comelately
Wild Horses
those comments were made either by teachers, or long time posters.
Sorry, I'm all confus-ed. Which comments?
you said:
"But I honestly think there's a sizeable minority of teachers are on a fairly easy ride, and are in the profession mainly for that reason."
which in my experience of seeing other teachers, is clearly rubbish. i however am an idle failure and am a teacher for that very reason. i'll be off at 3.00 today. btw.
Fair enough. Maybe my experience was a bad one, but nonetheless contained hearing more than one teacher go into a tirade about all the "lazy bastards round here". And although I met some very good and very hard-working teachers when I performed classroom observation 2/3 years back, I did get to observe a few who were clearly a bit shit, quite lazy and obviously not particualrly motivated - though I don't know the circumstances that brought them to that point I grant you.
I probably should have said "remain in the profession" rather than "are in the profession" for that reason - I don't doubt many a mediocre teacher was once a highly motivated potential lifechanger that got it all sucked out of them by classroom preparation and writing out behaviour incident reports which will be ignored when the child promises to behave for the 174th time. Things are pretty messed up in a lot of places, I wonder if it might not be better in the long-run for more teachers to simply let go and stop caring.
I've looked at the comments on CiF from teachers and mostly my suspiscions have been confirmed. You have young teachers going on about their student loans, the price of housing and how they'd be earning more if they had gone into a top graduate scheme. But most NQTs would never have bagged a place on one of those schemes, and many graduates infact take jobs at much lower pay than that received by a NQT (who I do concede has went through a year of training on a bursary which represents less money than they would earn working in an office). The problems that young teachers face are the problems most young people without very rich and generous parents face.
Obviously, the gap between what a teacher can earn and what can be earnt in other sectors has increased significantly and combined with the increase in house prices, top graduates are going to be much less likely to choose teaching as a career. And given the high % of Oxbridge graduates that used to go on to teach, I don't deny that this may have a significant impact on standards. But a few extra grand isn't going to be the difference maker there and teachers earlier in their careers will get pay rises through scale. I agree that teachers who are not subject to scale increases should not face an effective paycut.