Six figure salaries for Teachers

I’ve switched from corporate law to teaching, and can tell you that teachers work hard – at least 60 hrs per week during term, and 20-30 hrs per week during the ‘holidays’. Outside of the classroom I have to prepare lessons and assessments, mark work, answer student questions out-of-hours, complete endless administrivia and organise extra-curricular activities.

Classroom teaching also takes a huge amount of energy – it’s a performance, and it’s not easy to capture and hold the attention of 25-30 teenagers! When you think that teachers are responsible for 25-30 people at a time, that’s more than the average EL2.

On top of that, I spend quite a bit of money just doing my job. My school doesn’t even provide stationery, so I need to buy my own. I know that this is tax deductible, but it still costs me money.

I absolutely love my job; I love spending time with my students; I love helping them learn. I don’t regret changing careers at all, even though my salary has halved. However, that doesn’t mean that teachers aren’t worth six-figure salaries. I think that no matter how you look at it: hours worked, responsibilities held, contribution to society…teachers deserve to be paid more.

Just wanted to say a belated thank you to one of my primary school teachers, Mr Luscombe who gave over his own time to set up and run saturday morning cricket for at least the 7 years that i played.

Hope he got as much out of it as i did

Re Madam Cholet’s post #28 – overwork is a HUGE issue in the teaching profession. The teachers I know personally (high school) do more unpaid overtime than any other profession I have ever known, particularly those teachers in the music/arts area. That’s right, all those rehearsals, concerts, plays etc that schools use to market themselves and that the Minister uses to spruik, must be organised and done in the teacher’s own ‘spare’ time for zero remuneration. There is little acknowledgement of this by the Education Directorate or the Minister, and parents usually don’t realise this either.

Individual teachers have zero scope to share their extensive after hours work with anyone else, due to tight school funding/personnel formulas and specialised work areas. In other words, they are all working excessively long hours on a daily basis and take a lot of work home with them which is done in the evening and on weekends. They receive little support from the Directorate which continues to impose more and more time consuming administrative obligations on teachers with little or no perceived benefit to students. I have personally observed that teachers genuinely need those extra ‘holidays’ (part of which are actually work days but pupil-free) to recover from the near-burnout during term time.

See http://www.aeuact.asn.au/info-centre/documents/Summary_000.pdf (This report is over 10 years old, and things have got far worse since then).

When A Barr was Minister, he expressly stated that teachers are expected to operate as ‘public servants’. Yet this is a one-way obligation where teachers get a big fat zero. There is no access to flex time or flexible leave like other public servants at the same level. To top it off, I recently learned that teachers are required to attend some kind of ‘personal development’ in their field, at their own expense, once a year. This last would never be tolerated anywhere else in the PS or corporate world.

So my original comment was intended to point out that all teachers – IMO, high school in particular – are already deserving of higher pay and better work arrangements and I can’t see how these ‘special’ teachers are particularly special and more worthy than the others. There is nothing in the extra duties mentioned in the media release that doesn’t already happen as a matter of course, at great personal cost, by these massively undervalued workers.

It is shameful that teachers are so underpaid and undervalued, while we simultaneously have overpaid and unnecessary ACTEW Commissioners/CEOs/Board members with wasteful ‘hospitality’ and ‘sponsorship’ baggage. Oh to re-direct those wasted taxpayer funds and give teachers a decent pay rise across the board.

LSWCHP said :

Our future prosperity depends on having a highly educated population. Anybody who is denigrating the role of teachers in our society or claiming that they are overpaid is voting for Idiocracy in the future.

Simple is as Masquara does.

And if Masquara would like to cash in on this “extra” leave scam then why not get a teaching job and see how luxurious the extra leave and “long hours?” are.

Personally I like living in a world that is not full of idiots, so I quite highly value the role of teachers and think they should earn a wage that reflects their importane in out society.

Aww, God bless you, you’ve missed them haven’t you? 😉

what_the said :

Madam Cholet said :

I don’t think that most teachers are working long hours, but maybe those who do need either further assistance to help reduce their hours or more pay if that’s not possible. Most would be doing no more than any other 9-5 worker. Everyone does the odd bit of stuff at the weekend or after hours – and doesn’t get paid for it. I have one day off a week to take care of my son, but you know what, I check my email quite a bit and get involved if I need to. Not saying that is right, but that’s how it is.

Teachers must be paid according to what they do. No more, no less. If that means 100k for some then so be it, but as long as what they are doing is necessary and not just because their school has the expectation they will do more than they are officially paid for so they don’t have to pay extra help.

Is this your experience from talking to teachers or are you just pulling this from thin air? The teachers I know are preparing lesson plans for the next day, they dont just make it up on the day. And they’re marking assignments and homework at night also.

Not just pulling it from thin air, but my point was that they are not doing any more than anyone else – BUT if they are then we need to look at if it’s reasonable work or if it’s total overload. I manage a team of three people where I work and if I knew someone was staying back late and coming in early very often I would look at their workload to see if we needed another resource. Your salary package needs to reflect your time on the job, your effort and an incentive to always do your best. And I say salary package because it might not be in terms of remuneration – it could be professional development that is paid for on your behalf to ensure you always do your best, health care, time off…whatever.

I like teachers. I just don’t think they need to be paid MORE than anyone else reasonably earns if there is not a good reason. I agree though that they should be paid equitably if there is a good reason.

Holden Caulfield said :

Masquara said :

Long hours? What, with six weeks extra leave per year?

All public servants are slack arse bludgers who fudge their flex time.

All cyclists run red lights.

All motorists speed.

All teachers have too much leave.

All vegetarians vote for the Greens.

All posters on RA talk through their backsides.

How’d I go?

That should be cashmere thieving cyclists running red lights.

What’s with all this talk about hours anyway? Are we debating hourly wage? Should the hourly rate be the same for anyone in any job? If you think that – which some commenters here seem to be insinuating in their “short hours, long holidays” whinge – then you are definitely a communist and you should be focusing on those people at the top who are earning ridiculous hourly rates.

Parallel to the discussion about how many hours teachers do work in reality, there are lots of reasons why teachers should be paid a higher hourly rate. Some of those reasons relate to staff retention which is more important in this role than most others and others are to do with the nature of the work. Carrying the responsibility for the education of 20 kids for a year is no small pressure.

As a parent – and indeed also just as a member of the community these kids will be released in after school – it is hard to really put a value on a good teacher. I think for the really great teachers it’s often a vocation too. Which makes it even more important to do anything possible to retain them.

Madam Cholet said :

I don’t think that most teachers are working long hours, but maybe those who do need either further assistance to help reduce their hours or more pay if that’s not possible. Most would be doing no more than any other 9-5 worker. Everyone does the odd bit of stuff at the weekend or after hours – and doesn’t get paid for it. I have one day off a week to take care of my son, but you know what, I check my email quite a bit and get involved if I need to. Not saying that is right, but that’s how it is.

Teachers must be paid according to what they do. No more, no less. If that means 100k for some then so be it, but as long as what they are doing is necessary and not just because their school has the expectation they will do more than they are officially paid for so they don’t have to pay extra help.

Is this your experience from talking to teachers or are you just pulling this from thin air? The teachers I know are preparing lesson plans for the next day, they dont just make it up on the day. And they’re marking assignments and homework at night also.

I don’t think that most teachers are working long hours, but maybe those who do need either further assistance to help reduce their hours or more pay if that’s not possible. Most would be doing no more than any other 9-5 worker. Everyone does the odd bit of stuff at the weekend or after hours – and doesn’t get paid for it. I have one day off a week to take care of my son, but you know what, I check my email quite a bit and get involved if I need to. Not saying that is right, but that’s how it is.

Teachers must be paid according to what they do. No more, no less. If that means 100k for some then so be it, but as long as what they are doing is necessary and not just because their school has the expectation they will do more than they are officially paid for so they don’t have to pay extra help.