Teachers to take an oath to teach
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Desperate Dan
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It`s government by meaningless PR stunt after meaningless PR stunt.
Desert Orchid
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I read the headline on the BBC website this morning but refused to read any more than that.
I suspect that if teachers were offered similar pay & conditions to doctors there wouldn't be a problem but that will never happen, especially under a Labour government, as teachers traditionally have their pay & conditions eroded much more savagely than under the conservatives.
Doctors are among the most privileged of workers. That is not to say that they do not work hard but there is a huge difference between seeing four patients an hour and 33 for an hour at a time.
I suspect that if teachers were offered similar pay & conditions to doctors there wouldn't be a problem but that will never happen, especially under a Labour government, as teachers traditionally have their pay & conditions eroded much more savagely than under the conservatives.
Doctors are among the most privileged of workers. That is not to say that they do not work hard but there is a huge difference between seeing four patients an hour and 33 for an hour at a time.
Assuming that they haven't run off to France with a student, the traditional route is to negotiate an 'early retirement' or 'voluntary redundancy' package, whilst waving the threat of being placed under a regime of classroom observation and continual monitoring support (a euphamism for we're observing the procedures to the point of exhaustion and clearing the decks to move towards invoking the competancy procedure as a move towards sacking.). A trade union normally knows when they can defend a member and when they haven't got a leg to stand on, and will normally advise the member concerned to take the money and run if they don't fancy their chances.
I'd quite like to see something in the oath about foresaking the need to bleat as if they're the only profession required to work, and a commitment to be slung into a tank of scorpions if they continue to publicly promote their own self regard. I'd like to see another promise made to the partners of teachers too that when on holiday they will not seek out other teachers and proceed to continually talk about school every evening around a swimming pool, and that if they do, then they should be prepared to be thrown into it.
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Surely common sense dictates that a doctor should be paid considerably more then a teacher.
In Ireland teachers are represented by the most belligerent and powerful union in the country.A well established teacher with a couple of extra responsibilities should earn somewhere between €70-75K for a 22 hour teaching week.
Desert Orchid
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I'm struggling to believe an ordinary teacher can earn that kind of money, Luke.
I was Head of Dept (with a bucketload of extra responsibilities) until my retirement, at which point I was earning a tiny fraction over half that (in Scotland and in £s.)
My wife was a deputy head until her retirement a couple of months ago with a list of responsibilities that filled two pages of A4. She earned just over £50kpa.
A 22h teaching week is misleading. There is a huge difference in the time spent in front of classes (22.5hrs here) and overall workload. It has long been recognised that the 'notional' 35h working week is a joke.
I think I mentioned recently that my daughter, now a teacher too, is going out with an accountant who holds a management position in his firm. He drives a lot as part of his job which also sometimes involves overnights away from home. He has said more than once that he thought he worked a lot of hours until he started dating her.
One of my nieces is a lawyer with the local authority. She works 35h a week and is not required to take any work home (and earns three or four times as much). Another niece is a doctor and thinks a 40h week as a long week. She also earns three or four times as much.
I say good luck to them. They put the time and effort into it at uni and in training but not any more time and effort than my daughter - also a qualified lawyer but who didn't enjoy the work and gave it up to go into teaching - but until you've done the job I don't think you'll ever understand what's involved.
I was Head of Dept (with a bucketload of extra responsibilities) until my retirement, at which point I was earning a tiny fraction over half that (in Scotland and in £s.)
My wife was a deputy head until her retirement a couple of months ago with a list of responsibilities that filled two pages of A4. She earned just over £50kpa.
A 22h teaching week is misleading. There is a huge difference in the time spent in front of classes (22.5hrs here) and overall workload. It has long been recognised that the 'notional' 35h working week is a joke.
I think I mentioned recently that my daughter, now a teacher too, is going out with an accountant who holds a management position in his firm. He drives a lot as part of his job which also sometimes involves overnights away from home. He has said more than once that he thought he worked a lot of hours until he started dating her.
One of my nieces is a lawyer with the local authority. She works 35h a week and is not required to take any work home (and earns three or four times as much). Another niece is a doctor and thinks a 40h week as a long week. She also earns three or four times as much.
I say good luck to them. They put the time and effort into it at uni and in training but not any more time and effort than my daughter - also a qualified lawyer but who didn't enjoy the work and gave it up to go into teaching - but until you've done the job I don't think you'll ever understand what's involved.
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