Teacher Pay Increases (3 Viewers)

[iambored]

Originally posted by 400miles
Just because the UAI is low and people who do standard english or do not ace the HSC get into teaching does not mean that the quality of the teachers will go down. The quality of the teachers depends on how well they are able to teach their desired subject not which english course they did and what UAI they received.

lol but i'm arguing with you, not against you!
this thread is tiring, just going around in circles,

 

[iambored]

Originally posted by Asquithian
Read this....gives you an example of what a junior industrial relations solicitor on 35 000 might have to read and know off inside out after getting home from work...

http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/ircju...b35ccd59355b4155ca256e8d001b9dea?OpenDocument

that's part of the job, not after hours work added if that's what you were showing. there are also parts of the teacher's jobs they have to know as well (at uni level, if you're maths teacher only knows year 9 trig well they're pretty crap) and yes it'll be argued they are easier but whatever

 

[400miles]

Originally posted by Asquithian
arnt you comparing teachers to doctors to lawyers when you say teachers deserve the same as lawyers?

how else could you come to that conclusion without comparing?

by saying that a teacher deserve the same as lawyers is a comparative function?!?!

You also cannot say itsa just about the teachers - it doesnt operate in a vaccume there are other professions out there...


can you please justify why teachers would deserve more money that a lawyer?

ill just put a few things down

Ok Asquithian I concede that lawyer point... I just said that because you asked "do you really think teachers deserve as much as lawyers and surgeons"... And I really thought that they did... so I said it...

I think it is just about the teachers... yeah there are other professions out there but I don't see how that's relevant and you've failed to point that out so far.

2 No matter what you say if you think teachers work longer hours than lawyers you are just wrong wrong ... lawyers get almost zilch holidays...they do 6 years at uni in the process obtaining a degree that would allow them to teach anyways after 3 years ...they work saturdays and sundays...they work 9 till very late as in midnight...they work under more pressure (little jimmy who is being a dipshit in class is less stressful that a case invoving someones life or a large financial deal)...they arguably perform higher order work...

Half of that is the same argument you've been putting forth so often... did you know teachers generally work saturdays and sundays too... my parents do...

"No matter what you say if you think teachers work longer hours than lawyers you are just wrong wrong"
Again.... is that coming from all your experience as a teacher? Is that why you tell me I'm just "wrong wrong"...?

"they work under more pressure (little jimmy who is being a dipshit in class is less stressful that a case invoving someones life or a large financial deal)"
Again.... is that coming from all your experience as a teacher?

"they arguably perform higher order work..."
Arguably is right... I think that's crap

 

[400miles]

Originally posted by Asquithian
oh really...all day like lawyers 9 till late....people bag lawyers but they forget that the law firms get their pound of flesh out of them first...ie your not going home


you can never convince me that the 14 year old dipshit up the back is more stressful than dealing with peoples money or lives when they have no idea what to do.

I'm not trying to.
I'm trying to say that it's not a matter of comparing the job to other professions... especially when you're comparing it to professions that earn so much more than teachers, i.e: lawers.

"oh really...all day like lawyers 9 till late...." I had no idea what that was supposed to mean..

I know a guy who's a teacher. He's the head of his department, my mum used to work with him and he often works until midnight she says. He tutors many people and writes those study aids books that sell at Dymocks and stuff. He also marks the HSC. As well as this he has to fit in his family and all the geneal school work such as marking etc.

He often presents for boards and executive meetings.

"more stressful than dealing with peoples money or lives "
Mate, teachers are dealing with people's lives every day, many peoples. And probably in a lot more important ways - as they're dealing with kids, and heaps of them as well. They have to offer a huge amount of support for these students especially as they get to their final years of school.

 

[Ziff]

Originally posted by 400miles
He tutors many people and writes those study aids books that sell at Dymocks and stuff. He also marks the HSC.
He often presents for boards and executive meetings.

Are these part of his job description? No. Does the state pay him for this as part of his teacher salary? No. Does he get paid for these by other people/organisation? Yes. What does this prove? Absolutely nothing.

HSC markers get extra pay for being HSC markers. He writes study aids that get sold - he gets a royalty. He tutors - he gets paid by kids per the hour. He does presentations - he gets paid for the "lectures"/"presentations" by the company.

So you're saying he should get paid MORE money for the money he is already earning from these extra activities? Interesting!

So if a lawyer decides to go and sit on the board of a few companies, do some extra legal work e.g. creating a code of conduct for a company and a few other things she too should get paid extra by her profession because of all the extra work she does which she gets paid for?

Interesting concept... wait, I'm confusing interesting with tedious here - whoops.

 

[400miles]

Originally posted by Ziff
Are these part of his job description? No. Does the state pay him for this as part of his teacher salary? No. Does he get paid for these by other people/organisation? Yes. What does this prove? Absolutely nothing.

HSC markers get extra pay for being HSC markers. He writes study aids that get sold - he gets a royalty. He tutors - he gets paid by kids per the hour. He does presentations - he gets paid for the "lectures"/"presentations" by the company.

So you're saying he should get paid MORE money for the money he is already earning from these extra activities? Interesting!

So if a lawyer decides to go and sit on the board of a few companies, do some extra legal work e.g. creating a code of conduct for a company and a few other things she too should get paid extra by her profession because of all the extra work she does which she gets paid for?

Interesting concept... wait, I'm confusing interesting with tedious here - whoops.

Your sarcasm was quaint but you've missed the point buddy. I'm simply showing how a teacher's load my equal that to the one Asquithian keeps bringing up, say the lawyer. I'm not trying to compare, just bring up an example of how a teacher works bloody hard.

Yeah, he does get money for the books and the HSC marking (but not the board meetings)... And yeah he shouldn't get paid more for that.
I believe, however, the amount of extra work he does do without pay entitles him to more money.
He tutors me for free.
He's just dedicated.
Like so many teachers.

If it's tedious mate then it shows how much time you have to be reading AND replying to it.

 

[Ziff]

The load isn't equal though. We're talking about if it's part of their job. These extra bits aren't part of their job so they have no relevance at all to the argument they should get more pay.

A laywer goes home and does more lawyer stuff that they don't get paid for absolutely concerned with their occupation. Your teacher goes home and then does other stuff, he gets paid for separately and that is not related to being a teacher at a school.

 

[Ribbon]

Yeah except you are forgetting about the fact that this particular teachers load is not the norm. If you happily agree that this teachers load is equal to that of a lawyers then you are conceeding that teachers do not work anywhere near as hard (I would consider the marking, the books and the tutoring would have to be a huge amount of time and effort) as a lawyer.

Oh and my school teachers used to tutor me for free too... because the school allocated from thier budget $$ to pay them an extra per hour rate for the tutoring they did so tutoring wasn't a rich privilage.

As for the 'pay shouldn't be based on intelligence' comment then wtf is it going to be based on? If you are measuring intelligence by UAI, then the more 'intelligent' person is generally the one who has worked the hardest at studying, and I think that person deserves more than someone who hasn't worked so hard. If you are talking about the workplace, the people with the capacity to better perform thier work (ie, the intelligent ones) are the ones who get paid more... either through promotion or being better able to negotiate thier contract...

In regards to 'teachers should be paid as much as lawyers' I agree with asqy on the point that there is no motivation to excel in this case, and what about the other proffessions we have mentioned such as nurses who you agree should get a payrise? Should they get paid as much as lawyers? what about public servants, they work just as hard as teachers, will we pay them $100 000 + a year too? Who is going to fund all this? Taxpayers obviously, which means a) funds for other services such as roads, school and hospital resources ect. are cut out alltogether because if a 12% rise for teachers will cost 700ml I can't imagine how much a 300, 400, 500% rise for all public sector workers will cost. b) we raise taxes, which means the teachers will be paying 70% (consider how high the cost of increasing everyones wages is and you will understand this figure isn't so far fetched) of thier wage in tax and they will still be getting paid the same amount anyway (either through taxes or because the dollar will become worthless) and will *still* be whinging and bitching about how undervalued they are, meanwhile everyone in the private sector who hasn't had the benifit of the pay increase to counter the taxes has thier paypackets cut in half...

you just have to accept that it is not possible to pay everyone the exhorbant wages they would love to get... There has to be some sort of pecking order and capacity to perform/workload is a big factor is choosing who is at the top and who is at the bottom, and teachers just have to accept they can only ever fall somewhere in the middle...

oh and I know this point has been raised and I know you think teachers work hard in their holidays, but to put it into perspective, thier extra holidays amount to 280 less hours than every other proffessions. You can't honestly tell me that teachers work an 8 hour day every day of thier holidays, and you can't argue that the holidays make up for the out of school hours they have to work because by your own admission those hours are on par with the after-hours worked by other proffesions and so do not count for anything. Also, keep in mind these other proffessions are still working those 3 extra hours every night for the 7 weeks of holidays teachers get that they don't, and I simply cannot believe that teachers do an 11 hour day every single day of thier holidays...

 

[400miles]

Originally posted by Ribbon
Yeah except you are forgetting about the fact that this particular teachers load is not the norm. If you happily agree that this teachers load is equal to that of a lawyers then you are conceeding that teachers do not work anywhere near as hard (I would consider the marking, the books and the tutoring would have to be a huge amount of time and effort) as a lawyer.

Oh and my school teachers used to tutor me for free too... because the school allocated from thier budget $$ to pay them an extra per hour rate for the tutoring they did so tutoring wasn't a rich privilage.

As for the 'pay shouldn't be based on intelligence' comment then wtf is it going to be based on?

Hmmm... let me see here, now this is just jumping to conclusions... but maybe how hard they work and how well they do their job....

If you are measuring intelligence by UAI, then the more 'intelligent' person is generally the one who has worked the hardest at studying,

And what about those who have some extremely unfortunate misadventure in year 12 and as a result get a low UAI, should they get paid less?
And what about those who just weren't born with the ability to comprehend and synthesise things as well as other people? Should they get paid less? Are we going to divide society into the rich being smart and the dumb being poor? That would be pathetic.

and I think that person deserves more than someone who hasn't worked so hard. If you are talking about the workplace, the people with the capacity to better perform thier work (ie, the intelligent ones) are the ones who get paid more... either through promotion or being better able to negotiate thier contract...

The people who do their job well are the one that get promoted, their intelligence is irrelevant unless you're talking about a specific profession in which high intelligence is absolutely vital.

In regards to 'teachers should be paid as much as lawyers' I agree with asqy on the point that there is no motivation to excel in this case, and what about the other proffessions we have mentioned such as nurses who you agree should get a payrise? Should they get paid as much as lawyers? what about public servants, they work just as hard as teachers, will we pay them $100 000 + a year too?

Well you agree with asqy and say there's no motivation to excel but both you and asqy have ignored the reply I gave to that. That is, little johnny is going to go for the job he is most passionate about and would be most happy performing, that is, surgery. Which needs a UAI of 100. So little johnny has huge motivation to achieve this. Little Johnny does.

Big Tim also wants to be a surgeon but his father dies in his HSC year and he gets only 63. He goes into his second preference teaching. Nonetheless Tim works just as hard as he would have, were he a surgeon. But he gets paid much less.

There's still incentive. PLUS, again, UAI's are not based on how much money the job earns, but on how popular the course is.

you just have to accept that it is not possible to pay everyone the exhorbant wages they would love to get... There has to be some sort of pecking order and capacity to perform/workload is a big factor is choosing who is at the top and who is at the bottom, and teachers just have to accept they can only ever fall somewhere in the middle...

Again, a mistake that asqy kept making, was deciding to judge how hard teachers worked without basing it off anything. Why should teachers just accept they can only ever fall somewhere in the middle? Because you think they dont work hard?

Well an IMPARTIAL, INDEPENDANT group reviewed both the governments case AND the teachers case and found that, yes, the teachers in fact due for a payrise.

 

[katie_tully]

Originally posted by Kate_Tully...

Where the fuck is this argument up to? I'm lost...

 

[400miles]

Hmm this is the third thread I've come into where you've seemed lost.

 

[katie_tully]

It happens often when the threads are chasing their own tales.

 

[400miles]

Oh silly me I just thought it was you.

 

[katie_tully]

Silly you indeed.

 

[400miles]

Dont know why I would have gotten that impression

 

[katie_tully]

I don't know why either

 

[katie_tully]

Fair point;
If you're interested in some other views there's some good points in this thread:
http://www.insidepolitics.com.au/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=3;t=000025

It's kinda long, but interesting to scan through.

One of them state that there is no way to seperate a hard working teacher from a lazy teacher, but there was an interesting proposal;
Give the teachers a fixed salary that is directly linked to inflation.

 

[steph@nie]

haha yeh like thats ever going to happen.

 

[Ribbon]

I have the answer to the 'you don't know how hard teachers work so you can't judge argument'

This was recently posted on another forum by someone who I swear to god is the person in this thread who said both thier parents are teachers (I dunno why I think that, probably because the expressions used and argument is the same)

2) Increase wages for public school teachers, without using education funding and without giving private/catholic school teachers a pay rise!

Both my parents are public school teachers (one primary, one high school). While this may make all of what I have said slightly biased in some peoples opinions, I know what occurs in the public system (being enrolled in it since kindergarten) and with parents as teachers.

I remember my mum saying that in her 25 years of teaching, not once when teachers have requested a pay rise have they got it without industrial action (strikes).

Public school teachers in general earn about $50 000 a year (that's what my parents are on at the moment). This is in many cases well above average for the nation, however teaching is a profession. All other "professions" such as doctors, actuaries, and others are well on a salary of over $100 000 a year (and this doesn't include bonuses or overtime which teachers do not get)

Sure the initial working hours are seen by many as just 9-3, but this in most cases is not true. My dad has on many occasions done a 10 hour day in teaching (only being paid for 6 hours). People don't take into account that teachers are often at school by 8am and often don't leave till 4 or 5pm. They then go home to work more hours on marking work, planing the next day's schedule and/or doing reports. Then there is extra work with extra activities such as school excursions, school plays/musicals and other extra curricula activites which teachers do not get paid for doing or get overtime for.

The recent industrial action in which public school teachers took two days of action (meaning two days of pay lost) and asking for a 25% wage increase, only getting 12% over two years was also appaling from the government. But what was worse was that catholic teachers took one day strike and received a greater wage increase than that of the public teachers.

I suppose the politicians of Australia want to put the money into the schools that their children are going to (i.e. private schools). It would be rare to find a politician who sent their children to a public school.

The high school I have been going to (Moruya High School) in a small town (Moruya) about 4 hours south of Sydney has around 700 students from year 7-12. The population of Moruya and surrounding areas is about 7000. Our school has no pool, no gym, no tennis courts, has very limited sporting equipment, our english books are over 10 years old most falling apart, our computers are pentium 4s but have no advanced graphics, imaging or video programs available, our buildings look like something from a jail with bare concrete showing, and our whole schools floods when it rains heavily (water leaks into classrooms etc.)

Our school fees for the year are around $150! This is very cheap for a fairly good education, however this is a "voluntary contribution", so most people don't pay it, which adds another burden to the school's funding and budgets.

The other local private school, one catholic, one anglican range in fees from $6000 a year to $15000 a year. However the results in the HSC compared between students from all schools, shows that our school (the only public high school in the area) has the highest results of all.

My dad used to work in the maths department at our school and said that the annual budget for the maths department was $400. They had to replace decaying maths text books with a budget of $400!!!

The local primary school has the majority of their classrooms in demountables!

Despite all these set-backs in resources, our high school had around 6 students last year score over 95 in their uai.

The teachers at our school are mostly over 45 and about to retire, many have taken stress leave sometime with the past decade. New teachers are not being attracted to a stressful, decaying industry with poor pay, and little future oppurtunity for pay rises and other benefits.

and this was a reply to that post:

Actually - I am a Trained Science teacher! Tought in a Large sydney public High School for only 1 year after leaving Teachers College. Dropped that quick smart once I discovered all the sh*t going on.

Regarding teachers pay and placing them on par with other professionals - I really don't agree... There are heaps of bludgers in the teaching profession and many of them complete morons. So much so it's scary! There are however, a small percentage that are great and worth every dollar they are paid. Beeing a public service job, there is no ranking or performance based pay, which has a lot to do with many of the problems. Many teachers know they can do a lousy job teaching, with little effort and have no worry about losing their job - mainly becasue of the union and also because they are monitored by the senior staff and deputies. So as long as they stay chummy , they keep their job.

Also, having been through Teachers college and seen the standard of ability and work required to pass, well - lets just say I don't think its very high! Certainly not in the league of higher paid professionals..

So - I think they are paid very well for what they do... I do think some put up with a lot of sh*t from students and can do squat about it - for this reason alone they deserve the 40-50k mark...

Re workload, well good teachers work hard, but a lot bludge! And many professional workers out there work far beyond their job roles. I now work for a major IT company and they really expect a lot from their employees - makes the amount of time teachers spend on work activities seem like a holiday...

Now don't get me wrong, I think a lot of teachers deserve medals for the work they do... but unfortunately there are a lot of people who ride the system knowing that they can...

The outlook is bleak for our education system - I feel mainly becasue of political correctness - it's gone beyond a joke. The gov't and media teach kids they can do anything and behave how they like, it's their so-called right - and by the way, if the teacher does anything to you, tell us, we'll sack or sue them!

A lot of parents too think their kids are adults and should have adult rights - only leads to the trouble we are now seeing, but many can't see the forrest through the trees and think its correct... Kids are kids and have kids minds, they don't think how adults do nor perceive the world in the same way, they are egocentric till late teens and have hormonal rushes that make their decisions rash - it's not their fault, they are doing nothing wrong - it's how god made us, we all go through it... but some dildo adults still don't see it and think kids should be able to do what they want...

The laws set down to protect the few kids that have been truely abused and misstreated have been applied to the extreme and now it stops parents ability to discipline their kids and to teach them correct ways... The media plays on it and fosters the problem, you only have to listen to the radio breakfast and afternoon shows now to hear how cheap their morals are and they defend themselfs and profess to the kids listening that its cool... When someone speaks up, they just ridacule them on-air as they have the power to do so. TV shows shuch as heartbreak High, etc blatently teach rebellion and antisocial behaviour...

sorry folks for the whinge - no I'm not 100 years old and victorian. I just see and say it how it is!

So there we have it, a real valid old persons opinion from someone who has worked both as a teacher and in other proffessional fields.

I think that just about sums up the argument...

 

[400miles]

Firstly, no that wasn't me who posted the first one, my parents are both high school teachers.
And the second thing I thought was fair enough but I don't agree with. Her (I don't know if it's a she that's just what I thought, dunno why) argument was all 'a lot of teachers bludge', whilst constantly admitting there are teachers who do heaps of work. She never said the teachers that do heaps of work don't deserve high pay. Which is what I'm arguing. Seeing my parents do so much work and get so little out of it is why I firmly believe that teachers deserve a payrise.
So yeah a lot of that post that 'she' (?) made was very generalised and all came from her whole one year of experience and to be honest made me feel as though she was a teacher putting in bugger all. But yeah, I agree, there are shit teachers, like there are shit workers in every profession. But there are awesome teachers who do heaps of work and deserve a bloody big pay packet.