Who’d be a Teacher?

According to a BBC report new teachers cannot find secure jobs. Welcome to the real world. Ordinary workers haven't had job security for three decades. This is a result of the new world economy where profit supersedes people.

However, I must ask what the problem is? If the current advertisements on T.V. are to be believed, a teacher can expect a starting salary of £30,000 a year. Not bad, in my book. I wish somebody would offer me that sort of money for working my butt off in a manual job. So O.K., the issue seems to be they can't get these jobs. But the report goes on to say that 95% of newly trained teachers find temporary or supply work. Assuming temporary means short term contracts and assuming that as in real-world jobs this means showing ability, commitment and reliability results in an offer of a permanent position the onus is on them to show they are worthy of such consideration. As for supply teachers, I see advertised supply positions paying £100 a day and more. I would be happy to seek work as a supply plastics moulding technician at £100 a day.

What do they want? Jam on it?

Business Managers for Schools

Schools minister Vernon Coaker says a business manager could help schools ride out the recession, claiming they could save schools thousands of pounds per year.

The claim is that they can save head teachers up to 20% of their time to devote to teaching.

Well, I think it is just another bureaucrat creating bureaucracy to give jobs to the boys.

Margaret Thatcher did this in the 1980's. While she destroyed manufacturing, she created thousands of non-jobs paying intellectuals huge salaries to sort out finances and to manage in the National Health Service. Most weren't worried about people. The onus was on cutting costs. We've all seen the result of that.

Not only is this an issue, but also the move to privatise public service industries by the back door by introducing such jobs. Once the principle of 'business management' is accepted, we are on our way to privatising education. And isn't it odd that this idea has been thought up at a time when the government is meeting strong opposition to their attempt to introduce private academies?

Here are a few figures I have put together. Not scientific or statistically accurate. But accurate enough, I believe to give some idea of what we are heading towards. I got my figures by a Google search any one of you could try.

 

	Average Salary	Minimum Salary	20% of Salary
Head Teacher	£ 100,000.00	£ 70,000.00	£ 20,000.00	£ 14,000.00
Business Manager	£ 50,000.00	£ 25,000.00

 

So you can see that even paying a business manager the minimum salary of £25,000, while saving 20% of the average salary of £100,000 of a head teacher (£20,000), the difference is £5,000 which presumably the business manager will have to save (cut) from the budget just to break even.

Pupils are already buying their own books. Where will it come from? Education is non-profit making and one of the most important public services we have. Do we want to see it brought to its knees like the health service?

So is this just another 'jobs for the boys' and/or a 'make it look like we're doing something' exercise?

Either way, we have seen what managers did to the health service. Do we want it to happen to our schools?