What should be done about Public Sector pay?

When I was an Assistant Principal, I managed 13 Teaching Assistants. I made sure that the College ( upper secondary school ) policy was not to use them as replacement teachers.
Their contracts were for a maximum of 25 paid hours a week, or pro rata. The LA policy was that paid employment was strictly by the hour, so arriving early, staying late resulted in no extra pay.
On the whole they were dedicated, wonderful people who did many unseen tasks to help the students and teaching staff. Pay wasn't generous, but I tried to make their working conditions as good as they could be.

The 'highest' grade of TAs, HLTAs do teach whole classes, supposedly under the supervision of a teacher. This is a corruption of the role assigned to HLTA in the Schools Workload Agreement (2005 as I recall) but HTs have cheerfully gone along with it for teaching on the cheap (though who can blame them with school budgets so dreadfully squeezed since 2010).
The situation with TA's pay & conditions in Co. Durham is tricky, dj. There was never a national agreement on pay & conditions for TAs. Durham had a very good local agreement, better than most other LAs. It's austerity that has done for it. Plus it was far better than that of other LA school support staff, which gave the LA a lever through 'single status'.

Were you talking about TAs in your last post, Primrose?

Yes Maizie - with respect to the HuffPost article

Yes, I know, Maizie.
I know quite a few TAs in Durham, some of whom teach whole classes without supervision.
Three of them are heading for 25% pay cuts.

It's wrong that someone is taken on on a contract, then is forced to resign and accpet a worse contract.
One that I know does not know if she will be able to pay her mortgage. She has two schoolage kids. She could have to sell up, and she does not live in a very expensive part of Durham as it is.

Are teaching assistants paid for the weeks worked or are they paid for the entire year? Not being controversial just wondering.

I think I remember you mentioning this before djen - is this just in Durham or nationwide? Is this not illegal?
I suppose it must be just within legal boundaries or they would not do it and if so, it is immoral and unethical.

This is a little bit off topic but I have just seen some figures (for 2013/14 so may be a little out of date) which quoted the Median average earnings for the whole working population as £26,500, according to the Equality Trust, the High Pay Centre and the government. The ONS had it at £24,564 however.

What caught my eye was that the same article showed, once the top 10% of income was striped out (using ONS figures) a median average pay earned by the remaining 90 per cent of £12,872 for the financial year 2013/14.

I felt this told us much more about how our economy is working for the majority and wondered if anyone had seen any other research on this.

Sounds interesting gg can you post a link to the article?

It all depended on whatever the local agreement was, gillybob. When I started in Durham it was term time only, i.e paid for 39 weeks plus 5 weeks holiday (standard LA holiday allowance) though payment was spread over whole year. The agreement now being torn up was negotiated a few years later. It was for TAs to be paid full years salary + school holidays. It was very good & I was astounded we got it!
My personal view of the Durham situation is that TAs in post should've been left on the old T & C while new appointments set on on the 'new' T & C. But as it's really a cost cutting exercise that wouldn't have suited HTs.

GG2. Median is 'midpoint' and 'mean' is average. They will be completely different figures. So how does one arrive at 'median average'? The term doesn't make any sense..
Do give us the link if you can :-)

I don't know if this link is helpful, can't check as I have to go out now:
www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2016provisionalresults#average-earnings

It was only a little bit of something Primrose, that I saw when I was looking for something else. That was why I wondered if anyone could add clarification.

It actually appears to be meeting others comments about mean and median Maizie and ensuring the same test is used in both cases but - and it is probably right in front of my nose - I can't see where the original article is.

Average wages for 90 per cent of British workers are less than half what you’ve been told

TAs basically do whatever is required of them by staff and HTs. I have known people working in early years who have had responsibility for the nursery, supposedly as an 'Early Years Unit' under the supervision of the reception teacher. The reception teacher sometimes being an NQT and the TA long serving, the TA often finished up doing the planning and organising the assessments. In secondary schools they may be left to supervise classes overseen by the head of year. They are being treated appallingly, but it happened in Newcastle some time ago. They eventually negotiated a settlement but it wasn't brilliant and caused much distress.

gg I have to agree with Maizie here.
The median is used in the first place to avoid skewing the data, so they've just skewed it to the low end by stripping out 10%.
It's just playing with numbers and it's not representative of anything, other than a lack of understanding of basic maths.

In secondary schools they may be left to supervise classes overseen by the head of year.

It was more than just 'supervision' in the sec I worked in. HLTAs were expected to have some teaching hours; doing their own planning and preparation. I deliberately chose not to go into teaching with my late degree because being a TA was absolutely different from being a teacher. I only managed to avoid whole class teaching as an HLTA because I was running a whole school intervention.

They used the median in both Mazie I understand why this would be the preferred calculation and they used it. I understand the calculation and don't need a lesson in research methods. I also don't see the problem you both appear to have with even looking at these figures.

More to the point, I thought it would be interesting to know if the top 10% of incomes is giving a figure that had little relationship to peoples lived experience. I was hoping someone could add to this and knew of other research done in this area. If you don't you don't. No reason why you should.

I hadn't put it on to defend the figures but to see if more could be found to clarify just what the average person is actually likely to be living on. I thought it might give some idea why the politicians don't seem to grasp what is happening.

I'm not sure you are agreeing with me, Primrose

It was the meaningless term I was querying, really.

In my limited experience of statistics 'median' is usually a greater amount than 'mean'

The statistic I find alarming is that 23% of people in work (that is almost a quarter) are not earning sufficient to pay income tax. It was discussed on here a few months ago and, as I recall, the Gnet consensus was that it would not be enough to live on.

gg if you trace the article back to the source - it's all there in the links - you'll see where the median is used as the average etc. I think that's why they call it the 'average median'?

I mean, the average person isn't on a median salary right?

Sorry, GG, I wasn't trying to be snarky about your post, just the term 'median average' which is actually meaningless..

If I'm recalling the terms correctly median just means the midpoint of a range, but isn't at all related to the number of people above or below that mid point (perhaps Primrose will put me right...)

I mean, the average person isn't on a median salary right?

Neither is the 'average' salary the median salary...

It is! I didn't think you were being snarky(?) I was getting very confused.

However, what the person seemed to be trying to do was find a mid-point in the incomes of the bottom 90% of workers. It didn't seem, in this instance to make a significant difference - £97 wasn't it - although I can see that it might in some circumstances. I felt that as long as he/she was comparing like with like it was interesting.

If my memory serves me right median does (basically) mean mid-point when you put your figures (for incomes) in order.

If there is any truth in these figures and a more 'common income' is half the one we are being currently told (and I can sort of believe that) it would put our views of how people are managing in a very different light.

I wonder who would know?

So 23% of people pay no tax because their income is below £11,500.
But a representative 'common income' for full-time workers is £12,872.

Those working in the public sector probably do deserve a pay cut then. It's looking like those 'low wage' LA jobs are actually representative salaries and teachers/nurses are raking it in.

I can't see the logic of this meaning that therefore PS workers deserve a pay cut. How do you get to that point? I imagine quite a large proportion of PS workers are in this group. I notice he does not say as you do, that this is full-time; it is the weekly income and I think the reason it has gone to this level for so many is that they cannot get full-time work.

3 different types of averages, mean, median and mode.
For the mean, you add them all up, then divide by the number of numbers.
For the median, you put them in order, then take the middle one in the order.
For the mode, you look at which numbers are the same and the mode is the number which appears most often in the group.

They are all called averages.
Hope you can understand that.