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Could anyone please explain me why teachers are paid like shit? Not just in Australia, but I mean in general in many other countries. It's not like Australia i

Could anyone please explain me why teachers are paid like shit? Not just in Australia, but I mean in general in many other countries. It's not like Australia is a starving banana republic that's short on cash. Do you really value the education of your nation's kids so little? AFAIK in the Nordics like Finland, teachers are paid quite well since the kids are the nation's future workforce so it's worthy investment.

thebigwinning 3y ago
High supply of people who want to be teachers and are willing to trade some upside for security and flexibility.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hammyhavoc 3y ago
Budgeting derived from available funding. Person in charge of the institutional coffers may well want to pay teachers more, but alas cannot because this is what they're given to play with.
benji-york 3y ago
You could ask why the people that clean the toilets are paid so little. It is obvious that what they do is important. Dirty toilets are annoying and potentially a health hazard. The truth is that there are many people who can do the job adequately (as defined by societal consensus), so they are paid relatively little. The same goes for teachers.
hugh-avherald 3y ago
(1) There are a lot of teachers (2) They are all basically paid the same (i.e. if you want to pay some teachers more, you have to pay all (in the state) more) So any time there is a proposal to increase pay for teachers, you have to budget a lot of money. It's rare for there to be such an option each budget year.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  in wealthy California, legally mandated education money is relentlessly diverted into obscure and opaque mechanisms, and rarely to teachers. Add multiple layers of political shifting, constant political bickering where promises for benefits much later (retirement) are played at the same time as the first part. Combine with housing policy, lending practices and asset bubbles, and a similar economic result is playing out here, across the entire State.
throwaway2990 3y ago
Even tho a lot of people are in absolute denial about it… (evident by those who downvote) In the US, AU, NZ… Unions… despite having money, getting given more money, rarely does that money go to the teachers. The teachers Union doesn’t do a whole lot to help teachers and mostly works against teachers in their own interests. The unions started off great when they were first introduced but now they are pointless and are crippling the education system.
vasco 3y ago
Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you, which is a function of how many people want to do the job and how many people have the skills to do the job. Many people enjoy doing jobs with meaning, many people enjoy working with kids, and many people enjoy teaching things. Teaching is like nursing, many people find meaning in it and want to do it, and the skills required aren't too difficult to get. Just as many people likely want to be doctors or university professors, but less can do it, so pay goes up, comparatively. Or on the other hand, many people can do jobs like working in an oil rig but not many want to. Once you look at jobs like this you understand most of what dictates salaries. Find something hard to do, that not many people want to do, and you'll always be fine. If tomorrow all teachers quit because the pay wouldn't be worth it anymore to counterbalance their love of teaching and the feeling of accomplishment of molding the next generation, pay would go up because kids still need to be taught.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  > Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you It also depends on the minimum competence people will tolerate. There's plenty of competent people who would consider teaching if the compensation was worthwhile. It all depends on how much a country and its voting population care about education and how much more in taxes are they willing to pay to support that.
- beej71 3y ago
  > Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you Since there is a teacher shortage (i.e. people are not being replaced), this would appear to not be the case.
  - resonious 3y ago
    If there really is demand for teachers then this shortage will eventually balance out with more expensive education and more teachers. If I'm understanding the argument correctly that is.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
mnd999 3y ago
Low taxes get more votes than good schools. Why that is the case I have no idea.
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  Because current parents are a minority and the most reliable turnout is among seniors, at least in the US. Benefits of good school are more long term and people aren't very focused upon that in general. Combine that with distrust that given measures will actually help make better schools. (Just look at the generations long distrust of "New Math", "Common Core", etc.)
grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
Low productivity growth. The productivity of the education sector has been unable to keep up with other competing industries in their communities. Unfortunately we see a similar phenomenon for other labor intensive industries (nursing, public transport, etc).
- rightbyte 3y ago
  That doesn't make sense. If the parents actually get more productive they can afford paying (e.g. through tax) higher teacher salaries.
  - JaimeThompson 3y ago
    >If the parents actually get more productive they can afford paying That assumes that the gains in productivity are passed unto the parents in the form of increased income, do you have any data that shows this to be the case?
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      No. I believe in the last 20-30 years there has been a reallocation of wealth from wage workers to former house owners and stock owners. But some of the parents gotta be either shareholders or cashed out houseowners? I just moved from a city where teacher pay has gotten on par with engineers. The only thing needed was outlawing hiring unqualified teachers. Suddenly there was money for teacher salaries. It didn't solve the housing question for other sectors though ...
      - throwaway426079 3y ago
        Were there any requirements at all to get hired as a teacher before that change?
  - grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
    I think in general the costs of low productivity sectors tend to outpace the average which kind of negates additional spending (we see that already, educational spending has grown a lot over the years). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
jonhohle 3y ago
IMHO, it’s because teachers take it. In our district, administrative costs have expanded through the roof while teacher pay has stagnated. That increases education costs for the community without that money benefiting teachers directly. What’s worse, IMHO, the teacher unions will then run campaigns for overrides to add additional funding misleading voters into feel good ideas about funding education. When you oppose such an override because the district is a poor steward of public funds you look like you hate the kids or some other BS. I have four kids at our neighborhood school and my wife used to teach in the district (and still subs occasionally). I have a vested interest in ensuring high quality teachers are paid appropriately. But as mentioned, there are so many who have just accepted that it’s a low paying job and martyred themselves for the good of the community. We’re taking advantage of the people responsible for the future of our communities. And by we, I mean sociopathic school boards and district administrations. They’ll spend money on unnecessary technologies at the drop of a hat but teacher pay increases often require a strike. I’ve met more than a few teachers who’ve left to join educational supply companies, school administrations, or even unrelated businesses and not known one who went back into the classroom. One of their first comments when describing their transition is how much better the compensation is.
- grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
  I always wonder what the breakdown of these administrative costs look like. Is it personnel, is it suppliers fleecing school districts, or is it as simple as everything having got more expensive (eg. building maintenance, janitors, transport etc).
Mezzie 3y ago
In librarianship we have the concept of "vocational awe" [0] which also applies to professions such as EMTs, nursing, and teaching. It's a combination of guilt, the idea that bringing money into something 'holy'/moral is crass, and that if you leave you're to blame for the difficulties that your patrons/students/patients experience in the wake of having less access to resources (rather than blaming those who set salaries + staffing levels who are well aware of the correlation between low salaries and poor work conditions and high turnover). [0] = https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-...
- thebigwinning 3y ago
  This can contribute to being psychologically hard to leave, but doesn't explain why people get into these professions. I agree money is only one form of compensation. Some jobs focus on status or honor. But I don't see that in the areas you mentioned. - nurses do make a lot of money and it's accessible without an incredible academic aptitude - EMT is almost always a stepping stone job for young people - a lot of women and moms want to be librarians partly due to flexibility
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    I mentioned staffing in addition to money because that's how the issue shows up in nursing - nurses are paid a living wage but often expected to deal with horrendous working conditions such as working with far more patients than is safe. > a lot of women and moms want to be librarians partly due to flexibility Source? It's not a particularly flexible job, and in my program none of my peers ever mentioned that being why they were here. The concept of vocational awe also comes out of academic librarianship which is a whole other ball game to public librarianship. But maybe my network + program is an outlier so if you have reading on that I'd welcome it! > EMT is almost always a stepping stone job for young people And? They're still doing valuable, dangerous work and are literally in charge of keeping people alive. They're also paid barely enough to live on, which is batshit crazy if you consider that chronically stressed people (like those who are living poor) make worse decisions and EMTs are required to make very important decisions on the fly. The only reason it's maintainable is that they have new young people to dazzle. > But doesn't explain why people get into these professions. Speaking for librarianship, most people who get into it do so for a few reasons that I've seen(some of them are stupid): * They like reading and want to be around books and just like libraries. This is a very bad reason to become a librarian and go to graduate school. * They want to be an academic but can't hack it in/don't want to try to become a professor. Your odds of landing a library position are much better than getting a decent teaching/research job in much of the humanities. So lots of people with grad degrees in things like English and History who realized that they need a career. (This is also a bad reason.) * They really, really like organizing things. Or are really into niche areas like preservation that can pretty much only be explored professionally in this particular sector. Particularly for people in those interest areas who either have no interest in coding or who went into the profession before there were viable tech career paths to indulge those interests. * They have several years of library work experience and want to move up the ladder because often you can't get even a basic full time job without the grad degree. This is a version of sunk-cost fallacy (as is the 'wants to be an academic' reason); if you've worked in one field/area for a long time it's hard to consider leaving to do something else.
geomark 3y ago
Several comments about the budgeting issue in public schools, but what about teacher pay in private schools? Is it higher? Are private school teachers unionized? Because absent institutional constraints teacher pay would be more market based. My anecdotal evidence says the market still doesn't highly value traditional teaching, meaning teaching a class in a traditional school.
jwie 3y ago
It really depends on the country, and the particular school district. In the US our problem is cash being syphoned off into "not really education." Around 10-12k worth of education dollars are spent per year per student at a public school in the US. This money does not educate the children, or even go mostly the teachers' salaries. The nations that figured out how to get the cash to the people who matter in education are the ones doing it right. Most western countries spend a lot of cash on education; they just spend it in horrifically bad ways.

thebigwinning 3y ago

High supply of people who want to be teachers and are willing to trade some upside for security and flexibility.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hammyhavoc 3y ago

Budgeting derived from available funding. Person in charge of the institutional coffers may well want to pay teachers more, but alas cannot because this is what they're given to play with.

benji-york 3y ago

You could ask why the people that clean the toilets are paid so little. It is obvious that what they do is important. Dirty toilets are annoying and potentially a health hazard. The truth is that there are many people who can do the job adequately (as defined by societal consensus), so they are paid relatively little. The same goes for teachers.

hugh-avherald 3y ago

(1) There are a lot of teachers (2) They are all basically paid the same (i.e. if you want to pay some teachers more, you have to pay all (in the state) more) So any time there is a proposal to increase pay for teachers, you have to budget a lot of money. It's rare for there to be such an option each budget year.

mistrial9 3y ago
in wealthy California, legally mandated education money is relentlessly diverted into obscure and opaque mechanisms, and rarely to teachers. Add multiple layers of political shifting, constant political bickering where promises for benefits much later (retirement) are played at the same time as the first part. Combine with housing policy, lending practices and asset bubbles, and a similar economic result is playing out here, across the entire State.

throwaway2990 3y ago

Even tho a lot of people are in absolute denial about it… (evident by those who downvote) In the US, AU, NZ… Unions… despite having money, getting given more money, rarely does that money go to the teachers. The teachers Union doesn’t do a whole lot to help teachers and mostly works against teachers in their own interests. The unions started off great when they were first introduced but now they are pointless and are crippling the education system.

vasco 3y ago

Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you, which is a function of how many people want to do the job and how many people have the skills to do the job. Many people enjoy doing jobs with meaning, many people enjoy working with kids, and many people enjoy teaching things. Teaching is like nursing, many people find meaning in it and want to do it, and the skills required aren't too difficult to get. Just as many people likely want to be doctors or university professors, but less can do it, so pay goes up, comparatively. Or on the other hand, many people can do jobs like working in an oil rig but not many want to. Once you look at jobs like this you understand most of what dictates salaries. Find something hard to do, that not many people want to do, and you'll always be fine. If tomorrow all teachers quit because the pay wouldn't be worth it anymore to counterbalance their love of teaching and the feeling of accomplishment of molding the next generation, pay would go up because kids still need to be taught.

h0l0cube 3y ago
> Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you It also depends on the minimum competence people will tolerate. There's plenty of competent people who would consider teaching if the compensation was worthwhile. It all depends on how much a country and its voting population care about education and how much more in taxes are they willing to pay to support that.
beej71 3y ago
> Jobs pay as much as it costs to replace you Since there is a teacher shortage (i.e. people are not being replaced), this would appear to not be the case.
- resonious 3y ago
  If there really is demand for teachers then this shortage will eventually balance out with more expensive education and more teachers. If I'm understanding the argument correctly that is.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago

mnd999 3y ago

Low taxes get more votes than good schools. Why that is the case I have no idea.

Nasrudith 3y ago
Because current parents are a minority and the most reliable turnout is among seniors, at least in the US. Benefits of good school are more long term and people aren't very focused upon that in general. Combine that with distrust that given measures will actually help make better schools. (Just look at the generations long distrust of "New Math", "Common Core", etc.)

grumpy-de-sre 3y ago

Low productivity growth. The productivity of the education sector has been unable to keep up with other competing industries in their communities. Unfortunately we see a similar phenomenon for other labor intensive industries (nursing, public transport, etc).

rightbyte 3y ago
That doesn't make sense. If the parents actually get more productive they can afford paying (e.g. through tax) higher teacher salaries.
- JaimeThompson 3y ago
  >If the parents actually get more productive they can afford paying That assumes that the gains in productivity are passed unto the parents in the form of increased income, do you have any data that shows this to be the case?
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    No. I believe in the last 20-30 years there has been a reallocation of wealth from wage workers to former house owners and stock owners. But some of the parents gotta be either shareholders or cashed out houseowners? I just moved from a city where teacher pay has gotten on par with engineers. The only thing needed was outlawing hiring unqualified teachers. Suddenly there was money for teacher salaries. It didn't solve the housing question for other sectors though ...
    - throwaway426079 3y ago
      Were there any requirements at all to get hired as a teacher before that change?
- grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
  I think in general the costs of low productivity sectors tend to outpace the average which kind of negates additional spending (we see that already, educational spending has grown a lot over the years). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

jonhohle 3y ago

IMHO, it’s because teachers take it. In our district, administrative costs have expanded through the roof while teacher pay has stagnated. That increases education costs for the community without that money benefiting teachers directly. What’s worse, IMHO, the teacher unions will then run campaigns for overrides to add additional funding misleading voters into feel good ideas about funding education. When you oppose such an override because the district is a poor steward of public funds you look like you hate the kids or some other BS. I have four kids at our neighborhood school and my wife used to teach in the district (and still subs occasionally). I have a vested interest in ensuring high quality teachers are paid appropriately. But as mentioned, there are so many who have just accepted that it’s a low paying job and martyred themselves for the good of the community. We’re taking advantage of the people responsible for the future of our communities. And by we, I mean sociopathic school boards and district administrations. They’ll spend money on unnecessary technologies at the drop of a hat but teacher pay increases often require a strike. I’ve met more than a few teachers who’ve left to join educational supply companies, school administrations, or even unrelated businesses and not known one who went back into the classroom. One of their first comments when describing their transition is how much better the compensation is.

grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
I always wonder what the breakdown of these administrative costs look like. Is it personnel, is it suppliers fleecing school districts, or is it as simple as everything having got more expensive (eg. building maintenance, janitors, transport etc).

Mezzie 3y ago

In librarianship we have the concept of "vocational awe" [0] which also applies to professions such as EMTs, nursing, and teaching. It's a combination of guilt, the idea that bringing money into something 'holy'/moral is crass, and that if you leave you're to blame for the difficulties that your patrons/students/patients experience in the wake of having less access to resources (rather than blaming those who set salaries + staffing levels who are well aware of the correlation between low salaries and poor work conditions and high turnover). [0] = https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-...

thebigwinning 3y ago
This can contribute to being psychologically hard to leave, but doesn't explain why people get into these professions. I agree money is only one form of compensation. Some jobs focus on status or honor. But I don't see that in the areas you mentioned. - nurses do make a lot of money and it's accessible without an incredible academic aptitude - EMT is almost always a stepping stone job for young people - a lot of women and moms want to be librarians partly due to flexibility
- Mezzie 3y ago
  I mentioned staffing in addition to money because that's how the issue shows up in nursing - nurses are paid a living wage but often expected to deal with horrendous working conditions such as working with far more patients than is safe. > a lot of women and moms want to be librarians partly due to flexibility Source? It's not a particularly flexible job, and in my program none of my peers ever mentioned that being why they were here. The concept of vocational awe also comes out of academic librarianship which is a whole other ball game to public librarianship. But maybe my network + program is an outlier so if you have reading on that I'd welcome it! > EMT is almost always a stepping stone job for young people And? They're still doing valuable, dangerous work and are literally in charge of keeping people alive. They're also paid barely enough to live on, which is batshit crazy if you consider that chronically stressed people (like those who are living poor) make worse decisions and EMTs are required to make very important decisions on the fly. The only reason it's maintainable is that they have new young people to dazzle. > But doesn't explain why people get into these professions. Speaking for librarianship, most people who get into it do so for a few reasons that I've seen(some of them are stupid): * They like reading and want to be around books and just like libraries. This is a very bad reason to become a librarian and go to graduate school. * They want to be an academic but can't hack it in/don't want to try to become a professor. Your odds of landing a library position are much better than getting a decent teaching/research job in much of the humanities. So lots of people with grad degrees in things like English and History who realized that they need a career. (This is also a bad reason.) * They really, really like organizing things. Or are really into niche areas like preservation that can pretty much only be explored professionally in this particular sector. Particularly for people in those interest areas who either have no interest in coding or who went into the profession before there were viable tech career paths to indulge those interests. * They have several years of library work experience and want to move up the ladder because often you can't get even a basic full time job without the grad degree. This is a version of sunk-cost fallacy (as is the 'wants to be an academic' reason); if you've worked in one field/area for a long time it's hard to consider leaving to do something else.

geomark 3y ago

Several comments about the budgeting issue in public schools, but what about teacher pay in private schools? Is it higher? Are private school teachers unionized? Because absent institutional constraints teacher pay would be more market based. My anecdotal evidence says the market still doesn't highly value traditional teaching, meaning teaching a class in a traditional school.

jwie 3y ago

It really depends on the country, and the particular school district. In the US our problem is cash being syphoned off into "not really education." Around 10-12k worth of education dollars are spent per year per student at a public school in the US. This money does not educate the children, or even go mostly the teachers' salaries. The nations that figured out how to get the cash to the people who matter in education are the ones doing it right. Most western countries spend a lot of cash on education; they just spend it in horrifically bad ways.