Do teachers deserve a pay rise?

University Degree Education and Teaching

Daniel Finch -

By Daniel Finch 10TR

Mr Mc Sweeney

Introduction

In this unit I will investigate whether the teachers do deserve a pay rise. In order to do this I will follow the tasks on the sheet. The reason I am doing this is because throughout the past years teachers have been protesting for unfairly pay. For my research I will be writing out a questionnaire carefully and conclude whether teachers do actually deserve a pay rise. Mr Mc Sweeney will give out the questionnaires to the teachers. I will also ask to give reasons why they think they should have the pay rise. I will be making a graph and analyse whether teachers do deserve a pay rise. Before the investigation I would expect to find that most teachers are unfairly paid as we see lots of headlines on teachers not getting paid enough. I will also be using secondary sources such as searching on the Internet to find out information, news on TV, encyclopaedia and newspapers. After I finish my coursework I will come up with a conclusion that reflects on my coursework.

In order to get the maximum information I will be writing out questionnaires to approximately 20 teachers whether they think they need a pay rise. I will only be asking to secondary school teachers.

For this investigation I will be writing out questionnaire for the teachers to answer, this will give me more accurate and definite conclusion. This will help me find out what the teachers want in an realistic way. In order do that I will need to ask questions broadly to try and answer my question but not to ask the question. There are also limitations towards interviewing such as not getting an overall point of views in the whole of the U.K. Secondary information also has a limitation such as not getting enough close information as in why teachers don’t get enough pay.

Questionnaire

What attracted you to the job?

The money
Helping the community
Interest
Work experience

How old are you?

20-25
25-30
30-40
40-50

Do you think that the amount of work you do balance out with your pay?

Definitely
Yes
Maybe
No

If you found another job with the same work but a higher salary would you take it?

Definitely
Yes
Maybe
No

How much do you get a year?

15,000-20,000
20,000-25,000
25,000-30,000
Over 30,000

Are you happy with your work or is it too much?

It’s Great
Alright
Too much!

Did you ever want to become a teacher?

Yes
Kind of
No

Do you think that compared to other public sector jobs that teachers are unfairly paid?

Yes
Maybe
No

How long did it take you to qualify as a teacher?

I will be analysing my questionnaire with my graphs. I have done this so that I can see clearly what is going on. From here I will be able find out their opinions on “Whether teachers do deserve a pay rise.”

From here we can see that the majority of the teachers disagree on the question. This tells us ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Yes
Maybe
No

How long did it take you to qualify as a teacher?

I will be analysing my questionnaire with my graphs. I have done this so that I can see clearly what is going on. From here I will be able find out their opinions on “Whether teachers do deserve a pay rise.”

From here we can see that the majority of the teachers disagree on the question. This tells us that they are perfectly happy with there job. But these amounts of teachers aren’t enough to estimate the whole country’s opinion. |t could be that all the teachers who had received the questionnaire were mostly upper class teachers who are perfectly fine with their job.

From this we can see that more teachers did want to become a teacher. If they did want to become a teacher I don’t think that they should have chosen to become a teacher in the fist place if they were aware that teachers aren’t paid enough to what they deserve, so I think from this graph that teacher don’t really deserve a pay rise.

From this we can tell that some of the teachers are happily with their jobs and some who are trying desperate to get the best out of their job. This tells us that some of the get paid well and some teachers who get paid too low of what they deserve.

From this we can see that most of the teachers get paid over 30,000 a year. This amount is quite a lot compared to other public sector. This amount is more than some university lecturers and you need to be highly qualified to be a university lecturer. But this graph does not show the average amount that teacher gets in the school. It could be that most of the highly paid teachers had answered my questionnaire.

Evaluation

My analysis has shown me that most of the teachers are highly paid and there is no need for pay rise. However there is some part of the school that have quite low paid and willingly to move to another place just because of a slight increase of their salary. From the teachers point of view they think that they are not paid unfairly compared to other public sector. This means that they should be grateful for what they get as they more compared to other public sector jobs. Also if they think they don’t get paid enough they should not have chosen the job in the job in the first place.

I don’t think I have given out enough out questionnaires to give a stronger opinion on whether teachers deserve a pay rise. I think money does give some teachers a lot of motivation because on the question I have given them which were “If you found another job with a same amount of work but with a higher salary would you take it?” I don’t think that the teachers will be leaving the public sector because there are no other teaching jobs on education than the public sector except for private schools.

In this section I will be investigating in the web and other sources as my evidence to back up my thoughts whether teachers really do deserve a pay rise.

Getting the Right person?

It is very hard to get a new teacher. This is because you never know what they might be like when they do the work. In order to get to know the candidate the school asks for there C.V. This shows what kind of qualifications they have got and work experience. If the school is interested they will call the candidate to have an interview. By asking them questions they can roughly tell what their personality is. Health is also very important factor. For example if the candidate was an incredible teacher and was able increase student’s grades but his health was bad it could affect tremendously because that candidate could be ill for half a year and not be able to teach which could affect the school if that is applied to other teachers as well. Schools prefer more experienced teachers because they know they’re more reliable and know what they’re doing.

I think teachers don’t really have a choice on whether they think they should get a pay rise. Basically the teachers’ entire salaries are nearly around the same amount. Teachers become desperate to find a job that they have to give up and get a job even if they think they deserve more.

Does money motivate people?

Money doesn’t really appeal to everyone. But mainly this is the most important factor. Through the past years teachers have been frustrated that they don’t get enough pay for how much they work. But some people work for such as:

Helping the community
Work experience
Working in a place where friends and families are
Money
Cheerful environment

Teachers do get bonuses. The longer you work the higher salary it goes up. Also if teachers raise their student’s standard grade they get a pay rise, this keeps the teachers to carry on teaching at a high standard. These motivations does attract the teachers a lot because it shows once they’ve got the job and worked for a few years they’ll have the amount they want. See page one Teachers' Pay England & Wales STRB Recommendations 2003. But in my questionnaire research money wasn’t all that got them motivated it was their interest of them being a teacher. See page Questionnaire (graphs) number 5. To summarise I don’t think that money is the main way to motivate people.

Trade Union

The teachers’ trade union are organised by the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers). They represent over 160,000 teachers and lecturers. They determine realistic negotiations on contracts such as salaries and service conditions. These trade unions work together and say strongly to the parliament what they want if there is any problem.

Also if one teacher has a problem that teacher can write to the ATL and if they agree with the problem they will act against the school and demand their standard. This organisation was made so that the government couldn’t complete control of the public sector. It was made so that the teachers were treated a fair way with other jobs. More information at “About ATL”.

Bold =Look at the Appendix

(Extension)

Who determines the pay of the public sector?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Gordon Brown) deals with all money which goes in and out. He decides how much money should be spent such as Health, military, Education and public services. I don’t think the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to increase the pay because even if he had increased the salary a little bit it would still cost the government a lot of money. The government has a lot of other things to spend rather than only education.

Gordon Brown (The Chancellor of the Exchequer)

Throughout the past 6 weeks I have been researching whether teachers really do deserve a pay rise. Before the investigation I thought that teachers definitely deserved a pay rise. As I got closer on investigating the I started to find facts on how much the teachers got paid, their bonuses, amount of work and feelings towards their work.

For this question Do teachers deserve a pay rise? I totally disagree. I gave out my investigation questionnaire to 7 seven teachers. It showed clearly on my questionnaire that more than half the teachers received more than 30,000. This amount is given more than the university lecturers who have studied a lot more to get the job (my father has a friend who is a university lecturer and gets less than 30,000.) From this evidence I can say that teachers get far more pay than some of the other public sector workers who work for the same amount of work.

On one of my question which asks If you found another job with the same work but a higher salary would you take it? Some of them said no. From this I can say that some of the teachers have no intension of leaving to another school as their salary is so high that they don’t want to have the hassle.

One of my questions had asked Do you think compared other public sector that teachers are unfairly paid? More than half the teachers said no. This tells me definitely that there are more public sector jobs in need to gat a pay rise balance there work. This question is the strongest evidence that I have got which determines that teachers don’t need a pay rise.

I have also asked whether the teacher ever wanted to become a teacher? but it turned out that most did. From this I can say that if they did want to become teacher they shouldn’t have chosen the job in the first place if they were aware that they didn’t get enough for how much they work. From my investigation I think my main problem of getting more reliable information was the lack of teachers being asked. If I had more teachers who had answered my questionnaire my answer would be much more reliable.

Teachers' Pay England & Wales STRB Recommendations 2003 shows us that teachers who’ve just started to become a teacher do start do get a little less than the average, but if they work longer at the same school they will be able to achieve their goal and even get more than the average. I have for found out that the government tries their best to the highest standard they can, but there are lots of the problems the government have to face such as the NHS. Even a slight pay rise would cost the government hundreds of millions of pounds.

The strength of my coursework is the response I got from my teachers. Their answer gave me a strong answer on teacher not deserving the pay rise. However the lack of responses I got weakened reliability of my coursework.

I think I would be able improve my coursework by researching more on the internet to strengthen my coursework and it would have been better if I got more responses.