Please Sir can I have more!!

[Asthehills]

6 minutes ago, AcousticallyChallenged said:

Yet in the real world, most teachers work 50 hours a week or more. That’s a tad more than the 37.5 contracted hours many professional roles have.

The only local figures you can find talk about NQTs or self reports via indeed. But for many, that 45k figure you quote is a pipe dream. The majority of teachers on the island, as of 2020, earnt between 30 and 35k. 

The average salary for someone with a computer science degree is 57k. Depending on which figures you look at, starting salaries can be in the realm of 40-50. It’s not unheard of for them to be even beyond that. Pay rises moving between roles can be significant beyond that too, with plenty of company benefits often available, from stock options, to onsite gyms and training bursaries. Plus, inflation matched pay rises each year in your contract. 

Do you think someone with a computer science degree straight out of uni works 40-50 hours a week and has 12 weeks off 😂

Try 60-70 and four weeks off.

What planet do you people live on

[Asthehills]

8 minutes ago, Meoir Shee said:

The current dispute appears to be proxy for the chronic ills of the education system, both here and across.  Put the extra holidays and all to one side, just park it and move on just for a little while no matter how difficult that might be.

Funding has reached embarrassingly low levels.  A decade or so ago education was relatively well funded, those days are long gone and funding, in many ways, lags well behind England.  Investment in new technology appears to have been frozen for the past 5 years.  The IoM used to miles in front of England, it is now miles behind, both in terms of hardware and software.  Schools often get hand me downs from firms replacing their PCs and monitors, most equipment is 10+ years old.  Some Design and Technology equipment is 20+ years old and essentially obsolete as the parts are discontinued.

Investment in the fabric of the buildings has also declined.  Rooms not painted for 15+ years, carpets not replaced for 15+ years, desks and chairs in a terrible state, photocopiers often hand me downs from other government departments, sometimes 10+ years old and chronically inefficient.  Look at the disgraceful progress with Castle Rushen and then imagine working there every day, the place is falling down.

Investment in staff has essentially evaporated, staff training has declined to almost zero in recent years.  Secondary staff hardly ever receive specific training from exam boards, either on island or across, this used to be very regular.  Investment in teaching assistants has declined considerably and numbers have dropped alarmingly.  This has had a knock on effect on progress and behaviors of kids with various challenges.

School canteens have seen budget cuts, portions have shrunk, quality has suffered despite the best efforts of the kitchen staff.

Staff turnover appears to be accelerating and recruitment is becoming increasingly problematic.  Many staff are recruited from around the world, often via a zoom type interview.  Gone are the days of flying people in and meeting them, appointing the best candidate with confidence.  Very often recruitment is a shoe in, just one applicant.  Sometimes there are no suitable applicants.  Sometimes people accept and then give back word when they realize the cost of living but the schools still have to be staffed somehow so the standard gets compromised.

Morale is on the floor.  Behavior has significantly worsened since the various lockdowns.  Parents are increasingly less supportive of the education system, their child can do no wrong.  Society is often disrespectful, just look at some of the comments on here.  Staff are increasingly doorstopped at weekends, in supermarkets, living their own lives by parents unhappy with the school system, this is simply unacceptable.  Kids increasingly e-mail staff at all hours, evenings, weekends, holidays, complaints then come in from parents when staff don’t reply almost immediately.  Kids increasingly secretly record interactions with staff and share on social media, this can be devastating.  Staff get abused in the street and even in their own homes.  Parents often openly complain about staff, by name, on social media.  Many staff may have taken kids away, often patrolling corridors in a hostel in the UK or Europe at past midnight or running a sports event at a weekend, away from their own families, but sadly too many people have chosen to forget this, despite the fact they may well have benefitted themselves.

Yes, there are the holidays and the pension but real terms pay has genuinely fallen by almost 30% since 2010.  The holidays are somewhat soured by the extortionate cost of transport at peak times, especially off island.  People have simply had enough.  There are few tools to express dissatisfaction and industrial action is one.  

People might casually say just move on then but people have built their lives here, they have their kids in school here, it isn’t that easy.  There is a ticking time bomb in education, it is in a right mess and has been kicked down the road too often.  Healthcare is probably no different.  This isn’t a race to the bottom, my terms are worse than yours so yours should worsen, it should be a race to the top, what is the best we can do?  If people don’t want to work their breaks, fine as long as they do their core job, that surely can’t be unreasonable?  But a wider, strategic review is needed or the system might simply collapse under itself.

Sounds like hundreds of workplaces islandwide 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

1 minute ago, Asthehills said:

Do you think someone with a computer science degree straight out of uni works 40-50 hours a week and has 12 weeks off 😂

Try 60-70 and four weeks off.

What planet do you people live on

Bollocks do they. 

You can’t get enough programmers for love nor money, it very much is an employees market. 

Work for a big firm, and they’re so scared of accusations of overworking you, they’ll protest if you’re available or working outside of your contracted hours. 

The only places working people silly hours are the software houses that make all their money by underpaying graduates and working with huge rates of staff turnover whilst the bosses reap the rewards. 

[HeliX]

25 minutes ago, Asthehills said:

Do you think someone with a computer science degree straight out of uni works 40-50 hours a week and has 12 weeks off 😂

Try 60-70 and four weeks off.

What planet do you people live on

As someone who has spent most of his career in that field, and the rest of it in a related field, this is utter bollocks.

[Asthehills]

3 minutes ago, HeliX said:

As someone who has spent most of his career in that field, and the rest of it in a related field, this is utter bollocks.

Disagree.  20 years in that trade in businesses with hundreds of staff.

If you want to progress you do 69 hours plus and you get 4- 5 weeks holiday.

I want to say how works by most on here are, but instead I will repeat the request for someone to tell me what was wrong with the DESC statement yesterday?

[Asthehills]

Yes it was deliberate 

[snowman]

I don't think the geriatrics on here should be making any comments 

[Mercenary]

36 minutes ago, AcousticallyChallenged said:

Yet in the real world, most teachers work 50 hours a week or more. That’s a tad more than the 37.5 contracted hours many professional roles have.

The only local figures you can find talk about NQTs or self reports via indeed. But for many, that 45k figure you quote is a pipe dream. The majority of teachers on the island, as of 2020, earnt between 30 and 35k. 

Most professional roles also end up working more than their contracted hours, and on 48 weeks rather than 39 weeks.

 

The £45k figure was based on the 2020 response to the Tynwald question (ie. same source as yours). That 30-35k is after tax, NI and superannuation*, which at typical rates for the mid-point would be around £46k before deductions. It is straightforward to compare this to the general earnings surveys but you can see it would fare favourably.

 

* why it was released like that is pretty suspect, as other than to make teacher salaries look lower than they are I can't see a good reason, considering salaries areas never discussed in net terms.

[HeliX]

Just now, Asthehills said:

Disagree.  20 years in that trade in businesses with hundreds of staff.

If you want to progress you do 69 hours plus and you get 4- 5 weeks holiday.

I want to say how works by most on here are, but instead I will repeat the request for someone to tell me what was wrong with the DESC statement yesterday?

You've been mugged by your employers and now you want other people to be as well. Sad.

5 weeks holiday in every role I've had - with potential for extra unpaid or in exchange for time in lieu. Never worked more than an average of 40h/week over a couple of month period as a dev. No issues progressing, either. I average over those hours now in a different role, but I'm happy with the pay, conditions and flexibility so I do it willingly.

[forestboy]

1 minute ago, HeliX said:

You've been mugged by your employers and now you want other people to be as well. Sad.

5 weeks holiday in every role I've had - with potential for extra unpaid or in exchange for time in lieu. Never worked more than an average of 40h/week over a couple of month period as a dev. No issues progressing, either. I average over those hours now in a different role, but I'm happy with the pay, conditions and flexibility so I do it willingly.

Well lucky you. 

[HeliX]

1 minute ago, forestboy said:

Well lucky you. 

I am lucky in several respects, but if someone has normalised their boss walking all over their personal time when there is, and pretty much always has been, a shortage of devs on the island then luck isn't that much to do with it.

[AcousticallyChallenged]

5 minutes ago, HeliX said:

You've been mugged by your employers and now you want other people to be as well. Sad.

5 weeks holiday in every role I've had - with potential for extra unpaid or in exchange for time in lieu. Never worked more than an average of 40h/week over a couple of month period as a dev. No issues progressing, either. I average over those hours now in a different role, but I'm happy with the pay, conditions and flexibility so I do it willingly.

“If I had to live in a teacup and drink battery acid to make ends meet because my employer was rubbish, so should everyone else” 

[Asthehills]

4 minutes ago, HeliX said:

You've been mugged by your employers and now you want other people to be as well. Sad.

5 weeks holiday in every role I've had - with potential for extra unpaid or in exchange for time in lieu. Never worked more than an average of 40h/week over a couple of month period as a dev. No issues progressing, either. I average over those hours now in a different role, but I'm happy with the pay, conditions and flexibility so I do it willingly.

I am six figures now, but I put the effort in

The entitlement of the people here is mind blowing 

 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

1 minute ago, Asthehills said:

I am six figures now, but I put the effort in

The entitlement of the people here is mind blowing 

 

It’s entitled to expect to be paid for the work you do? 

Imagine hiring a builder and telling them you’ll only pay them for some of the time they’re there. You’d get told to jog on in no uncertain terms. 

[HeliX]

3 minutes ago, Asthehills said:

I am six figures now, but I put the effort in

The entitlement of the people here is mind blowing 

Doing the amount of work you're paid for isn't entitlement. Your employer already steals your labour value in profits, imagine doing unpaid labour on top of that.