Teachers and the MinEd

[Oscar]

Teachers complain about their lot constantly .... if one dares to offer an alternative suggestion, one gets branded a teacher hater or a right winger!

It reminds me of a drunk defending his bottle!

I thought you would have been above that kinda crap rainman! (then again maybe you really are!)

Little kids are hard to train away from their cuddly blankets, the teachers seem to have adopted their less than perfect employments conditions as their own cuddly!

There's nothing more to discuss on this self perpetuating subject, the participants don't appear to want to solve it or change it for a better deal!

Bullshit.
My teacher just found another job away from teaching.
She's a great teacher who has been ground down under the weight of a shit system, bad pay and stupid parents.
25 years of experience down the karzi.

[rapid van cleef]

wow do teachers get paid 74k? any teacher on here care to back that claim up? Maybe i need to swap careers!

Top of the payscale (around 8 years of teaching after 4 years studying after ncea level 3 is around 67K). anything more than that is management units for head of department, head of house, assistant principal, principal etc. starting salary straight outta uni is around 50k i believe. An average teacher will spend around 60 hours per week working. Remeber that they are paid to get the job done, not knock off at 3 when the kids leave. There are teachers that roll out of the carpark just after 3 every day and it boils my piss(a minority but does happen). Those teachers working considerable less than that, in my opinion, are not doing the job properly. Plenty of teachers go and study for a masters or phd which will cost in the region of 10K in uni fees which is paid for by the teacher themselves. there is no pay increase linked to these higher qualifications. I came here from UK where I was top of the payscale and had to drop down several paygrades as nzqa did not value my BA HONS Degree and 6 years of teaching as much as a NZ trained teacher....rant rant. ah well, never mind.

[The Pastor]

Top of the payscale (around 8 years of teaching after 4 years studying after ncea level 3 is around 67K). anything more than that is management units for head of department, head of house, assistant principal, principal etc. starting salary straight outta uni is around 50k i believe. An average teacher will spend around 60 hours per week working. Remeber that they are paid to get the job done, not knock off at 3 when the kids leave. There are teachers that roll out of the carpark just after 3 every day and it boils my piss(a minority but does happen). Those teachers working considerable less than that, in my opinion, are not doing the job properly. Plenty of teachers go and study for a masters or phd which will cost in the region of 10K in uni fees which is paid for by the teacher themselves. there is no pay increase linked to these higher qualifications. I came here from UK where I was top of the payscale and had to drop down several paygrades as nzqa did not value my BA HONS Degree and 6 years of teaching as much as a NZ trained teacher....rant rant. ah well, never mind.

piss off they do 60hrs of work, your dreaming.

[rapid van cleef]

ok then.....you obviously know a lot about it, so thats great.

[Jantar]

piss off they do 60hrs of work, your dreaming.

Actually, some do, and they deserve to be rewarded. Many hardly do 40 hours.

See, performance based incentives do make sense.

[Oscar]

piss off they do 60hrs of work, your dreaming.

From the looks of your post, no teacher worked overtime on you...

[brendonjw]

Actually, some do, and they deserve to be rewarded. Many hardly do 40 hours.

See, performance based incentives do make sense.

After flatting with 2 primary school teachers and 1 intermediate school one over the past 2 years i can confirm that none of them did even close to a 60 hour week and 40 hours would have been a stretch for 2 of them, Sure they would go in for 1 day during school holidays to setup for next term but considering how many school holidays there were it didn't seem like much of a "sacrifice" to me. Sure there are some teachers that do go above and beyond (and they should be rewarded) but they seem to be in the minority these days i think. Having just interviewed another teacher as a potential new flatmate i'm seriously thinking of moving overseas if have kids.

[rainman]

Actually, some do, and they deserve to be rewarded. Many hardly do 40 hours.

See, performance based incentives do make sense.

Rather simplistic logic there, surely. As in any endeavour, turning up and working long hours are no guarantee of high performance. In fact it's often the case that the long hours are correlated with crap performance.

I think all simplistic logic in favour of performance based pay for teachers generally falls on its arse - the problem is quite tricky. Apart from a few serial underperformers I imagine most people, teachers included, would actually be supportive, if it could be done without major side-effects. That and the fact that if you considered actual hours worked, even if you penalised the slackers and paid the good and excellent their fair slice, the exercise would not be a zero sum game. And I don't see either major party supporting any serious initiatives to lift us out of being a low wage, high cost economy.

I know you had a crack at making some suggestions that went some way toward a performance pay mechanism, but I think even though it's not bad it still has some issues. Unfortunately I'm chasing a mega deadline that will have me working to the wee smalls tonight again so I can't address them in detail, but I'll come back in a few days and be a bit more expansive.

[mashman]

As was pointed out by a chap this evening. What happens if the teacher in question is good with the window lickers and as such teaches that group? Are they penalised based on their results? My question would be: How do you set up the performance related pay "scale"? Do you have a base salary (i.e. 50k) with add-ons based on KPI? Meaning that some will have to take a pay cut until they have proven themselves against some measures set up by a board to top up their salary to the level they currently receive? or is there a new mystical pot of millions of $$$ to reward those who make the grade so to speak? Measuring performance based on time spent working is no measure at all in regards to quality or work in my experience.

[Jantar]

.... How do you set up the performance related pay "scale"? ......

Go back and read my suggestion on that on the previous page.

[mashman]

Go back and read my suggestion on that on the previous page.

Ok, I did. Now can you answer where the money is gonna come from to pay for it?

Other than that I can see that your suggestions are open to interpretation. I can't see teachers rocking up to the class and asking them to be conscientious students because they need their bonus. I'm almost dead against performance measurement at schools given the array of variables that affect learning. A slight bias I guess. That doesn't mean that what you suggest would not work, but I would have though that it'd negatively affect teacher turnover based on the self "valuation" of the teacher.

[Jantar]

Ok, I did. Now can you answer where the money is gonna come from to pay for it?

....

Simple. Next pay round instead of a direct pay rise, the government introduces the first stage of performance incentitives. Continue for the next few years

As class sizes increase and the number of teachers decrease we would be left with the better teachers earning more.

[PrincessBandit]

As class sizes increase and the number of teachers decrease we would be left with the better teachers earning more.

Class sizes increase and teacher numbers decrease - YIKES!

[mashman]

Simple. Next pay round instead of a direct pay rise, the government introduces the first stage of performance incentitives. Continue for the next few years

As class sizes increase and the number of teachers decrease we would be left with the better teachers earning more.

Cool . I'm sure they'll appreciate the encouragement.

Or not.

[Banditbandit]

Simple. Next pay round instead of a direct pay rise, the government introduces the first stage of performance incentitives. Continue for the next few years

As class sizes increase and the number of teachers decrease we would be left with the better teachers earning more.

Quick question - which planet are you on?