You mention bringing conditions in line with European averages. I would be totally in favour of this. What I would suggest is a shorter school day (preferably through longer breaks during the day), and 4 weeks extra teaching in June/early July. I would also put in place 2/3 weeks of training for teachers in August, to keep them up to date not only on their subjects but also their methods, IT, etc. This would still leave teachers with a very generous 6 week break in the summer (as well as breaks throughout the year). But I appreciate these are not economic points, so I’m straying from my home turf!

To close, just on one other point you made, the pensions levy is not a pay cut. It’s just your employer asking you to make a slightly less negligible contribution to an excellent defined benefit pension when you retire. Even if it were doubled (which would be extreme), it would still not even come close to the true financial cost of a public sector pension. If I could free up a little time, I would love to explain this point a little better. It’s not sour grapes, I don’t want to bash, but I do want people who are going to get these pensions (including myself, although I only notched up a couple of years in the public sector) to understand how lucky they are.

Thanks again, though, for taking the time to comment in such detail.

R

I have the 2009 OECD Indicators in front of me. They are largely consistent with the figures from the 2008 study. Irish secondary teachers work 735 teaching hours per year. This is in contrast to a European average of 665 in lower secondary and 635 in upper secondary school. Taking the average here, we work around 80 hours more teaching per year than the European average. And this is despite working 4 weeks less! That is some disparity. Would you agree that someone working, let’s say, 8 hours a day in a job deserves to get paid more than someone working 6 hours at the same job?

My point is that the wage per teaching hour is most relevant, not per day. The amount of hours you teach dictates the amount of preparation and corrections you have. Looking at the report, Irish secondary teachers earn $72 per teaching hour. This is completely consistent with the European average of $63 for lower secondary and $74 for upper seondary education. And this was before the 7.5% pension levy (pay cut)!

I am not arguing that Irish teachers don’t get paid more in absolute terms – they do. However, when working conditions are taken into account, the disparity disappears. Irish teachers work a 22 hour week. The European average on these figures is around 18 hours. There’s a 4 hour disparity there – the equivolent of about one day’s teaching per week. Therefore, for 34 weeks Irish teachers work 1 day more than the European average. For 4 weeks European teachers work 20 days more than Irish teachers (when we’re not working). That is still a 14 day weighing on our side.

If you are advocating Irish teacher’s wages abeing reduced to European levels in absolute term, wouldn’t you also have to advocate Irish teachers’ working conditions falling into line with those same European standards? This would mean the reduction of the Irish teaching week by 4 hours a week – I’d very much take that.

in conclusion, I feel that Irish teachers can find great solace in these OECD figures.I believe that pay will have to come down for budgetary reasons, nothing else. There is no moral imperative on these figures. With the inevitable reduction in pay, there is a serious case for a reduction in teaching hours in Ireland. Would you agree? I’d love to hear your opinion on this. The ironic thing is that of all things to do with teaching you’d think that the long holidays are the most unjustifiable. With the 22 hour teaching week these holidays turn out to be the most unjustifiable to touch!

Thanks for the comment. I wouldn’t like you to think that I am attacking teachers. I am trying to investigate which sectors in Ireland are most in a position to “bear the burden” for the adjustment. I saw official figures that Irish primary teachers are paid 57,000 euro on average – http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0416/teachers.html – and decided it warranted further investigation.

I know what you mean about relative wages – in Russia, the average wage in education is low than any other sector apart from agriculture – I’m not arguing that Irish teachers should be a poorly paid occupation. I’m just trying to find out whether – due to mechanisms like guaranteed incremental increases in pay and ‘benchmarking’ – they might be overpaid.

Hope that makes sense,

R

As an example, here is Switzerland, (not EU I know but…) teachers get paid less than house cleaners. I don’t what that says about Switzerland but I don’t know if you would want to compare their wages to those of Irish teachers.

Rather than a pay cut, I think it’s more accurately described as a “public sector tax”.

What a lively debate. I won’t cover teacher pay – more heat than light being generated at this point.

On the pupil – teacher ratio, John’s instinct are backed up in the research – the teacher – pupil ratios matters for very young pupils. However, in a review of over 100 studies, the strong consensus view is that there is no significant relationship between student outcomes and pupil teacher ratio for most students.

On investment levels and teaching hours:
· Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement in performance. Ditto in the UK. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing.
· Long hours don’t do it either which might not support some points above. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries but have among the best results. However, longer school terms are better than longer days.

What really matters in terms of providing a good education service includes:
· Having excellent teachers. To become a primary school teacher in Ireland you need to be in the top 14% of students (We do well but South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates), in terms of CAO points (harder to judge the quality of secondary school teachers). What attracts excellent people into teaching in countries such as Finland is the fact that teaching remains a respected profession and that (ironically) it is difficult to get into. In Finland all new teachers must have a master’s degree. Of course, decent pay also plays a role. However, an over-emphasis on pupil teacher ratios (particularly if you believe that teacher pay is high) means that less resources are available to invest in new school buildings, school science labs, ict in schools, etc.
· Secondly ensuring the professional development of teachers is critical. Teachers need to continuously learn! Iriconally, the education sector seems to benefited least from education and research. Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others’ classrooms and plan lessons together. In Ireland, ongoing professional development is woeful. Little formal learning happens after college – perhaps some short courses when school syllabi are introduced. Teachers receive little formal guidance after they finish college. Principals also have limited powers to assess teachers on their performance and offer suggestions on how they might improve. There are also limited opportunities for teachers to learn in terms of peer learning (e.g. sitting in on each other classes). It is also notable that while other professions have associations that focus strongly on professional development (e.g. accountants, lawyers, engineers, etc.), teachers associations are mostly unions which focus primarily – coming back to this debate – on pay and teacher pupil ratios

You might be interested in this recent report http://www.competitiveness.ie/publications/2009/title,3564,en.php