Current Affairs The Conservative Party

[abelard]

lol

you know you've drunk the koolaid when "but nobody can afford a house and kids anymore" is seen as validation

If you have data on what teachers are paid around the world in relation to the cost of living in those countries then by all means share it and I'll gladly receive it.

i actually would, if i thought there was the slightest possibility it would change your mind

 

[Bruce Wayne]

lol

you know you've drunk the koolaid when "but nobody can afford a house and kids anymore" is seen as validation



i actually would, if i thought there was the slightest possibility it would change your mind

I actually looked for some but could only find absolute comparisons, not relative. If you know of any I would be interested.

 

[abelard]

I actually looked for some but could only find absolute comparisons, not relative. If you know of any I would be interested.

well, in Toronto (not any cheaper than London these days) teachers easily make almost double what they do in the UK - about £49k, and there is plenty of opportunity to earn more in rewards and incentives (which, unlike in Britain, do not generally make the recipient worse off than they were before).

countries which take education seriously, and which routinely eat Britain alive in educational performance (according to the admittedly flawed metrics that measure these things) take teaching training very seriously, and pay accordingly - Canada, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.

none of these are cheap countries to live either.

meanwhile, in London, nearly half of the people the government who the government has paid to become teachers have left in the past five years because the hours and stress are so high, for so little reward. this... also does not seem like your precious tax dollars being spent wisely.

I really think you should set aside the instinctive contrarianism that swells in you any time I post anything, and think a bit more seriously about what the state of public services will be like if the current state of affairs continues.

and it is not just that i'm an incorrigible lefty pinko wannabe academic; even @zzr45 has stated that the government needs to do something about housing prices, and he responds like a cat thrown into the bathtub if he so much as overhears somebody say the word "left".

you are always banging on about the importance of retraining people, but who exactly do you think is going to do this when we are not even prepared them to pay enough to support a family?

in an odd way, much like the Brexiters, I am not sure you understand the sort of intellectual competition this country is up against, and we are doing just about everything we can think of to make ourselves less competitive.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

well, in Toronto (not any cheaper than London these days) teachers easily make almost double what they do in the UK - about £49k, and there is plenty of opportunity to earn more in rewards and incentives (which, unlike in Britain, do not generally make the recipient worse off than they were before).

countries which take education seriously, and which routinely eat Britain alive in educational performance (according to the admittedly flawed metrics that measure these things) take teaching training very seriously, and pay accordingly - Canada, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. none of these are cheap countries to live either.

meanwhile, in London, nearly half of the people the government who the government has paid to become teachers have left in the past five years because the hours and stress are so high, for so little reward.

I really think you should set aside the instinctive contrarianism that swells in you any time I post anything, and think seriously about what the state of public services will be like if the current state of affairs continues.

and it is not just that i'm an incorrigilbe lefty pinko wannabe academic; even @zzr45 has stated that the government needs to do something about housing prices, and he responds like a cat thrown into the bathtub if he so much as overhears somebody say the word "left".

you are always banging on about the importance of retraining people, but who exactly do you think is going to do this when we are not even prepared them to pay enough to support a family?

in an odd way, much like the Brexiters, I am not sure you understand the sort of intellectual competition this country is up against, and we are doing just about everything we can think of to make ourselves less competitive.

Believe it or not, I am genuinely interested as I've read a number of things comparing education around the world. I know Finland tend to pay teachers handsomely, but don't have any real data to say how much or what the difference is between these countries and the UK. As with so much in life, things are always a trade off, and as much as I think professions such as nursing and teaching are underpaid, when you ask people if they're happy to put their hands in their pockets to pay extra tax, few are willing to do so. It's become something of a trope to trot out the whole 'soak the rich' line, as though that would solve all the world's ills, but I'd respect people a whole lot more if they were happy themselves to do the things they request of others.

Britons say how important education, yet no one that actually goes to university seems happy to pay for it, they say how wonderful the NHS is, yet when I suggested in a thread here in the past that many of us abuse it with our unhealthy lifestyles, there was all manner of umbrage, as though it's their right to live badly and have the NHS pick up the pieces. Most of what Ayn Rand writes is utter twaddle, but the notion of taking a bit more responsibility not only for your own life but for the community around you would be no bad thing imo. Passing the buck constantly onto the state does no one any good.

 

[zzr45]

Those who can’t - teach.

As they say.

 

[abelard]

Sixth forms drop languages A-levels due to 'inadequate' funding
https://www.theguardian.com/educati...-languages-a-levels-due-to-inadequate-funding
Survey finds courses most affected are German, French and Spanish

Half of sixth forms in schools and colleges have been forced to drop A-levels in modern languages as a result of “totally inadequate” funding of post-16 education, according to research.

French, Spanish and German have been hardest hit – 57% of sixth form leaders who took part in a survey said German courses had been axed, 38% have dropped Spanish, 35% had ditched French and 15%, Italian.

The poll by the Sixth Form Colleges Association comes as concerns rise about dwindling language skills in schools, but school and college leaders say funding cuts and cost increases in post-16 provision make it impossible to put on courses for small numbers of students.

Highly rated courses in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) are also suffering. More than a third (38%) of those surveyed have dropped Stem courses for the same reasons. Three quarters (78%) have cut student support services or extra-curricular activities and eight out of 10 (81%) institutions have bigger classes.

Students are getting fewer teaching hours, with 46% of school and college leaders admitting they have cut delivery hours;68% have moved from a standard four-subject offer to three A-levels.

The SFCA says the survey, which is based on responses from a sample of 271 schools and colleges teaching 26% of the cohort of 16- to 18-year-olds, exposes the damaging impact of funding cuts on sixth form education, which is one of the hardest hit areas in education.

Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year found that in real terms government spending per student in school sixth forms fell by more than 20% between 2010-11 and 2017-18. Campaigners for fairer funding are calling for an increase in the annual funding rate from £4,000 per student to at least £4,760.


#winthefuture

#whycan'ttheyjustspeakbloodyenglish?

 

[Jebus_lives]

Believe it or not, I am genuinely interested as I've read a number of things comparing education around the world. I know Finland tend to pay teachers handsomely, but don't have any real data to say how much or what the difference is between these countries and the UK. As with so much in life, things are always a trade off, and as much as I think professions such as nursing and teaching are underpaid, when you ask people if they're happy to put their hands in their pockets to pay extra tax, few are willing to do so. It's become something of a trope to trot out the whole 'soak the rich' line, as though that would solve all the world's ills, but I'd respect people a whole lot more if they were happy themselves to do the things they request of others.

Britons say how important education, yet no one that actually goes to university seems happy to pay for it, they say how wonderful the NHS is, yet when I suggested in a thread here in the past that many of us abuse it with our unhealthy lifestyles, there was all manner of umbrage, as though it's their right to live badly and have the NHS pick up the pieces. Most of what Ayn Rand writes is utter twaddle, but the notion of taking a bit more responsibility not only for your own life but for the community around you would be no bad thing imo. Passing the buck constantly onto the state does no one any good.

Education is crucially important. In many instances people will recognise the value of a degree as intrinsically linked to their future prospects - most jobs will require a degree to do the work they expect people to do, so you have to qualify yourself accordingly. There is no guarantee at the end of that though, you're into a marketplace. Likewise, there's no guarantee of the quality of the education that is on offer or a whole range of factors that may go towards your University 'experience'. Based on my degree, I'd be seriously questioning the value of paying £9000 against the quality of education I received.

Similarly with health, it's not a bubble. You have to compete in the NHS with business who want to increase their profits. Sugar & fast food products, cigarettes, alcohol - all advertising heavily for people. You also have people with a vested interest trying to misinformation and mislead - the Nigel Farage 'the doctors have got it wrong on fags' etc in the same way as is done with climate change.

You combat that by education - but as we've seen this government doesn't put much stock the idea of people being more educated, otherwise they'd subsidise schools more and teachers. Particularly May, who seems to prescribe to the ideology that God bestows upon us our position in life and we should be thankful for it.

 

[Barnfred 55]

well, in Toronto (not any cheaper than London these days) teachers easily make almost double what they do in the UK - about £49k, and there is plenty of opportunity to earn more in rewards and incentives (which, unlike in Britain, do not generally make the recipient worse off than they were before).

Is this accurate though?

If we are comparing with London, the starting salary for new teachers is just shy of £30k. But the main teachers pay scale for London ranges upto £40k, and I understand a competent teacher would take on average 5/6 years to work their way to the top of the pay scale. So it's probably fair to say that more than half of teachers working in London will be at least on this higher pay grade.

You then get the upper pay scale, which is available to all teachers to apply for. The qualification for this is very subjective and is within the remit of the school where they work. Basically they need to have proved for the previous 2 years that their contribution to the school has been both substantive and sustained. Anybody on the upper pay scale in London can earn upto £48k pa.

You then get the TLR additional allowances for taking on extra responsibilities such as form head, or department head, right up to deputy head. Extra pay for the many who undertake such functions range from £3kpa upto £13kpa.

I'm not saying that the average teacher wage in Toronto is not higher than their oppos in London. But anybody reading your post who didn't know any better would assume from the above that teachers in London are having to get by on a little over £25k pa, which is just not true.

I'm not passing judgement on whether teachers are under or over paid in this country. Personally I think that, overall, it's pretty comparable to the private sector. I don't think many people realise just how poorly paid some of the people in the private sector are paid. My wife worked for the same bank for over 25 years before leaving in 2013. She was a mid grade clerical worker but very experienced and good at her job, always very well thought of until selling became king. She only worked part time, but at the time she left the full time equivalent of her salary was £16k. In the 10 years prior to her leaving, she received a total pay increase of £150. This was commonplace in the private sector which is why there probably hasn't been that much overt support for the recent pay freezes in the public sector. The Private sector have also had their final salary pension schemes systematically decimated over the last 15 years too, but you don't see much public outcry about that.

I actually believe that there are many young, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers who are probably grossly under paid for what they do. But likewise there are probably as many middle aged long serving teachers sitting there comfortably on salaries way in excess of £40k pa who need to do much more

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Is this accurate though?

If we are comparing with London, the starting salary for new teachers is just shy of £30k. But the main teachers pay scale for London ranges upto £40k, and I understand a competent teacher would take on average 5/6 years to work their way to the top of the pay scale. So it's probably fair to say that more than half of teachers working in London will be at least on this higher pay grade.

You then get the upper pay scale, which is available to all teachers to apply for. The qualification for this is very subjective and is within the remit of the school where they work. Basically they need to have proved for the previous 2 years that their contribution to the school has been both substantive and sustained. Anybody on the upper pay scale in London can earn upto £48k pa.

You then get the TLR additional allowances for taking on extra responsibilities such as form head, or department head, right up to deputy head. Extra pay for the many who undertake such functions range from £3kpa upto £13kpa.

I'm not saying that the average teacher wage in Toronto is not higher than their oppos in London. But anybody reading your post who didn't know any better would assume from the above that teachers in London are having to get by on a little over £25k pa, which is just not true.

I'm not passing judgement on whether teachers are under or over paid in this country. Personally I think that, overall, it's pretty comparable to the private sector. I don't think many people realise just how poorly paid some of the people in the private sector are paid. My wife worked for the same bank for over 25 years before leaving in 2013. She was a mid grade clerical worker but very experienced and good at her job, always very well thought of until selling became king. She only worked part time, but at the time she left the full time equivalent of her salary was £16k. In the 10 years prior to her leaving, she received a total pay increase of £150. This was commonplace in the private sector which is why there probably hasn't been that much overt support for the recent pay freezes in the public sector. The Private sector have also had their final salary pension schemes systematically decimated over the last 15 years too, but you don't see much public outcry about that.

I actually believe that there are many young, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers who are probably grossly under paid for what they do. But likewise there are probably as many middle aged long serving teachers sitting there comfortably on salaries way in excess of £40k pa who need to do much more

According to the official Ontario education folks, a teacher's starting salary is around 44,000 Canadian dollars, which works out at around £25,000 (https://ett.ca/salary-grid-for-tdsb-elementary-teachers/). This compares to £22,000 in Britain, with those in inner London getting £28,000. Obviously this rises with experience (in both countries). Incidentally, that's the lowest pay grade for Canadian teachers, with those with a degree earning the equivalent of £26,700, with those teachers with the best degrees starting at around £32,000.

This could well be underpaid, but I guess the point I was making is that taking one isolated example like we had in that article in order to make a political point seems a blunt instrument. I've got a number of teachers in my extended family, and all have not only managed to get onto the housing ladder (in Oxford so not mega cheap), but have also got a couple of kids on average. It clearly is doable, but the key seems to be to have both partners working, which I'd imagine is probably the case for a lot of families in Britain today.

 

[Barnfred 55]

According to the official Ontario education folks, a teacher's starting salary is around 44,000 Canadian dollars, which works out at around £25,000 (https://ett.ca/salary-grid-for-tdsb-elementary-teachers/). This compares to £22,000 in Britain, with those in inner London getting £28,000. Obviously this rises with experience (in both countries). Incidentally, that's the lowest pay grade for Canadian teachers, with those with a degree earning the equivalent of £26,700, with those teachers with the best degrees starting at around £32,000.

This could well be underpaid, but I guess the point I was making is that taking one isolated example like we had in that article in order to make a political point seems a blunt instrument. I've got a number of teachers in my extended family, and all have not only managed to get onto the housing ladder (in Oxford so not mega cheap), but have also got a couple of kids on average. It clearly is doable, but the key seems to be to have both partners working, which I'd imagine is probably the case for a lot of families in Britain today.

To be honest I didn't really know what the basis of your discussion was Bruce. I just saw the posters comparison of teachers salaries between Canada and the UK and felt he was being a bit simplistic in his comparisons. Certainly from the UK side he appeared to be working on starting salaries, which if you have teachers in the family Bruce you know they can work through the scales pretty quickly. It may not feel quick at the time but I'm talking relative to a teaching career of 40 years plus.

Re your point of house prices, I think it really only applies to the south east where it is almost impossible to get on the ladder. It's still hard in other areas where you need two full time salaries but can still be done. Even in places like Liverpool and Manchester, where cheap housing is readily available in certain area's, you would normally have to rely on 2 salaries to afford a property in a "preferred" area.

But it is a huge problem in London and the south east. The "allowance" that teachers get for living in that area is around £5k, similar to what the bank I used to work for paid to staff. That doesn't even come close to covering the additional cost of living down there, and not just housing costs. So living in Liverpool I've never envied the guys working in London, albeit employment opportunities are a lot better down there so you can advance your career a lot more quickly.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

To be honest I didn't really know what the basis of your discussion was Bruce. I just saw the posters comparison of teachers salaries between Canada and the UK and felt he was being a bit simplistic in his comparisons. Certainly from the UK side he appeared to be working on starting salaries, which if you have teachers in the family Bruce you know they can work through the scales pretty quickly. It may not feel quick at the time but I'm talking relative to a teaching career of 40 years plus.

Re your point of house prices, I think it really only applies to the south east where it is almost impossible to get on the ladder. It's still hard in other areas where you need two full time salaries but can still be done. Even in places like Liverpool and Manchester, where cheap housing is readily available in certain area's, you would normally have to rely on 2 salaries to afford a property in a "preferred" area.

But it is a huge problem in London and the south east. The "allowance" that teachers get for living in that area is around £5k, similar to what the bank I used to work for paid to staff. That doesn't even come close to covering the additional cost of living down there, and not just housing costs. So living in Liverpool I've never envied the guys working in London, albeit employment opportunities are a lot better down there so you can advance your career a lot more quickly.

Yes, London is practically impossible I would say without some quite extreme circumstances. We live in Zone 1 so are perhaps not the best example, but it's rare to find a 1 bed flat in any of the dozen or so new blocks that have been built in our area for under £400,000, which even with a combined salary of 80k would still need people to have a deposit of well over 100k. It's just not possible without extreme circumstances (wealthy parents for instance).

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

This investigation article in the Times, tells a story of how perilous state our state school system has become.

Parents asked to pay for teachers’ salaries and school repairs

State schools are asking parents to donate hundreds of pounds a year to pay for salaries, buy textbooks and equipment and repair leaking buildings, a Times investigation has revealed.Grammars, comprehensives and primaries are increasingly relying on families to pay for essentials and in one case ha

www.thetimes.co.uk

 

[davek]

Amber Rudd. Again.

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

Karen Bradley, apologises over he statement that deaths caused by the security forces in Northern Ireland were "not crimes".

No handle on her brief...

Karen Bradley: NI secretary 'will deliver for those she hurt'

The Northern Ireland secretary is "devastated" to think her remarks about the Troubles hurt victims' families.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[davek]

Karen Bradley, apologises over he statement that deaths caused by the security forces in Northern Ireland were "not crimes".

No handle on her brief...

Karen Bradley: NI secretary 'will deliver for those she hurt'

The Northern Ireland secretary is "devastated" to think her remarks about the Troubles hurt victims' families.

www.bbc.co.uk

The thickest Cabinet of all time. You have to hand it to May: she surrounds herself with half-wits in order to look almost credible herself.