of working life than at the start, then the last thing you want is a final salary pension.

Teachers should explain why they believe the rest of the country should guarantee their pensions, before embarking on a strike that only a third of their members support.

Otherwise, they can strike as long as they want for all the country will care: every working day they spend in the pub unpaid reduces the career average pay which will determine their pension.

I’m not going back through the whole thread to copy and paste for

so thats a no then?

How can you improve, and in general you (all scholls) need to improve

wow you do irony!

dmjb4 – Member

a strike that only a third of their members support.

Is this one of those “big lie” things where you hope that by repeating a blatant falsehood over and over, it becomes accepted as truth?

Did you open this thread to support the cuts or look for some kind of support for the teachers? The whole thread is one long whinge fest.
Irony? Where?

Only about a third of union members supported the strike. 40% of 92% is 36%. Or about a third.

Can you not do basic arithmetic or use a calculator?