Teachers more worthy than doctors?

Whether teachers have been at work or not is irrelevant.

Pay rises are based on the income they have been receiving and what it is felt they should now have.

No-one is comparing the usefulness of the three lines of work mentioned when giving a pay rise.

Not nuances in vocabulary, but a deliberately provocative title.

Furret hot news, current news, breaking news, latest news ..... call it what you like, it was still reported widely yesterday and of interest to the general public.
There's no point two of us making fools of ourselves over nuances in vocabulary, so I will not been drawn into that futile argument.

And just consider what your header says. Inviting exactly the sort of posts you wanted.

Ellianne

^Why even start a thread like this? What was the point?^
Sorry, Furret, but I think you'll find this very thread has been started on many forums, with both young and old members, mumsnet being an example. It was hot news yesterday which concerned many and which in turn got others thinking. So yes, there was a point in mentioning it.

Hardly hot news.

I have 2 DIL's who are both teachers. One works in the biggest primary school in the country and has worked every day teaching key workers children. Terrified of bringing the virus home to her own small children but putting on a happy face for the children she was teaching. On the other hand, my GP is part of a group practice that is also a teaching practice. Since lockdown, the GP partners have been conspicuous by their absence and there has only been 1 trainee GP on site each day. The surgery is still closed for face to face appointments, only telephone available. I am baffled, a person who works in the supermarket is coming into contact with many more people than the GP but have worked all the way through lockdown? Between the dentist and the GP personally I wouldnt give either of them a pay rise.

My daughter is a civil servant who has made herself ill through overwork acquiring supplies for the NHS and corvid vaccine researchers.She hasn’t had a pay rise for 5 years. I was a teacher of post16 year olds and adults and I can tell you I never earned more than £22,000. Every weekend was spent marking & preparing lessons. I exhausted myself working to ensure unemployed adults with no confidence achieved qualifications to get them into the labour market. You people who knock teachers ought to see how you would cope with the job.

After the last teacher-bashing thread, I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in any more. It literally set my heart racing, and I felt ill reading some of the comments then. However as a retired teacher with 4 decades of classroom teaching/secondary subject management under her belt, I so feel for the colleagues I left behind a couple of years ago.
I know with all my experience, I could not have done what these teachers have achieved in the last 4 months.
Btw even with this pay increase, teachers' pay does not buy as much as it did in 2010. (And the nurses were left out as they already had a 3 yr pay plan, negotiated before)
(I've deleted 60% of this because some of us have tried to explain what teaching is about, and failed)

The government has made these announcements of overdue public sector pay rises as a smokescreen and in their privileged ignorance have upset thousands of private sector workers who have or are likely soon to have lost their jobs/businesses. That is hardly the fault of the teachers who are at the receiving end of so much invective on this thread.

My grandson’s school has been open to key workers’ children and also vulnerable children while doing their best to keep in touch with the rest of the children, including providing tablets for those whose only access to online lessons was on their mum’s phone. If there are teachers who have spent lockdown enjoying the sunshine then it is the fault of their headteachers and I find it hard to understand, but there are badly run companies and lazy people in every walk of life.

I was working as a TA for the last 10 years before retirement and I know how hard teachers worked and how long their day. 7.30 to 6.30 was a normal day. Judging a profession based on the behaviour of one’s next door neighbour is very strange.

When I needed a doctor a month ago my GP phoned in response to my request for help. I had been a little miffed to be honest when the surgery closed very early on in the pandemic but the response was rapid and helpful. My GP’s wife is also a doctor in the practice and at the end of the conversation I enquired after her and he replied that they were just missing their toddler son. Elderly family members had provided part-time childcare before Covid and the only way to keep on working was to hand over their infant full time to his grandparents and keep right away. For months on end.
Had I not asked I would never have known the sacrifice they are making.

We know what our neighbours are up to but have no idea how the majority of any profession are behaving,

I understand why people are upset but not the unwarranted attacks on teachers. As someone pointed out, if it’s such a cushy job why is it so hard to recruit people to do it?

cupcake1

lucca marked pupils work? Not one teacher marked my DGD’s work since day one and she conscientiously did her online lessons every day since the schools closed! I was appalled not a word of encouragement or acknowledgement for her commitment as not all pupils bothered to access the site. Perhaps it’s just her school?! She’s in year 9 with 2 GCSE’s to be sat next year.

A. Every teacher I know (and I know a lot of teachers...) has marked work set lessons and delivered online lessons etc
B. In that case COMPLAIN to the school don’t just whinge on here and then assume all teachers to be the same.

Why even start a thread like this? What was the point?
Sorry, Furret, but I think you'll find this very thread has been started on many forums, with both young and old members, mumsnet being an example. It was hot news yesterday which concerned many and which in turn got others thinking. So yes, there was a point in mentioning it.

Can you imagine the sheer chaos if schools can’t reopen in September?

These pay rise discussions were underway well before the Covid pandemic.

Surely I can't be the only one who is somewhat cynical that the announcements have been made now and worded in such a way as to make it seem these workers are being rewarded for the work they have been doing during the pandemic by a grateful Government?

What a thoroughly nasty thread. Too many poster who know nothing at all about the unpaid hours put in by those in the public sector is bad enough, but not even willing to listen and try to understand the realities of these jobs, is worse.

Nothing it seem can persuade them to look at it from someone else’s perspective even when people are talking from experience.

There are those who always enjoy a good moan. Nothing is ever right for them. Fair enough. But then to spew venom aimed at those who have helped to hold the country together, the nurses and doctors on the frontline, the teachers and TAs who (with no PPE) have looked after the children of frontline staff and kept schools open, and so on......I ask why?

Why even start a thread like this? Why encourage those with an axe to grind to dig themselves into a hole. What was the point?

Don’t we have enough to worry about with people turning in each other.

Cupcake complain to the school.

lucca marked pupils work? Not one teacher marked my DGD’s work since day one and she conscientiously did her online lessons every day since the schools closed! I was appalled not a word of encouragement or acknowledgement for her commitment as not all pupils bothered to access the site. Perhaps it’s just her school?! She’s in year 9 with 2 GCSE’s to be sat next year.

Many teachers are leaving the profession as it's not the easy job some people think it is.

There are many vacant posts and there needs to be recruitment and incentive for teachers to stay otherwise there won't be many left to teach our grandchildren.

Lucca

Headteachers may well earn that much but standard classroom teachers most definitely do not !

Yes Lucca and that’s when you start looking at how misleading % pay rises are.
When I was earning £2 for a Saturday job I once got a 100% pay rise.

My next door neighbour is a teacher in a secondary school. She told me how much better off she has been during lockdown - no travelling expenses, no paying for childminder to have her children after school, and still being paid.

We have all appreciated their efforts, but the employers are the ones you should be addressing.
Perhaps you could write to your M.P. and then copy in the supermarkets , the delivery companies etc.

Headteachers may well earn that much but standard classroom teachers most definitely do not !

Sys2ad2

I agree teachers do not deserve a pay rise of 3% they have done no work for 3 months on full pay now on 6 weeks summer holidays the rises should be for nurses, junior doctors and police all worked through the pandemic. Head teachers earn £100,000+ 13 weeks holiday a year.

They have done no work?? So who taught key workers children ? So who delivered online lesson and marked work submitted and contacted pupils and parents who planned bubbles for re entry. Seriously , who ?

What about all the supermarket workers, delivery drivers, care workers Etc most of whom will be on minimum wage, some on zero hours contracts with no/little pension provision and who have worked their socks off through out the lockdown....

Having no lunch break is no rarity in many professions, JustretiredHilary. Why are you so anti- teacher ?
I find it very distressing that so many posters are anti the teaching profession and that there is so much misinformation .
It's a job I wouldn't do now and I take my hat off to those who battle on . This is not saying that teachers are better or that the job is better. Perhaps more careful reading of what is posted would help.

I must say, I could see how this particular thread was going to go, in the same way as one at the beginning of lockdown when schools closed and the teacher bashing by some began.
It really distressed me how angry and venomous some posters can come across, especially ones who have been shown so much sympathy and concern over how difficult this time has been for them ( by many with troubles of their own and family working in healthcare and education at the frontline to worry about). Knowing so many of the contributors to this site work or have family who work in the public sector they certainly know how to provoke.
By all means, have an opinion but do not generalise these valued professions because a few may be taking advantage of our current situation. My daughter has been working darned hard at school during this pandemic. She gave up her Easter to continue teaching key workers children, plus remotely teaching her own year two class and her children at home. She and others like her in health and social care are to be applauded.
As a retired teacher myself I know what a difficult job it is. I know many who have entered the profession after working in the private sector and the shock upon discovering it's not a job you leave behind in the classroom at 4 o'clock has soon made them reconsider and leave.
Yes teachers, doctors, nurses deserve their rise and I hope supermarket bosses will do likewise for their staff considering the price rises at the moment.
This pay rise will probably be the last one they will get for a long, long time. This pandemic is going to be with us far into the future. It's not going away and we are all going to need these people at the frontline. Let's give them some reward while we can.