Despite us getting around 10% less than private school teachers? Who get the same pension, may do more hours a week but get longer holidays!

As I said before, having done 10yrs in the maintained sector and now about the same in the private, that margin feels about right more or less. 17 or 18 years ago teachers might have had a case for being underpaid but since then we have seen some pretty reasonable rises (around the turn of the millennium under Blair) whilst keeping hold of most of our pension rights whilst other sectors had been royally shafted in their pensions. On the whole I’d say our package is not bad.

For maths geeks out there my wife and I sat down and calculated our annual hours at work. She is a in a normal office base job with 4 weeks leave plus bank holidays. I do around 200 hours more at work annually than she does taking into account my massive holidays. I was allowed to do more biking and less chores in my holidays after that! 🙂

Public schools i’d have though are more a 24/7 job – but they possibly get cheap on-site accomodation etc to offset this?

I also can’t think of many jobs that you can so easily get away with being incompetent. The number of teachers sacked for being no good every year is tiny. (Thats not to say I think the vast majority are incompetent btw!)

I agree but it may also be because even the poor ones still meet the minimum standard but it is a profession, unlike most others, whereby teachers need to go above and beyond their contractual requirements. Not everyone will but they are still not technically in breach of their Terms and conditions

I do agree that there needs to be a way of doing it but, and I am sure the teachers on here will agree, that no one really wants to give that power to management. They will often use it to manage people out of the school who dont share thier “vision” rather than ones who are not actually good. They would , potentially anyway, abuse it to get rid of “troublesome ” teachers and we would be left with yes people rather than good teachers. I am not sur eif this would be better tbh

For example many heads only look at the league tables and results [ because it is all that parents look at] and are not interested in holistic or support within the school or the pastoral system so they dislike teachers who advocate it and try and ensure the school still does this,
I suspect their bosses think they are not good teachers and not focusing on the corect things but they may not actually be a bad teacher.

Given all teachers work with different resources [ pupils] it is not always easy to find an objective measure of effectiveness

It is a [small] issue but one that does not have an easy soloution.

If not identical, do private school teachers have to do something else to earn 10% more?

Sell our souls to he devil? 🙂 I think that was pretty much the opinion of my old headteacher and half my colleagues when I told them I was off to the dark side! I think the line was “If you do this, you’ll never be welcome back!”.

The number of teachers sacked for being no good every year is tiny.

I think the reason for this is that most leave of their own accord. Being a poor teacher is a proper horrible place to be. The pressure from pupils, parents and smt is massive and most jump before being pushed. Or become super stressed and ill and leave that way. There is not much sadder than watching a nice person who just happens to not make a very good teacher spiralling to the exit door and it happens all the time.

Convert, I am intrigued by your working day what activities do the kids do after 7 pm other than prep or is that what you are supervising?

If not identical, do private school teachers have to do something else to earn 10% more?

Produce Tories who marry and pretend they are straight?

Lots of different stuff – it’s a boarding school so all the things a busy active student might get outside of school otherwise.

So it might be:-

Prep/homework – there are supervised study slots that need to me manned
Sport – all different stuff (I mainly lifeguard or coach swimming, supervise a gym, or in the summer run a mountain biking activity)
Drama & music – rehearsals for plays, choirs, concert bands, or rock stuff.
Workshops – keeping the art and Design areas open for extra work
Civics Talks – lots of really interesting folk we manage to get in to talk to them (open to the local public too).
Duke of Edinburgh award training.
More chilled stuff like cooking, chess clubs, debating clubs.
Occasionally its supervising a dance/rock show type thing.

Mostly I’m either doing sport or keeping my workshop open with a smattering a cultural stuff and D of E. It could be worse. The kids have a full on day – woken at 7am and then pretty much flat out until 9pm everyday. They are knackered by the end of the term.

For maths geeks out there my wife and I sat down and calculated our annual hours at work. She is a in a normal office base job with 4 weeks leave plus bank holidays. I do around 200 hours more at work annually than she does taking into account my massive holidays.

Google Latitude says that I spend about 45 hours a week at work. But, some of that time isn’t working and some of the time I’m not at work is spent working.

Hey – shssss, whatever the ins and outs are – post conversation I got to ride my bike and chill in the holidays without being nagged at – it’s all good, don’t rock the boat!

it’s a boarding school

I know that is why I asked the question as in my day all we did after 7 was prep in the week.

I think the change came when a lot of boarding schools stopped being 7 day a week and actually allowed the kids home on Saturday afternoon until Sunday evening. Now all the stuff that used to go on then now gets shoehorned into the remaining 5 1/2 days.

Mefty – I think that you would be surprised at the range of activities that take place after 7 – work, music, cultural, R&R etc, all of which require supervision.

Convert – interesting observation about fitting 7 into 5 1/2 – house sport/music comps etc on a Sunday suddenly become a lot less popular!

To be honest I don’t remember doing much on weekends other than doing sport on Saturday afternoons, which presumably still goes on, and Chapel on a Sunday.

EDIT: Of course in my day, the senior boys ran the houses and did most of the supervision so the big change for me is how much more involved teachers are.

Is the role identical? If so then surely if you wanted 10% extra pay youd be working in a private school. If not identical, do private school teachers have to do something else to earn 10% more?

you’ve clearly never met me or taken much notice of what i post here but I would fear for the pupils if I had to teach Tarquin and Poppy! I have my standards. Convert obviously thinks his job is harder a maybe it is I dont know nor will i ever. But its a fact that many a good teacher leaves the state sector for more pay and less abuse

you’ve clearly never met me or taken much notice of what i post here but I would fear for the pupils if I had to teach Tarquin and Poppy! I have my standards. Convert obviously thinks his job is harder a maybe it is I dont know nor will i ever. But its a fact that many a good teacher leaves the state sector for more pay and less abuse

Many a shite teacher, too. Moreso, because if they’re struggling with classroom management, can’t connect with these challenging kids, then the way out seems obvious.

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Many a shite teacher, too. Moreso, because if they’re struggling with classroom management, can’t connect with these challenging kids, then the way out seems obvious.

Might well be the case, many go straight into private from pgce too.

Many a shite teacher, too. Moreso, because if they’re struggling with classroom management, can’t connect with these challenging kids, then the out seems obvious.

You are quite right in saying that there are some teachers in the private sector that might struggle with the crowd control aspect that is so important in some schools and would get eaten alive in front of the wrong kids. That does not make them poor teachers though – just wrong for that environment. I’ve met some incredible teachers who communicate with such knowledge and wit and are able to tease the absolute best out of a potential oxbridge students that would be rubbish at maintaining control and delivering a worthwhile lesson in some of the schools I’ve worked in. Neither skill is better but I rarely see them both in the same person. A lot of the people in the staff room here have more in common with university lecturers than maintained sector teachers – it works here but I doubt it would work everywhere. Having said all that I’m really glad I did my time in some tricky state schools first – I might not need some of those skills on a day to day basis but it’s handy to know they are there.

I’d echo that. I don’t work in a private school, but in a sixth form college so get, generally, motivated students who want to be there and have smallish class sizes (up to 24 in a class).

I think I’m an okay teacher in this setting, but when I worked in a dodgy primary school I was awful. Now, a lot of that was the school, rather than just me, but I left and swore I’d never step foot in a classroom again.

You two girls want to grow a pair and get a proper job!!!