It seems ironic that, in a system where the majority of multi-academy trust CEOs are very well-paid males, it should be so difficult to recruit and retain men in classroom roles (“No place for young men? Male teachers quit as pay levels drop”, News). It’s not just the take-home pay that is the issue, eroded as it has been by pay “pauses” (aka freezes). The ever-widening pay gap is exacerbated by performance-related pay, which regularly delivers bonuses to the top, but much less reliably to the lower echelons. School budgets often can’t run to rewarding hard work and high performance for teachers.
Yet workload remains excessive and rising. Weekends and holidays are snaffled by preparation, extra teaching (revision) and accountability. The ratio of pay to hours worked is more unbalanced than ever. Promotion is less financially rewarding now that the 2022 pay arrangements target higher rises at new teachers and hardly enhance remuneration for more experienced and senior staff.
