Conservative’s plan to get more science grads teaching
How much would you have to be paid to teach these oiks?
Michael Gove, Shadow Schools Secretary, has announced a quite simple new policy to entice more science graduates into teaching science – graduates get their student loan paid off, if they go into teaching.
It’s a good policy insofar that it gets lots and lots and lots of headlines. The downside is, it won’t make much difference. Gove claims that the scheme could potentially save graduates ‘£40,000 over a lifetime’.
‘Over a lifetime’, that is not a lot of money. A grand a year over a forty year career? Will that replace the hole in a science graduate’s earnings caused by turning down Glaxo for a teaching job? I doubt it. In real terms, Gove is offering a 3% pay increase to science graduates – up until their student loan is paid off. When that debt has gone, there is no incentive.
It’s better than nothing, but why would high-achieving graduates want to embark on a really stressful career for the sake of a barely improved salary?
Gove claims that the scheme will help create “generation of teachers who have made a commitment to the long-term, and thus we will diminish the churn that characterises our system now.”
How is a short term pay increase going to ‘diminish the churn’? To be a good teacher, you have to love your job. And I mean really love it. Extra pay might cushion job dissatisfaction, but not forever – and certainly not if the extra pay dries up in a few years.
Teaching is difficult and not particularly well paid. Why would someone with a first in Chemistry go and teach at a crappy comp if Deloitte have offered them a £25,000 starting salary for a piss easy consulting job?
Gove has got the right idea: you want better teachers, give them a better pay deal. But he needs to go much further.
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Better pay will certainly mean that more suitable candidates for teaching posts will be attracted to the profession. As a qualified primary teacher, I have moved out of mainstream and into teaching in Prisons as a) the pay is better and b) the red tape isn't half as time consuming and I can actually teach, rather than simply writing records about doing it.
Bribing graduates that aren't entirely sure what do with their degree into the teaching profession is not the way forward. It just results in having people teaching that are doing it because they didn't know what else to do with their new qualifications. Standards aren't improving & I question why the Government are still scratching their heads and wondering what they are doing wrong.
Teaching is a time consuming, in fact life consuming, rather poorly paid profession. Make teaching more attractive, more people will want to become part of it & standards will improve!