As someone who has a lot of family who are teachers, you need to learn to say 'no' to those extra roles you take on that's making you work unpaid overtime.
Some of my family take on the extra roles and some dont, yet they all get job satisfaction. The main difference is that those who don't, aren't constantly exhausted.
You have to find the balance between taking on extra roles/tasks that you like/want and taking on roles to look 'good'. Reality is, the majority of teachers don't take on much of these extra roles.
You will get just as much job satisfaction as you will be able to give your full energy into your actual passion, the kids and the roles you do want.
I think it's a risk changing professions just to get paid overtime. Working regular overtime hours isn't sustainable long term.
The system is designed so that principals have enormous power over a large cohort of temporary teachers and new graduates.
Once you have tenure, stop doing the pet projects that achieve nothing but help admin get promoted.
The kids are your raison d'etre. Do only things that help you help them. Overworking yourself hurts you both.
Come in later, leave on time, get on to the ipad for an hour of research each weeknight, and see if you rediscover the passion enough to stop being jealous.
If you're really committed to leaving to chase money, then you'll either have to sell your soul to political games in an office or ruin your body in a trade.
Paperwork that only exists for people to say something's getting done that was previously done doesn't serve the ones filling the paperwork out.
It's crazy how many extra steps can be put into a process that already works fine just to prove to someone else down the chain that it's happening.
The issue is the system now depends on these unpaid overtime. So they strong arms you into it. Public also not very sympathetic since they think teacher = easy life due to school holidays off - this affects how hard their union can campaign
I know over a dozen teachers, and not a single one of them works anywhere near half the school holidays. One of them even considers spending less than 8 weeks overseas a year is a BAD year.
That's because the holidays are essentially paid overtime. On our payslips (QLD at least), it's put as we've worked 50hrs equivalent in a fortnight for a FT teacher. Only the really bad teachers actually work 5hrs a day and can, therefore, game the system. The idea is that the extra time spent on prep, calling home, etc is paid back during holidays. I think most normal people would be pretty shitty if they had to work on their TOIL days.
I 100% agree to saying no to the extra work. If we all keep saying "no," then hopefully they'd figure out they need to give us more time during the day. This extra work isn't always some new learning initiative for a HoD who wants to get a DP role. For example, a new curriculum has just been released. The first time in 15 years. Entire units, lessons, and assessments have to be altered and rewritten, meaning that teachers who had done the work to have lessons ready to go need to update again. It's expected that hundreds of hours will be poured into this, but most schools won't be given extra time to do so - something I believe the union is working on though, so we'll see.
What are the low effort entry level jobs making over $110K per year? I don’t think they’re as common as you think. Look for other jobs and if they sound genuinely better then take them, but I think a lot of teachers who have only ever done teaching can have a rose coloured view of corporate life. Give it a go if you want, you can always go back to teaching. Good luck getting more than $110k on your first job out and enjoy working 8:30-6pm and getting four days off over Christmas
Every teacher is convinced they’d be filthy rich if only they’d gone into industry. Reality is theyd likely end up near median (80k) working a completely normal job like bank teller or admin assistant or similar.
I'm close friends with a lot of teachers and they're all on a very high wage and have a good work-life balance (though with some very busy periods during report writing). They're home in the afternoon for their kids, have access to benefits and flexible work, go on frequent holidays, have secure jobs. They put up with a lot of ridiculous admin and often nonsense from parents, but they do have it *far* better than they think.
My impression is that given their excellent union (which always banging on about how little teachers earn and doing its job fighting for pay rises), and the current ease teachers have in finding work (there are huge teacher shortages after massive, rapid population growth), many teachers seem to lack awareness of the fact they're *already* some of the country's top earners and they are actually extremely well compensated in comparison to the overwhelming majority of roles out there.
Teachers have some amazing skills, but these don't necessarily translate to high earning alternative roles. For example, with little management experience, equivalent public service roles for which most teachers are competitive will be APS5 or APS6 roles, which generally pay 10-25% less than a median teaching wage brings in. Corporate roles may be possible, but will not give anywhere near the same benefits, so that has to be factored in.
For anyone thinking of leaving teaching, I'd certainly recommend against doing it out of an assumption you'll earn more money elsewhere. This is very unlikely. Almost any industry is going to require other qualifications and training and will likely come with a pay cut.
Absolutely pursue something else if you want a career change, but don't expect a higher wage, or certainly not right off the bat without additional training and experience: the reality is you are NOT underpaid for what you do according to the actual job market and median rates of pay available.
The fact is that people in the corporate world or people outside of education have no idea what it's like. They look at the perks and minimise the drawbacks. I taught for 5 years, worked in corporate and in public. The most intelligent hard working people I worked with were teachers, not even close.
If you think the average teacher is APS 5-6 level it shows how clueless you are. Try EL2 - SES Band 1 in terms of strategic thinking and responsibility, just for the average classroom teacher. The average teacher is on their feet 6 hours a day and makes 2000 decisions per day.
Do you ever have a day where you run back to back meetings all day, context switch constantly, have to learn and absorb information continuously and feel drained like you haven't done any actual work, then you get home and do busy work? That is every single day for a teacher. Now add behavior management, a sprinkling of parental abuse, incompetent departments and ever increasing admin and you might start to have an idea.
The fact is that teachers can earn way more and typically outperform the lifelong corpo worker in terms of strategic thinking, emotional intelligence and soft skills.
Took me 9 years (4 uni, 5 teaching) to make 90k in education. Took me 2.5 years in corpo to earn 150k (few industry certs, easy peasy) and I was only an average teacher, there were many way smarter and much harder working.
When I was a teacher I would work with people that I thought 'this person is of a different calibre, no matter how hard I worked or how much I studied I would never be able to get to their level'. Have never met a person where I thought the same in corpo, they either have hard skills or soft skills, not both.
People say 'but they get 10 weeks leave a year'. Trust me you need it to fight fatigue and burnout. You don't get any say when you take it and you can't switch off unless its the jan holidays. If it's such a sweet deal, all the corpo folks that think it's great should go and do it. We have a severe teacher shortage. Put you money where your mouth is... or shush.
Not a teacher here but teacher's pay comes not from the work they do or the hours they put in but the environment they operate in. Go ask your friends about all the horror stories out there.
How many people at an APS5 or 6 role have to deal with teaching a 4 or 5 classs of 25 different kids each day who might cyber stalk you and your family to filming and reporting your every actions and words?
How many white collar workers have to deal with disengaged clients and then attempt to with their parents who are even more disengaged? God forbid you tell off a kid whose parents have deep pockets and are well connected to the school alumni.
I think teaching was pretty cushy in the past but I can't imagine what it must be like now with technology as prevalent as it is. There's a reason why something like 50% of grads quit within the first 5 years.
The reality is the world is full of tough jobs. For example, teachers earn 20% more than paramedics and nurses - who I'd say have much, *much* tougher and more complex jobs, and certainly jobs with exponentially higher stakes and stress levels. There are many APS jobs with high stress and a high level of responsibility, for example those with frequent customer engagement, where people can be abused all day long and may need to deal with customers in vulnerable situations, often with high stakes.
I'm not saying teaching isn't a difficult job. It is. Teachers provide a valuable service and *should* be admired and well paid for what they do. But they *are* well paid.
It's a *very* well paid job with extremely good long term salary growth prospects and excellent job security.
You are clueless, teacher cap out at $120,000 after 10 years. After that there is no growth. Hardly long term.
Teaching is also way more complex than you clearly think.
Indexed pay ray rises you don't have to go in and beg for, you can go into "management" i.e. leadership roles, principals, work for the department, if you want to go higher or harder. You are clueless, the reality is most jobs won't earn anywhere near that amount and most jobs to get a meaningful pay rise you are personally going in and asking for it, putting in extra unpaid work to make yourself look good. Working in most jobs is obviously way more complex than you think.
I would push back on that; base rate yes but cops and ambo's get penalty rates which would push them over most teachers' salary.
You also don't need a degree to be a cop and you get paid to train.
>They're home in the afternoon for their kids, have access to benefits and flexible work
They're probably doing the bare minimum and scraping by on the skin of their arse, if that's how they present it.
If you think OP is delusional, you should check out r/australianteachers. They are living in a fantasy world echo chamber about how their suppposed noble sacrafices basically deserve martyrdom status in Australian society. It is bizarre yet fascinating to read.
I'm really not sure why they're like this. My best guess is it's kind of spilt over from American culture where it is common for teachers to complain about low salaries, poor work conditions etc. (rightfully so). They took this and for some reason, believe they are just as hard done by (they are not).
My brother in christ, nothing you say will convince them otherwise, absolutely nothing. Teachers, along with farmers, are easily the biggest whingers in Australia hands down. Although farmers don't usually get 10+ weeks of paid holidays.
I think it’s something you can’t really understand unless you’ve been inside it yourself. I agree that the pay and hours are actually, in general, quite good (and you’re slightly disingenuous saying pay and hours are the main points teachers on that sub are bringing up). OP is actually in the minority on this. Most teachers will tell you that the problem with teaching is the job itself: students have become unteachable, responsibility creep, admin and bureaucracy working against everyone but themselves, governing bodies/academics in positions of power that are out of touch. Something just isn’t working, and the stats are there to show it. People are leaving the profession in droves, and contrary to what others are suggesting, these aren’t all veteran teachers who know only teaching. I’d say close to most teachers actually moved from other professions.
If it's such an easy job, then why is there a shortage? Why do half of pre-service teachers quit before finishing their degree? Why are half of them leaving before they reach 5 years of service?
I encourage you to stand in front of a class of kids who would rather be anywhere else for 6 hours a day and not be completely exhausted by the end of it (that's without all the planning, marking and extra shit we do).
What we learned from Covid is that a lot of parents, when locked in a house with their own kids and given all the work to do from the teacher, still can't look after 1 or 2 kids of their own ,let alone 25-30 stranger kids.
OP hates teachers tbh if you look at their post history (I know, bad internet etiquette to bring up one's post history but still an interesting insight).
Don't teachers get 10 weeks annual leave? I'm sure they have to do class prep in that time but a 8:30-6 job paying $110k will only have 4 weeks annual leave so that's a
a big trade off too.
Reusable class prep for a large cohort of students where there are no real KPIs on performance is not particularly a stressful target.
KPI teachers on student outcomes and competitiveness and you'll have a point.
You look at improvement over time, not marks from a single exam. But, honestly, for those areas.....turning up to class to get chairs thrown at you and be verbally and physically threatened and abused is enough to deserve a pay rise before you even start considering KPIs.
If you pro rata the salary of this teacher to a non teacher role with only 4 weeks annual leave they'd be making just under $95k. If you go the other way, their salary would be $132k, which is a very good wage.
It feels like teachers love leaving out the fact they're paid very well for the time that they work
Teaching is a tough gig, and I’m grateful for good teachers, especially in public schools. But the amount of people here explaining they don’t get THAT many holidays are insane - I get 20 days per year and we have to take 10 compulsorily at Christmas!
100% we actually do get a lot of time off to decompress. I think the issues can also be super dependent on what schools you're at and how efficient you are at work etc. I'm really lucky to be at a great school etc but trade off is huge 300+ cohort (5 classes for me and min of marking 3 to 4 classes per assessment which usually overlap in time) which means infinite marking at an insane turnover. But tbh once you've been in the industry enough and if you don't take on many extra curricular roles, your holidays are pretty nice.
Unfortunately I maybe forever a temporary teacher (so I could just lose my job at any moment hah) so I do take on a few extracurricular which I enjoy.
The point is time spent at home. Non-term weeks are stay-at-home weeks. If OP is a parent then they must be saving countless money on daycare. Full month of Jan. Every two-week holiday of the year. Afternoons at home. All this time without having to drive to work and save so much on fuel. All other jobs paying the exact same as OP’s teaching job would still not be the same amount of money, with the amount spent on those non-term days.
Hey, ex teacher here. I fully understand what you’re saying. I’m now in the field of air traffic control now. After the initial training, starting salary is 115k and then after 9-10 years you’re at 210k. 14-15% super on top. Since there is a shortage, you’ll get lots of paid overtime which if done regularly, you can add an extra 30% income on top. Then if you want to go into middle leadership, (like a leading teacher/learning specialist in education), then there is a pay bump for that too.
That being said though, the application process and initial training is brutal and unforgiving. Shiftwork is the norm. Failing your medicals is pretty much the end of controlling for you. Mistakes have pretty grave consequences for hundreds of lives. Not a job for the feint in heart.
That would be one hell of a job! You must have nerves of steel. Good for you.
Story. I knew of a young woman who went for all the medicals etc for this. She went on holiday before starting. Overseas, she had a brain aneurysm😮 Close to death & was in a country with great healthcare luckily. BUT no reciprical health agreement with Australia. Her insurance tried to get out if paying by saying it was a pre- existing condition.
What saved it was that she'd been for several of those medicals and passed. Sje would never have passed if there was any evidence of such a brain defect.....phew!
That's what happened pretty much. You'd think they wouldn't take it as far as they did? But it went to court & the medicals that had been done clearly proved that no one knew she had an aneurysm.
I suppose? Given the cost was millions? She'd had complicated surgery & then had to stay in hospital for nearly 12 months before she could be moved.... They wanted to really get out of paying!
As they said, she was seconds from death. One very lucky person.
Still better than me as an accounting grad in Sydney, making 49.6k before taxes (42.9k after taxes).
*the job market is an absolute shitshow atm, so you've got this*
I suggest you do. So much opportunity especially in Sydney, and if you already have some experience you will be more attractive than freshly baked grads. You are being paid minimum wage and something tells me you are doing accounting work that is worth more than minimum wage.
Accountant of 15 years here, go to SME firms, they pay better than big 4 and have better work life balance. You still do overtime but not like big 4 where you are busting are round the clock and other than a few public holidays, they will turn their nose at you for taking any leave. Trust me, leave the big 4
I'm actually in a small firm, which *encourages work-life balance*, however the *catch* is that the *pay* is *$25 per hour* starting tomorrow!
I kinda want to go to Big4 or Top 30 Business Services/audit asap only because of the *exit opportunities* such as working in the *accounting and finance department* of large companies as an accountant in companies such as *Macquarie Group, ANZ Bank, Suncorp, IAG, Alianz, Westpac, CBA, EB Games, Flight Centre, Evolution Mining, Woolworths Group, Coles Group, Vanguard, Dell, Apple, Ingham's, Domain, RealEstate, Aldi Stores Australia, BHP, Rio Tinto, KFC, a2 Dairy, Arnotts Group, McDonald's, eBay, Amazon, Tesla, Hungry Jacks, and potentially even Uniqlo!*
However, I'm not entirely sure if it's worth *sacrificing WLB* for the sake of these *exit opportunities* because it seems like the wages for industry accountants are kinda *similar to those at public practice firms* later on down the road, and also *career progression* tends to be better in public practice firms rather than in industry (I could be wrong)?
*it's very unlikely I'll be working heaps of overtime because it seems like a small firm that isn't particularly busy as it's outside of Sydney, which explains the pay!*
There is a Facebook group named Small Business Advisors something something - and Tax Accountants maybe? Can’t remember but you’ll find it easily enough if you search. The people there post frequently about how much trouble they have finding staff. If you’re earning $25 an hour now, you can *definitely* jump ship and get more money elsewhere. You just need to know where to look.
Waiting for this comment. I get the demands on teachers, rude and abusive parents etc, but grad accountants have to deal with difficult clients and difficult partners/directors/seniors... for very little pay. Not fun.
But how many of those clients are throwing things at you and then back in your office almost immediately every single day? One of my colleagues was recently concussed by a student, and half an hour later she was sitting in emergency while he was being let out to recess play. I have been violently attacked by students and threatened by parents. The education department continues to support violent students while ignoring teachers who are scared to go to work. Either changes need to be made to support teacher safety, or we need to be paid a salary that reflects the working conditions we are facing.
Yeah, the shiftwork doesn't bother me but I know myself, I wouldnt be happy with that kind of stress. Sounds like you're earning every penny, needing to be on top of your game 100% of the time with risks like that.
It depends on what stream you choose. If you pick “tower”, then most likely you’ll be sent to a remote tower because the more experienced controllers would have already be stationed at the capital city towers. But if you pick “enroute”, you’ll either be in Melbourne or Brisbane.
Most people in corporate 6 figure jobs don’t get paid overtime. I haven’t been paid for overtime hours since I was 23 and got my first promotion. As an fyi, I am a salaried worker, employed to work 35 hours per week, with 4 weeks leave + 5 days at Christmas. I’ve never worked a 35 hour week and routinely work 9-10 hour days for no additional pay or time off. When it’s really busy, I can be logged on and working until 10 or 11pm. My husband, also a salaried worker, pulls the same sort of hours, if not more and again, no overtime pay or time in lieu.
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
Are you doing 17.5 plus hours a week of overtime as a regular thing?
Mean working hours in Queensland are 55 a week for teachers. For EQ that means 30 hours a week of unpaid overtime. Against a typical 37.5 hour paid week, that's 17.5 hours of unpaid overtime.
Early career teachers and leadership team often approach or exceed 70 hours a week.
My close friend made the jump from teaching to corporate so I can give a bit of perspective here.
1. She was shocked there are no such things as guaranteed promotions/pay rises in the private sector ie. It is possible to stay on entry level salary indefinitely if you have no luck.
2. First year she really struggled with being switched on the entire year without school holidays.
3. Overtime isn't as uncommon as she thought. All her friends boasting about never working past 5pm on social media were lying. On that note, she tried claiming for OT and you can guess how that went.
4. On a positive note, she enjoys dealing with adults and less children. The same parents who give her grief in parent teacher interviews are just normal adults in a workplace.
It's not always greener on the other side but it's always good to try new things.
I don't know any corporate jobs in my sector (accounting) that pay overtime, but you are expected to work massive overtime if you want just a CHANCE at a promotion which is heavily not guaranteed. Dw there are adults who behave like toddlers at times too, and clients can get aggressive. Grass is not greener, also if you're not a manager you earn way less than teachers working 60hr weeks year round working tight tax deadlines
Adding in that I have a friend who came to join me in private consulting from teaching and was shocked that other professions do at least as much unpaid overtime as teachers.
Suddenly $100K + and 10 weeks off wasn’t looking so bad.
Anyway. I think 112 K is pretty good money. You might just need to change schools.
Do you absolutely have to do all that extra work? Or are you one of those people who cant say no? Cant stand up for yourself?
It's the same at jobs I've been at (RN) They try to push extra work on you. I suppose its easier for me to refuse cause i have no interest in climbing the ladder. I just want to do my work, do it well, and go home. So if superiors wont promote me? I don't give a rats arse. Lol.
You have to learn to say NO.
Actually was just talking about this recently. A young relative is doing very well in teaching. I asked her how she handled the workload and part of the response was that she had to be tough & mindful of what she took on. She's very assertive & very smart & capable. I imagine they try to put a lot of extra stuff on her! Sounds to me like she weighs it up, but then says NO if she doesn't want to or doesnt ser benefit for her in doing it
I do think a lot of teachers have the habit of taking on too much in the way of extra work, and admins seem good at applying some pressure to do this. However, teachers do have more power than the majority of workers to say no - many people in corporate roles simply don't have this option, and will work hours of unpaid overtime because if they don't, they can be let go. Teachers aren't getting fired if they won't take on additional responsibilities outside the scope of their roles.
I'm also a teacher, a lot of the comments in this thread aren't exactly accurate in many ways (e.g. many private schools pay very similar, and in some cases less, depending on your State EBA).
What is the real problem? You want to make more money (e.g. 160+) or you want to have a better work/money ratio? Because you could always just stop doing all the extra stuff, the kids WILL survive. I work roughly 7.5hours a day and very rarely work at home outside of reporting time and maybe half a day on each school holidays - and students love my class. If you want to make more money, you could always have a look at leadership, but that still is going to cap you at certain amounts.
The good news for you, is that you can leave and try anything you want to try, and it won't be hard at all to walk back into a job.
Because Boomers (who make up something like half of qualified teachers) are retiring and we've seen massive, poorly planned population growth. Teacher retention isn't necessarily worse than in most other industries - people in the private sector often move jobs every year or two.
I think many teachers, much like the OP, have this idea they have it much harder than other workers and that the grass is greener. I have a friends on $120k+ who get salary bumps every year, have awesome super, have months of the year off and do have this idea they could walk into a higher paying job elsewhere; honestly though I seriously doubt they could find a role on anywhere near the same pay level, or certainly not one with such good benefits.
Some of this may come from unrealistic comparisons to US teachers who actually *are* grossly underpaid e.g. my son's kindergarten teacher was on something like $20,000 a year and worked a second food service job every night, weekends included, to make ends meet. I've never met an Australian teacher who's had to do anything like this.
Absolutely, great point, the boomers leaving is hitting hard - I gather there aren’t many Gen Xs either, due to various political choices in the past, so it’s already falling on us Millennials to be the elders in some cases. Boomers in teaching are also excellent pain sponges, happy to endure what younger staff wouldn’t tolerate, so they’re tough to replace.
I guess I can’t speak for how retention compares to other industries, but I do think there’s an issue attracting quality new teachers to the profession - the standard of pre-service and graduate teachers at my school (which is genuinely a great school that can normally afford to be quite choosy in who we hire) seems to be poorer these past few years.
I read a few years back that only 2% of students enrolled in teaching courses had an ATAR above 80, so clearly the highly capable applicants we would WANT teaching the future of our country aren’t putting their hands up. Jason Clare, the Federal Education Minister, has said he wants people to be as excited about studying education as they would medicine or law, but without comparable salaries I don’t see why anyone WOULD (not sure how state governments would afford to pay tens of thousands of people a doctor’s or lawyer’s salary, of course.)
I agree that teachers in Australia are paid well compared to the rest of the world, but we do LIVE in Australia, and so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the OP and teachers more broadly to compare themselves just to the high standard of living required here.
Perhaps the issue is HOW our pay is calculated: many people on this forum argue we’re paid too much, others say we’re paid too little, everyone has a personal take on how society should value us.
As it is we’re paid based on years experience, or leadership responsibility, rather than effectiveness and impact (which is hard to objectively measure) so perhaps if there was a way to pay teachers according to their ability (which the Union will never allow) people wouldn’t mind ‘better’ teachers receiving a higher pay, and less effective teachers earning a reduced salary - it seems to me that a major gripe on this forum is that people believe all teachers are on $120k for only working 3/4 of the year, which we apparently don’t deserve despite other industries having the option to wfh or receive annual bonuses.
I acknowledge there are a lot of lazy teachers, but it’s also one of the lowest paying jobs that requires a degree, and some of us came to teaching after studying and working in other industries, so we’re not all low-skilled baboons. I think some of us probably COULD earn a better income in other industries, but we choose to do this because we think it’s the most important thing we could be doing (no doubt a lot of people would say that about their job tho, so I accept if we can seem a little self-absorbed at times) so of course we’re always going to dream about better pay and conditions.
Heck, sometimes we’d just settle for kids listening to us and their parents not telling us how to do our job based on some anecdote they read on a Facebook forum.
Teachers on contract can't say no or they will never be made permanent. Permanent staff can't always say no, or they are likely to be force-transferred to an area/ school that is far from their home that they don't want to work in. (Not all states have the force- transfer system, but some do.)
And much of the outside hours work is not something that you can just say no to anyway. Lesson planning, unit planning, marking, reporting, parent-teacher interviews, writing individual student plans, contacting parents, recording contact with parents and other professionals, writing letters and filling out forms for medical and other professionals, attending meetings with parents and other professionals about students with complex needs... All absolutely required aspects of the profession, yet none of these things can be done whilst also teaching a room full of students, so it almost all happens outside paid hours.
On one hand, know your value. On the other - comparison is the thief of joy. I suspect it wont matter what job you do OP, there is a chance you'll still end up back at this point.
But to answer your question, disability support work usually has a lot of OT going (and penalty rates) - but you will be earning that money. Which may work out well for you, if you do still want something that will give you a feeling of purpose and achievement along with that Sunday double time OT.
All careers come to the point where you question your dedication and enthusiasm. To the pay and work conditions that you have to endure. Some see the signs and bail before long term health issues appear. Some don't and find themselves without choices. If money is your concern then quit and find a job that pays you the wage that satisfies your needs.
Teaching is relatively well paid given the responsibilities, intelligence and knowledge requirements. It's the BS behavioral stuff from parents and students that make the job tough.
Have you thought about leveraging your teaching qualifications and branching out into adult ed, instructional design or eLearning? You will need to get a cert 4 in TAA. Keep in mind 112K is an OK income when the national average is 58k I think.
I upvoted because those are options for someone who wants to get out of teaching school - but the money is not usually better, sometimes it’s worse.
OP enjoys working with kids - and wants more money.
My partner is an instructional designer/learning designer. He has had a number of teachers talk to him about transitioning into it, and they all didn’t do it when they found out it would be a pay cut.
I teach adults. Workplace safety or emergency response depending on the day. Full time is $85-100k in our industry so a pay cut. BUT I don't take work home, and often a course is 6-7 hours long. So not doing a full week really.
We feel you in this household. My husband has a Master's in Teaching. I have no formal degree. I make $30k more and made more by $10k after my return to work after 7 years off... It's not just the hours that suck, but also the Dept of Education's policies and the lack of ability to discipline students when they misbehave. Also, being a male teacher, there's a huge risk in general of unfavourable accusations.
I had a similar discussion with my daughters teachers during parent teacher interviews. They are so hamstrung about what they can do when kids are misbehaving in the class. And increasing acts of violence by teens. It's no wonder teachers are leaving in droves.
I am very appreciative of my daughters teachers. She has ASD and ADHD, so she gets a slightly modified curriculum for some classes. I am aware this is extra work for them, and may often performed outside of paid work hours, so them supporting my daughter so comprehensively is above and beyond.
Teachers are under appreciated, overworked and underpaid. Especially the good ones!
We need to protect them from burn out.
There was a brilliant student in my master class. After he told my husband and me (CPA qualified accountants) his paygrade, we even felt sorry for him.
My wife is a teacher. It blows my mind that she knows every year she will be getting a pay rise and what that amount is. IMO teachers like to gripe, it’s a tough job, but they just ignore the significant advantages they receive over most of the working population.
Teacher here - private and catholic schools pay more so you can always move into that sector. I make it a point not to do unpaid overtime unless it's something that directly benefits the kids and I'm happy about it. E.g. preparing a student for an eisteddfod or something. To be honest, you kind of have to put your foot down with schools and if they're asking you to do unnecessary paperwork you need to ask for less teaching load to make up for it or it just doesn't get done. Schools are generally desperate for good teachers so it's rare they will even think about firing you. As far as paid overtime, I tutor in the evenings for extra money, it pays well and I enjoy it.
If you do insist on doing unpaid OT then log everything so at least you can show the principal after a few months and make a claim for a lighter teaching load.
I'm sorry but... join the club. Plenty of professionals are working crazy hours, free overtime, high pressure, etc etc and not making $110k (myself included with a Masters Degree).
The grass always looks greener.
PS. Don't teachers get good holidays?
Go to casual / relief teaching. Pay rate is good and less stress with no reports / admin / meetings.
You only get paid when you work though, so while daily rate is high, you only have around 40 weeks per year you can potentially work.
You could look to tutoring for after hours - since you don’t have lesson planning / meetings after school anymore. Can also tutor on weekends / school holidays. Building your reputation up you could easily get $150/hour for tutoring based on what others have said they charge.
Build a tutoring business up and you can hire people to work for you and further expand your potential income.
Another teacher here (PE - can't teach, teach PE eh?) I hear you - workload and responbilities are substantial. I love my job, often have to pinch myself that I get paid to play sport. Personally, I've pretty much given up on going the extra mile. I do my job well and see awesome results for those that at least somewhat give a damn. But you're right, it's relentless, unforgiving and no one besides yourself appreciates the effort you put into lessons at times. I really do try my best but it can be demoralising at the worst of times. I've only been in the career for seven years and have seen my pay increase nearly forty thousand in that time. On top of that, every ten weeks we get break - definitely one of the highlights of our job! I commend you for your efforts. Please try to find a balance that makes you happy.
Teachers are well paid but they complaint loudly. While i agree that the workload needs to be reduced and pay at the senior levels could be increased, the 112k is basically 130k private job allowance for the same 4 week leave.
Before you complain that you work during parts of the holiday, private are actually working full time during that same period.
Name another job that is paid 85k grad pay and 130k senior that is low stress and easy. Nothing is easy money, teacher is hard, jobs with overtime is hard, jobs that pay 150k+ are hard. You might get the occassional unicorn but in the real world most of us dont have unicorn jobs.
Yeah, I understand that it isn't an easy job but at the same time i'm a veterinarian working 50+ hour weeks making mid $70K. I wouldn't be complaining as a teacher on $112K, jesus
It pains me how badly paid the whole vet industry is. Seriously crap. Every vet I used to work with had a partner in IT/finance/corporate who was the breadwinner, meanwhile they studied however many years and were constantly stressed for a pittance.
I'm also on a 70k salary working in food manufacturing and I started off at 55k. Overtime is expected and the work is non stop. I've been told being a teacher is a better alternative to what I do and this thread is making me think about making the jump.
You love your job? Why would you want to leave a job paying $112k with all of the leave entitlements? Have you worked full time elsewhere?
I was earning 90k as a civil engineer a bit over a year ago and quit due to stress. I turned my back on the industry and had very few skills for other industries, so I applied for jobs at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, Rebel Sport, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi. I was rejected from the defence force due to very minor medical issues. I must have applied for 30 jobs in retail and was rejected for each one.
I eventually got a crappy job from gumtree of all places and I had to start at 5am in the morning to earn a measly $23 an hour. It was stress free though so that was certainly a win.
I went back to uni to study part time while working full time and lucky for me I only had to complete six more units to get my 2nd tertiary degree. I just completed my studies in February and now I need to grind as a graduate accountant for the next three years to get anywhere near to back to what I was earning. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless you are truly hating the field you're working in. It's a tough pill to swallow. And everyone will ask you why you turned your back on a high paying career.
What skills do you have that can be transferred from teaching to another industry? I suspect you would have to go back and study or turn to a trade.
You get 112? I’m on mid-90 here in Victoria despite technically being ‘range 2’.
The problem is that there’s no scope for promotions, meaning an increase in pay per hour, beyond a certain point. After you hit the ceiling, there is no incentive to get better at your job, and every incentive to do the minimum to get by. This is the idiotic system that the AEU and friends have negotiated for us.
How many other fields can you name where the average millennial employee holds a Master’s degree and is salary capped at 115-120?
Good on you for posting your thoughts and question before you made a change given that you love your job (and I would call what you do a vocation because the continual learning and developing you will do over your career).
1. The grass is not greener it is just in a different yard. You will have the same challenges of work frustrations, co worker issues, bosses, pay, conditions and overtime if you go somewhere else. It won't change.
2. 110k is not too bad. You'll be lucky to get 80k for any entry level or unskilled work and skilled work is often 100 to 120k anyway.
3. If you LOVE what you do do not stop doing it as you will have exactly the same frustrations in every other job.
4. Have you thought about a management role within education to broaden your earning potential? This way you stay in a field you know using your previous degree and grow your income. BUT you will do more overtime.....
Good luck
It’s a job that ware’s you out.
You’re at the point in your career when people start to look at promotions as a way of getting out of the classroom. Problem is, there’s only so many of those positions to go around.
For some teachers, teaching is what puts air in their lungs. They’re a tiny subset of teachers that seem completely unfazed by anything. They often don’t have much else going on in their life. This has become the benchmark, and almost nobody can meet it.
I don’t know what the answer is for you, but I would try and take LWOP to go and do something else. Don’t overthink it. Just start applying
$112k is pretty great pay. Are you able to set some more effective boundaries and say no to extra things that are being given to you? Do you have to necessarily do all that over-time? Are you adding unnecessary work to your already large workload? It sounds to me like you might benefit from some more critical personal reflection, and assess where you might be ‘giving’ too much. You don’t always have to go above and beyond.
A lot of people in this thread don't understand the reality of working as a teacher. The stress and demand is insane and not worth the money or the mental health repercussions. I quit right after my graduation for reasons outlined with OP and never looked back.
If you enjoy the work then look into becoming a behaviour therapist OP. There is some crossover but the pay is much better (~$90/hr starting rate), some companies will offer you full flexibility and autonomy over your schedule, and you still get to have the same rewarding feeling of helping the youth.
Feel free to DM me if you want more information. Everything I'm speaking of is first hand experience.
I like how most people who talk shit about teachers gloss over the fact that they are fighting for pay AND conditions. It's not just about the pay, I think you'd find that if you adjusted the conditions, the "whinging" would dissipate.
112k is good money but not when your working the hours that a teacher works? 12 weeks off a year? No. They are expected to do work for a portion of that.
And for clarification for the many who seem not to understand, teachers only get the standard 4 weeks paid holiday. The other 8 weeks is covered by pay being prorated to cover them. Teachers on shorter contracts are paid the same amount overall but receive more per pay as they aren’t paid during the holidays.
And although these 8 weeks are unpaid, many teachers are expected or need to work during them in order to catch up with the workload. So realistically, these are unpaid work weeks.
What sort of teaching, i.e. high school or primary school? Public or private?
Could you take on some students to tutor? Or become a HSC (or your state equivalent) maker?
Will you consider being a freelance tutor? I used to send my kids to this tuition centre called Northshore and they command quite a hefty fees from us parents
Mr brother in Christ move to a better paid school or take on extra responsibilities you're nowhere near the top of the pay scale in Australia.
Many people in my school are over 150k
Teaching a bunch of kids all day sounds absolutely challenging and exhausting, but if you love it and are good at it, please keep it up because we need you!
Myself and spouse are probably 10-20 years older than you and both have +5 years of uni. Neither of us earning as much as you do. My spouse works about 50 hours a week with none of it paid as overtime. I don't work with kids but I do work with challenging clients which like you, I enjoy, but it is tiring.
Compared to us, your salary and leave sound quite good. If you also like the job, I think you are in a good position.
My suggestion would be, if you want to earn more by doing overtime, just add some extra work on weekends/evenings/holidays. A family member is a retired teacher, when they used to work they worked in a different industry one day a week, and did odd jobs in the holidays. Also you can sign up for exam marking and things, tutoring, or do something totally different which gives you a mental break from the world of teaching. You can make a good chunk of change doing a 8-10 hour shift on a Saturday night/Sunday doing disability support, truck driving, bar tending, whatever!
You also need to be really firm about your boundaries and just doing "good enough" in a teaching role. Because there is endless stuff you could do. Easier said that done, but if you practise saying no to spending hours marking/prepping during holidays and outside class times you can reclaim a lot of time to make some extra money on the side. My relative was a great teacher but was very efficient about their outside class time and therefore had lots of spare time to do other stuff.
Lol do it then come back and post about being attacked by mentally ill angry kids and how you want to quit. Most teachers don’t care about the lack of money but the inability to discipline kids is the issue.
I have two family members who are teachers, as well as some friends who found their way into the profession. From my experiences, the workload/enjoyment is mainly down to the school and management, like any job it varies. My brother is able to cram in most marking and planning in a few hours, has gotten multiple promotions in his early career from doing well, has free time in between periods to either work, or sit on his phone, takes the kids to activities, enjoy 95% of his holidays and barely works much overtime compared to the average job.
I think many teachers have come right out of school, into uni, back into school and have a skewed perception of the workforce and “paid overtime” (which isn’t common) as well as how glamorous other professions are.
Many redditors come to the defence of teachers due to misconceptions, but in Australia at least they are relatively well paid, exceptional annual leave, have free time in between periods (depending on the school) and are usually home by 5 with little to no weekend work.
Looking at some of these comments are hilarious, no teachers are averaging 55 hours a week lol. Starting at 8 and doing some light admin after 3:30 till 5 is not a tough gig compared to most corporate places.
Workload and enjoyment down to management yes.
Relatively well paid yes.
Home by 5 and little weekend work, half right for some. I get home at 5.30 and live close to school, rarely work weekends.
No teachers averaging 55, plenty do, but they shouldn’t, they should just stop at 40.
Exceptional annual, yes and the the best perk of the job.
Doing some light admin after 3, no that’s work, meetings and often the little uninterrupted time you get to do planning and marking.
If your brother is cramming his marking and planning into only a few hours so he can sit on his phone he’s either been teaching for over a decade and has his shit sorted, or he’s short changing his kids. If you want to do a half way reasonable job you work a solid 8 hour day and go home.
You were right, in 2018. Then, it was 54 hpw.
"teachers are working an average of 54 hours per week (43 hours at school and 11 hours at home)" 2018.
Now there are less of us.
https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-nsw-teachers-working-long-hours-to-cope-with-administrative-load-99453#:~:text=While%20most%20people%20expect%20to,them%20to%20meet%20compliance%20standards.
What a whine, do permanent night shift for under 90k with no 8 weeks holidays and breaking my back every night on 4 hour sleeps for far less than you. What an absolute whinge, doesn't pass the pub test in fact you're lucky you're not in a pub.
Move into the private system. Most elite private schools pay 135k+ easily, on top of which lots of extracurricular activities that will pay you for.
For perspective I'm a classroom teacher + extracurricular which I take on. Gross is 165k. I could take on more sport and activities for more but not at this point as money isn't the only priority.
How’s the job security? Are you on a contract or ongoing?
Also what are the parents like - I work at a high achieving gov school and they’re already pretty entitled…
Fine, worked in the private system for 7years now (across two schools). Permanent at both right away. Don't know a single private school (secondary) they would even consider hiring temp.
First school I think other than the occasional behaviour management, I had one contact from a parent in five years. They didn't really seem to care tbh.
Second school again, in two years maybe sent 3-5 emails at most to parents (no phone calls) and of those usually they were heads up regarding poor academic results because I submitted work and or assessment results. They just copped it on the chin and moved on
I'm sure if you were at private highly geared academic schools like Knox Grammar it would be different but most of the students are at these schools for the experience and connections.
Wow that’s great, quite different to what I’d been led to believe - might have to look at jumping over to Private!
How many hours per week do you put in, in order to get up to $165k? (That’s more than a lot of Gov AP salaries!)
- Base is 135k (8:30ish-3:30), normal school day. Rarely if ever take work home as department is very well resourced.
- cocurricular commitments (usually must do something), Im an age coordinator for a sport. Glorified admin for a second, have automated most of the work that pays 5k. In season about 1hr a week of work. (Season is about 2 terms)
- Have worked in a boarding house for once a week for the past 7years. Different schools pay differently, last one was contract, current is hourly. One night a week works out to be 25k EOY.
I could take on more responsibility or cocurricular but am happy where I am at. It's a good work life balance.
I have friends at some other private schools being paid 155k for a classroom teacher, with HODs another 20-30k on that.
Additionally, we have longer holidays, works out about 3extra weeks per year (break up first week of December) + term 2 holidays is 3 instead of 2weeks.
Wow, this is extraordinary to me, I had no idea it was such a significant pay increase over Government - I’d always thought it was only about 10k more with significantly more responsibility and pressure.
Thanks for detailing all that, very helpful!
The only entry level jobs that might pay $110K are in the mines. I did a Driller Offsider job in WA, 4 weeks on 2 weeks off, no lunch break for a 12-13 hour shift, working in the sun, rain, wind, doing tough physical work.
You're welcome to try...
Depending on your teaching level and subjects you could do tutoring.
FIFO/dido may also be suitable.
There may be some inhouse training companies.
Look at larger companies training roles.
I know our technical trainers get 150k+
Hell you could write training materials with field based guys
Do some BS safety course delivery and go arround the state for that.
Or you could simply become an operator and earn decent money.
If you want to make good money and don't mind long hours, and don't want years more study,go into business. Buy a business. Start a business. Not a franchise.
You'll need drive, intelligence, the ability to listen to customers and the ability to find a niche and general purpose skills like initiative and communication.
What about moving into government or edu department roles? Both pay well. My parents were both teachers; one moved into being a primary principle early by going rural for 7 years, and one moved into a state department role before ending up in a state role working on national curriculum. There's also lots of consulting companies for edu in aus.
I'm in corporate; to manage expectations my first role out of uni was 60k and it has been a grind to where I am now (over 200k package senior role). From the start I've never been a 40 hour week, every role has been unpaid overtime. Particularly now, I work big hours.
There's also job insecurity which you don't face as a teacher once you are perm. One set of redundancies, or a new C-suite/manager who doesn't like you...start job hunting.
The other big benefit that isn't mentioned often is LSL - as long as you stay gov, you can change schools and keep you LSL going. Such an amazing benefit! In corp, change companies, start the 7/10 year countdown again.
I'm a software engineer which is usually held up as the gold standard of high paying cushy jobs for grads. For the first 6 months of my career I was working 30 hours a week for $500, for the next year of that I consistently did 80 hour weeks for 65k. During my entire career I have been paid for overtime once. I know engineers working at big tech companies making less in salary than a graduate teacher.
Trust me, you're not going to get a better deal than teaching.
I can't complain before I retrained as a teacher, I was working in the chemical industry and pulling 80 hrs a week is normal for me. I was always on a temp contract and the pay was ok at the time.
I am now enjoying the benefits of a teacher. loving the holidays. can't complain because I came from another place that was worse than being a teacher.
Do what you want with the comfort of knowing you’re in an industry that will still be there and easy to get back into should your new choice not work out.
Just do it life’s to short for what if’s
What are the low effort entry level jobs making over $110K per year? What are the low effort entry level jobs that get the level of holidays that you enjoy? Do you feel ripped off over your employment conditions seriously?
Everyone is looking for more money and thinks the other bloke is better off from lawyers that get shit money in the first several years of employment to then making lots of money but working endlessly. Accountants, and book keepers that get stressed around tax time.
Your initial comment "I will preface this by saying I love what I do and enjoy going to work everyday." is one that many people would take less money for to be able to enjoy their job.
Now to your question " I am wanting to branch out in an industry where I can get a lot of overtime that can increase my pay significantly." If you truly want to INCREASE your pay few jobs paying overtime will do it .
To the question "What industry/career would you recommend me for this?" - if you believe in yourself and have a passion selecting the right product in sales and working on a commission will give you the income you seek.
I wish you well but can't think of any other industry where teaching skills can be adapted for profit and that appears to be your goal higher income. I will read the comments below once posted and see if I have missed something that has been already been posted.
The pay is fine, for me it's the conditions. Pay for leaving 2:20 and 12 weeks holidays is fantastic. But dealing with admin and BS time wasting meetings is the annoying aspect.
I think the benefit of being a teacher is you can do it from anywhere, 110k might not be a lot in Sydney but you can live like a king in North QLD or WA.
You also only work 40 weeks of the year, the salary is effectively 150k in any other industry.
Looks to me like you're conflating a few things which aren't actually equivalent, and/or taking a few rare anecdotal accounts, and drawing slightly unrealistic conclusions.
**1. Entry-level jobs earning $112k**
Where? Who? The median salary in Australia is around $70,000, so half of all people in Australia working full-time earn less than that. A salary of $112k puts you in the top 20% of all full-time earners in the country, let alone comparing specifically to unskilled entry-level work.
I graduated Uni about a decade ago, and some of my friends who have been the most financially well-off are the ones who are teachers. Salaries are quite high, and the job security and union-driven workplace protections are great.
**2. Overtime for shift work vs overtime for salaried work.**
Its not only teachers who do unpaid overtime, the stock-standard for salaried roles these days is "salary X paid based on a 40-hour week but inclusive of any reasonable additional hours required for your role". I've seen that for engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, accountants, social workers, miners, etc etc.
Paid overtime is primarily the province of casual shift-work or public service roles, which typically have a much lower pay rate. I have a friend who works as a park ranger, and her base rate is low, but she can pick up extra shifts occasionally on weekends or overnight to bump those numbers up to a living wage.
**3. Overtime for more work vs overtime because you want to do a good job.**
You gave the specific example of doing overtime to "make learning fun, engaging and inspiring". That is a great thing to do, but it has no parallels to the sort of overtime people get paid to do.
* A retail worker doesn't get paid overtime to stack the shelves in a super neat, visually pleasing way that helps the shopper. They get paid to unload another truckload of product.
* A nurse doesn't get paid overtime to pretty up the patients rooms and make the pillows super fluffy for a comfortable stay. They get paid to make sure people don't die overnight, change more dressings, and put in more stents and catheters.
The teacher equivalent isn't "more fun learning experience", its tutoring or out-of-school-hours care. Both of which you can get paid for.
**4. Sense of purpose and achievement.**
Some people work just to take home a paycheck, others are lucky enough to find their passion and get paid for it. If you're passionate about teaching and earning a well above-average salary, it sounds to me like you're on a winning trajectory already.
112k isn't bad. I'm 8 years in IT at 120k with 5 years university.
If you truly love what you do, I suggest you stick to teaching, and instead invest time into learning to use AI to do the unneccessary or time-wasting parts of your job. With that freed up time, enjoy life or find/study a side hustle if you require extra money.
Come again? 112k and 12 weeks paid holidays is pretty good not to mention actual teaching finishes at 3pm.
You would have known every thing that’s involved in being a teacher and that requires you to work past 3pm like marking, class prep, parent teacher interviews ect.
A pay rise won’t change your job title or conditions within the school.
I think your pay is pretty good for what it is and you're not paid that overtime and extra work because you get extra weeks off work every year that others do not.
I think it sounds like a fair trade.
How much did your degree cost?
You get what? 8 weeks off a year cos the school is closed plus your annual leave right? Unless leave can only be taken when school is out?
Annual leave can only be taken over the summer break. Which, when you include all of the public holidays everyone else gets over that period, is about 4 weeks annual leave, and around one or two days of stand down. The stand down is usually spent doing mandatory PD.
As someone who has a lot of family who are teachers, you need to learn to say 'no' to those extra roles you take on that's making you work unpaid overtime. Some of my family take on the extra roles and some dont, yet they all get job satisfaction. The main difference is that those who don't, aren't constantly exhausted. You have to find the balance between taking on extra roles/tasks that you like/want and taking on roles to look 'good'. Reality is, the majority of teachers don't take on much of these extra roles. You will get just as much job satisfaction as you will be able to give your full energy into your actual passion, the kids and the roles you do want. I think it's a risk changing professions just to get paid overtime. Working regular overtime hours isn't sustainable long term.
The system is designed so that principals have enormous power over a large cohort of temporary teachers and new graduates. Once you have tenure, stop doing the pet projects that achieve nothing but help admin get promoted. The kids are your raison d'etre. Do only things that help you help them. Overworking yourself hurts you both. Come in later, leave on time, get on to the ipad for an hour of research each weeknight, and see if you rediscover the passion enough to stop being jealous. If you're really committed to leaving to chase money, then you'll either have to sell your soul to political games in an office or ruin your body in a trade.
Paperwork that only exists for people to say something's getting done that was previously done doesn't serve the ones filling the paperwork out. It's crazy how many extra steps can be put into a process that already works fine just to prove to someone else down the chain that it's happening.
The issue is the system now depends on these unpaid overtime. So they strong arms you into it. Public also not very sympathetic since they think teacher = easy life due to school holidays off - this affects how hard their union can campaign
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I know over a dozen teachers, and not a single one of them works anywhere near half the school holidays. One of them even considers spending less than 8 weeks overseas a year is a BAD year.
That's because the holidays are essentially paid overtime. On our payslips (QLD at least), it's put as we've worked 50hrs equivalent in a fortnight for a FT teacher. Only the really bad teachers actually work 5hrs a day and can, therefore, game the system. The idea is that the extra time spent on prep, calling home, etc is paid back during holidays. I think most normal people would be pretty shitty if they had to work on their TOIL days. I 100% agree to saying no to the extra work. If we all keep saying "no," then hopefully they'd figure out they need to give us more time during the day. This extra work isn't always some new learning initiative for a HoD who wants to get a DP role. For example, a new curriculum has just been released. The first time in 15 years. Entire units, lessons, and assessments have to be altered and rewritten, meaning that teachers who had done the work to have lessons ready to go need to update again. It's expected that hundreds of hours will be poured into this, but most schools won't be given extra time to do so - something I believe the union is working on though, so we'll see.
So why is there a teacher shortage? People should falling over themselves to become teachers if it's so great, no?
If you work 5 hours a week more than the EA it basically turns to flex.
What are the low effort entry level jobs making over $110K per year? I don’t think they’re as common as you think. Look for other jobs and if they sound genuinely better then take them, but I think a lot of teachers who have only ever done teaching can have a rose coloured view of corporate life. Give it a go if you want, you can always go back to teaching. Good luck getting more than $110k on your first job out and enjoy working 8:30-6pm and getting four days off over Christmas
Every teacher is convinced they’d be filthy rich if only they’d gone into industry. Reality is theyd likely end up near median (80k) working a completely normal job like bank teller or admin assistant or similar.
Grass is always greener on the other side, if you think can get 112K for little effort, explain why its a top 20th percentile income 😂
I'm close friends with a lot of teachers and they're all on a very high wage and have a good work-life balance (though with some very busy periods during report writing). They're home in the afternoon for their kids, have access to benefits and flexible work, go on frequent holidays, have secure jobs. They put up with a lot of ridiculous admin and often nonsense from parents, but they do have it *far* better than they think. My impression is that given their excellent union (which always banging on about how little teachers earn and doing its job fighting for pay rises), and the current ease teachers have in finding work (there are huge teacher shortages after massive, rapid population growth), many teachers seem to lack awareness of the fact they're *already* some of the country's top earners and they are actually extremely well compensated in comparison to the overwhelming majority of roles out there. Teachers have some amazing skills, but these don't necessarily translate to high earning alternative roles. For example, with little management experience, equivalent public service roles for which most teachers are competitive will be APS5 or APS6 roles, which generally pay 10-25% less than a median teaching wage brings in. Corporate roles may be possible, but will not give anywhere near the same benefits, so that has to be factored in. For anyone thinking of leaving teaching, I'd certainly recommend against doing it out of an assumption you'll earn more money elsewhere. This is very unlikely. Almost any industry is going to require other qualifications and training and will likely come with a pay cut. Absolutely pursue something else if you want a career change, but don't expect a higher wage, or certainly not right off the bat without additional training and experience: the reality is you are NOT underpaid for what you do according to the actual job market and median rates of pay available.
The fact is that people in the corporate world or people outside of education have no idea what it's like. They look at the perks and minimise the drawbacks. I taught for 5 years, worked in corporate and in public. The most intelligent hard working people I worked with were teachers, not even close. If you think the average teacher is APS 5-6 level it shows how clueless you are. Try EL2 - SES Band 1 in terms of strategic thinking and responsibility, just for the average classroom teacher. The average teacher is on their feet 6 hours a day and makes 2000 decisions per day. Do you ever have a day where you run back to back meetings all day, context switch constantly, have to learn and absorb information continuously and feel drained like you haven't done any actual work, then you get home and do busy work? That is every single day for a teacher. Now add behavior management, a sprinkling of parental abuse, incompetent departments and ever increasing admin and you might start to have an idea. The fact is that teachers can earn way more and typically outperform the lifelong corpo worker in terms of strategic thinking, emotional intelligence and soft skills. Took me 9 years (4 uni, 5 teaching) to make 90k in education. Took me 2.5 years in corpo to earn 150k (few industry certs, easy peasy) and I was only an average teacher, there were many way smarter and much harder working. When I was a teacher I would work with people that I thought 'this person is of a different calibre, no matter how hard I worked or how much I studied I would never be able to get to their level'. Have never met a person where I thought the same in corpo, they either have hard skills or soft skills, not both. People say 'but they get 10 weeks leave a year'. Trust me you need it to fight fatigue and burnout. You don't get any say when you take it and you can't switch off unless its the jan holidays. If it's such a sweet deal, all the corpo folks that think it's great should go and do it. We have a severe teacher shortage. Put you money where your mouth is... or shush.
What corpo role/field did you move into? I’m also looking for a way out.
Not a teacher here but teacher's pay comes not from the work they do or the hours they put in but the environment they operate in. Go ask your friends about all the horror stories out there. How many people at an APS5 or 6 role have to deal with teaching a 4 or 5 classs of 25 different kids each day who might cyber stalk you and your family to filming and reporting your every actions and words? How many white collar workers have to deal with disengaged clients and then attempt to with their parents who are even more disengaged? God forbid you tell off a kid whose parents have deep pockets and are well connected to the school alumni. I think teaching was pretty cushy in the past but I can't imagine what it must be like now with technology as prevalent as it is. There's a reason why something like 50% of grads quit within the first 5 years.
The reality is the world is full of tough jobs. For example, teachers earn 20% more than paramedics and nurses - who I'd say have much, *much* tougher and more complex jobs, and certainly jobs with exponentially higher stakes and stress levels. There are many APS jobs with high stress and a high level of responsibility, for example those with frequent customer engagement, where people can be abused all day long and may need to deal with customers in vulnerable situations, often with high stakes. I'm not saying teaching isn't a difficult job. It is. Teachers provide a valuable service and *should* be admired and well paid for what they do. But they *are* well paid. It's a *very* well paid job with extremely good long term salary growth prospects and excellent job security.
You are clueless, teacher cap out at $120,000 after 10 years. After that there is no growth. Hardly long term. Teaching is also way more complex than you clearly think.
Indexed pay ray rises you don't have to go in and beg for, you can go into "management" i.e. leadership roles, principals, work for the department, if you want to go higher or harder. You are clueless, the reality is most jobs won't earn anywhere near that amount and most jobs to get a meaningful pay rise you are personally going in and asking for it, putting in extra unpaid work to make yourself look good. Working in most jobs is obviously way more complex than you think.
I would push back on that; base rate yes but cops and ambo's get penalty rates which would push them over most teachers' salary. You also don't need a degree to be a cop and you get paid to train.
>They're home in the afternoon for their kids, have access to benefits and flexible work They're probably doing the bare minimum and scraping by on the skin of their arse, if that's how they present it.
Yep and you're not seeing the early mornings or marking til 3am. Or unpaid PT interviews or overnight camps.
top 20th percentile
5 year degree to be a bank teller?
This needs more upvotes
If you think OP is delusional, you should check out r/australianteachers. They are living in a fantasy world echo chamber about how their suppposed noble sacrafices basically deserve martyrdom status in Australian society. It is bizarre yet fascinating to read. I'm really not sure why they're like this. My best guess is it's kind of spilt over from American culture where it is common for teachers to complain about low salaries, poor work conditions etc. (rightfully so). They took this and for some reason, believe they are just as hard done by (they are not). My brother in christ, nothing you say will convince them otherwise, absolutely nothing. Teachers, along with farmers, are easily the biggest whingers in Australia hands down. Although farmers don't usually get 10+ weeks of paid holidays.
I think it’s something you can’t really understand unless you’ve been inside it yourself. I agree that the pay and hours are actually, in general, quite good (and you’re slightly disingenuous saying pay and hours are the main points teachers on that sub are bringing up). OP is actually in the minority on this. Most teachers will tell you that the problem with teaching is the job itself: students have become unteachable, responsibility creep, admin and bureaucracy working against everyone but themselves, governing bodies/academics in positions of power that are out of touch. Something just isn’t working, and the stats are there to show it. People are leaving the profession in droves, and contrary to what others are suggesting, these aren’t all veteran teachers who know only teaching. I’d say close to most teachers actually moved from other professions.
If it's such an easy job, then why is there a shortage? Why do half of pre-service teachers quit before finishing their degree? Why are half of them leaving before they reach 5 years of service? I encourage you to stand in front of a class of kids who would rather be anywhere else for 6 hours a day and not be completely exhausted by the end of it (that's without all the planning, marking and extra shit we do).
What we learned from Covid is that a lot of parents, when locked in a house with their own kids and given all the work to do from the teacher, still can't look after 1 or 2 kids of their own ,let alone 25-30 stranger kids.
Perhaps OP can ask all these ex-teachers what they're doing now .
And yet, there’s 3,000 jobs for teaching in NSW that nobody will apply for. Sounds like they need you and you should apply!
OP hates teachers tbh if you look at their post history (I know, bad internet etiquette to bring up one's post history but still an interesting insight).
I too want to know. I bust my arse for my salary (same as OP).
Don't teachers get 10 weeks annual leave? I'm sure they have to do class prep in that time but a 8:30-6 job paying $110k will only have 4 weeks annual leave so that's a a big trade off too.
Reusable class prep for a large cohort of students where there are no real KPIs on performance is not particularly a stressful target. KPI teachers on student outcomes and competitiveness and you'll have a point.
How do you KPI teachers in low ses areas? You’re getting kids in Yr 7 that can’t read or write.
You look at improvement over time, not marks from a single exam. But, honestly, for those areas.....turning up to class to get chairs thrown at you and be verbally and physically threatened and abused is enough to deserve a pay rise before you even start considering KPIs.
If you pro rata the salary of this teacher to a non teacher role with only 4 weeks annual leave they'd be making just under $95k. If you go the other way, their salary would be $132k, which is a very good wage. It feels like teachers love leaving out the fact they're paid very well for the time that they work
Teaching is a tough gig, and I’m grateful for good teachers, especially in public schools. But the amount of people here explaining they don’t get THAT many holidays are insane - I get 20 days per year and we have to take 10 compulsorily at Christmas!
100% we actually do get a lot of time off to decompress. I think the issues can also be super dependent on what schools you're at and how efficient you are at work etc. I'm really lucky to be at a great school etc but trade off is huge 300+ cohort (5 classes for me and min of marking 3 to 4 classes per assessment which usually overlap in time) which means infinite marking at an insane turnover. But tbh once you've been in the industry enough and if you don't take on many extra curricular roles, your holidays are pretty nice. Unfortunately I maybe forever a temporary teacher (so I could just lose my job at any moment hah) so I do take on a few extracurricular which I enjoy.
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The point is time spent at home. Non-term weeks are stay-at-home weeks. If OP is a parent then they must be saving countless money on daycare. Full month of Jan. Every two-week holiday of the year. Afternoons at home. All this time without having to drive to work and save so much on fuel. All other jobs paying the exact same as OP’s teaching job would still not be the same amount of money, with the amount spent on those non-term days.
Day care has to be paid for whether the child goes or not, or you lose your place.
I like how accurate yet respectful this response is. Teachers earn a lot imo
Hey, ex teacher here. I fully understand what you’re saying. I’m now in the field of air traffic control now. After the initial training, starting salary is 115k and then after 9-10 years you’re at 210k. 14-15% super on top. Since there is a shortage, you’ll get lots of paid overtime which if done regularly, you can add an extra 30% income on top. Then if you want to go into middle leadership, (like a leading teacher/learning specialist in education), then there is a pay bump for that too. That being said though, the application process and initial training is brutal and unforgiving. Shiftwork is the norm. Failing your medicals is pretty much the end of controlling for you. Mistakes have pretty grave consequences for hundreds of lives. Not a job for the feint in heart.
That would be one hell of a job! You must have nerves of steel. Good for you. Story. I knew of a young woman who went for all the medicals etc for this. She went on holiday before starting. Overseas, she had a brain aneurysm😮 Close to death & was in a country with great healthcare luckily. BUT no reciprical health agreement with Australia. Her insurance tried to get out if paying by saying it was a pre- existing condition. What saved it was that she'd been for several of those medicals and passed. Sje would never have passed if there was any evidence of such a brain defect.....phew!
Wouldn't the insurer have to prove it was a pre-existing? On what basis could they claim that without evidence?
That's what happened pretty much. You'd think they wouldn't take it as far as they did? But it went to court & the medicals that had been done clearly proved that no one knew she had an aneurysm. I suppose? Given the cost was millions? She'd had complicated surgery & then had to stay in hospital for nearly 12 months before she could be moved.... They wanted to really get out of paying! As they said, she was seconds from death. One very lucky person.
Fml… making 95k as a software engineer in Sydney.. for the past 3 years.. And job applications this year have been so disappointing 😭
Still better than me as an accounting grad in Sydney, making 49.6k before taxes (42.9k after taxes). *the job market is an absolute shitshow atm, so you've got this*
Are you in the big 4? That is abysmally low even for accounting...
I want to leave as soon as possible. I almost had a mental breakdown tbh
I suggest you do. So much opportunity especially in Sydney, and if you already have some experience you will be more attractive than freshly baked grads. You are being paid minimum wage and something tells me you are doing accounting work that is worth more than minimum wage.
Accountant of 15 years here, go to SME firms, they pay better than big 4 and have better work life balance. You still do overtime but not like big 4 where you are busting are round the clock and other than a few public holidays, they will turn their nose at you for taking any leave. Trust me, leave the big 4
I'm actually in a small firm, which *encourages work-life balance*, however the *catch* is that the *pay* is *$25 per hour* starting tomorrow! I kinda want to go to Big4 or Top 30 Business Services/audit asap only because of the *exit opportunities* such as working in the *accounting and finance department* of large companies as an accountant in companies such as *Macquarie Group, ANZ Bank, Suncorp, IAG, Alianz, Westpac, CBA, EB Games, Flight Centre, Evolution Mining, Woolworths Group, Coles Group, Vanguard, Dell, Apple, Ingham's, Domain, RealEstate, Aldi Stores Australia, BHP, Rio Tinto, KFC, a2 Dairy, Arnotts Group, McDonald's, eBay, Amazon, Tesla, Hungry Jacks, and potentially even Uniqlo!* However, I'm not entirely sure if it's worth *sacrificing WLB* for the sake of these *exit opportunities* because it seems like the wages for industry accountants are kinda *similar to those at public practice firms* later on down the road, and also *career progression* tends to be better in public practice firms rather than in industry (I could be wrong)? *it's very unlikely I'll be working heaps of overtime because it seems like a small firm that isn't particularly busy as it's outside of Sydney, which explains the pay!*
Also B4 audit pays less than my wage on an hourly basis (if you're in specific teams), but at least they get *lucrative exit opportunities!*
There is a Facebook group named Small Business Advisors something something - and Tax Accountants maybe? Can’t remember but you’ll find it easily enough if you search. The people there post frequently about how much trouble they have finding staff. If you’re earning $25 an hour now, you can *definitely* jump ship and get more money elsewhere. You just need to know where to look.
Waiting for this comment. I get the demands on teachers, rude and abusive parents etc, but grad accountants have to deal with difficult clients and difficult partners/directors/seniors... for very little pay. Not fun.
But how many of those clients are throwing things at you and then back in your office almost immediately every single day? One of my colleagues was recently concussed by a student, and half an hour later she was sitting in emergency while he was being let out to recess play. I have been violently attacked by students and threatened by parents. The education department continues to support violent students while ignoring teachers who are scared to go to work. Either changes need to be made to support teacher safety, or we need to be paid a salary that reflects the working conditions we are facing.
Yes, I'd be surprised to meet an accountant who has been regularly bitten at work!
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You make more at Coles
You'll feel better once you've gotten your CA/CPA and gone into commercial.
Yeah, the shiftwork doesn't bother me but I know myself, I wouldnt be happy with that kind of stress. Sounds like you're earning every penny, needing to be on top of your game 100% of the time with risks like that.
To be honest, 50% of the time it’s fun. 49% of the time it is boring. 1% of the time it is sheer nightmare inducing terror.
And don’t you have to work in a remote location for the first several years?
It depends on what stream you choose. If you pick “tower”, then most likely you’ll be sent to a remote tower because the more experienced controllers would have already be stationed at the capital city towers. But if you pick “enroute”, you’ll either be in Melbourne or Brisbane.
Current Prin here. Keen to move into that!
Interesting career path, are you also a part time magician?
What low silled jobs are making 110k a year??
5 baristas sticky taped together
Ah the human centibean
None that I know of
Most people in corporate 6 figure jobs don’t get paid overtime. I haven’t been paid for overtime hours since I was 23 and got my first promotion. As an fyi, I am a salaried worker, employed to work 35 hours per week, with 4 weeks leave + 5 days at Christmas. I’ve never worked a 35 hour week and routinely work 9-10 hour days for no additional pay or time off. When it’s really busy, I can be logged on and working until 10 or 11pm. My husband, also a salaried worker, pulls the same sort of hours, if not more and again, no overtime pay or time in lieu.
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
Are you doing 17.5 plus hours a week of overtime as a regular thing? Mean working hours in Queensland are 55 a week for teachers. For EQ that means 30 hours a week of unpaid overtime. Against a typical 37.5 hour paid week, that's 17.5 hours of unpaid overtime. Early career teachers and leadership team often approach or exceed 70 hours a week.
My close friend made the jump from teaching to corporate so I can give a bit of perspective here. 1. She was shocked there are no such things as guaranteed promotions/pay rises in the private sector ie. It is possible to stay on entry level salary indefinitely if you have no luck. 2. First year she really struggled with being switched on the entire year without school holidays. 3. Overtime isn't as uncommon as she thought. All her friends boasting about never working past 5pm on social media were lying. On that note, she tried claiming for OT and you can guess how that went. 4. On a positive note, she enjoys dealing with adults and less children. The same parents who give her grief in parent teacher interviews are just normal adults in a workplace. It's not always greener on the other side but it's always good to try new things.
I don't know any corporate jobs in my sector (accounting) that pay overtime, but you are expected to work massive overtime if you want just a CHANCE at a promotion which is heavily not guaranteed. Dw there are adults who behave like toddlers at times too, and clients can get aggressive. Grass is not greener, also if you're not a manager you earn way less than teachers working 60hr weeks year round working tight tax deadlines
Adding in that I have a friend who came to join me in private consulting from teaching and was shocked that other professions do at least as much unpaid overtime as teachers. Suddenly $100K + and 10 weeks off wasn’t looking so bad.
Anyway. I think 112 K is pretty good money. You might just need to change schools. Do you absolutely have to do all that extra work? Or are you one of those people who cant say no? Cant stand up for yourself? It's the same at jobs I've been at (RN) They try to push extra work on you. I suppose its easier for me to refuse cause i have no interest in climbing the ladder. I just want to do my work, do it well, and go home. So if superiors wont promote me? I don't give a rats arse. Lol. You have to learn to say NO.
Right? I thought teachers were on like 80k. That’s way better than I expected!
Actually was just talking about this recently. A young relative is doing very well in teaching. I asked her how she handled the workload and part of the response was that she had to be tough & mindful of what she took on. She's very assertive & very smart & capable. I imagine they try to put a lot of extra stuff on her! Sounds to me like she weighs it up, but then says NO if she doesn't want to or doesnt ser benefit for her in doing it
I do think a lot of teachers have the habit of taking on too much in the way of extra work, and admins seem good at applying some pressure to do this. However, teachers do have more power than the majority of workers to say no - many people in corporate roles simply don't have this option, and will work hours of unpaid overtime because if they don't, they can be let go. Teachers aren't getting fired if they won't take on additional responsibilities outside the scope of their roles.
Yes. Exactly.
Most of us are on 80k. It takes like 11 years to get that kind of pay in some states
Ouch..isn't that the starting salary for teachers in Canberra now?
As of this year it's more like 90k
It takes like 10 years of experience to get that pay.
It takes 10 years experience in corporate too.
But the increases aren’t guaranteed
I'm also a teacher, a lot of the comments in this thread aren't exactly accurate in many ways (e.g. many private schools pay very similar, and in some cases less, depending on your State EBA). What is the real problem? You want to make more money (e.g. 160+) or you want to have a better work/money ratio? Because you could always just stop doing all the extra stuff, the kids WILL survive. I work roughly 7.5hours a day and very rarely work at home outside of reporting time and maybe half a day on each school holidays - and students love my class. If you want to make more money, you could always have a look at leadership, but that still is going to cap you at certain amounts. The good news for you, is that you can leave and try anything you want to try, and it won't be hard at all to walk back into a job.
I think a lot of people would be happy to be on 112k.
Then why is there a massive teacher shortage?
Because Boomers (who make up something like half of qualified teachers) are retiring and we've seen massive, poorly planned population growth. Teacher retention isn't necessarily worse than in most other industries - people in the private sector often move jobs every year or two. I think many teachers, much like the OP, have this idea they have it much harder than other workers and that the grass is greener. I have a friends on $120k+ who get salary bumps every year, have awesome super, have months of the year off and do have this idea they could walk into a higher paying job elsewhere; honestly though I seriously doubt they could find a role on anywhere near the same pay level, or certainly not one with such good benefits. Some of this may come from unrealistic comparisons to US teachers who actually *are* grossly underpaid e.g. my son's kindergarten teacher was on something like $20,000 a year and worked a second food service job every night, weekends included, to make ends meet. I've never met an Australian teacher who's had to do anything like this.
Absolutely, great point, the boomers leaving is hitting hard - I gather there aren’t many Gen Xs either, due to various political choices in the past, so it’s already falling on us Millennials to be the elders in some cases. Boomers in teaching are also excellent pain sponges, happy to endure what younger staff wouldn’t tolerate, so they’re tough to replace. I guess I can’t speak for how retention compares to other industries, but I do think there’s an issue attracting quality new teachers to the profession - the standard of pre-service and graduate teachers at my school (which is genuinely a great school that can normally afford to be quite choosy in who we hire) seems to be poorer these past few years. I read a few years back that only 2% of students enrolled in teaching courses had an ATAR above 80, so clearly the highly capable applicants we would WANT teaching the future of our country aren’t putting their hands up. Jason Clare, the Federal Education Minister, has said he wants people to be as excited about studying education as they would medicine or law, but without comparable salaries I don’t see why anyone WOULD (not sure how state governments would afford to pay tens of thousands of people a doctor’s or lawyer’s salary, of course.) I agree that teachers in Australia are paid well compared to the rest of the world, but we do LIVE in Australia, and so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the OP and teachers more broadly to compare themselves just to the high standard of living required here. Perhaps the issue is HOW our pay is calculated: many people on this forum argue we’re paid too much, others say we’re paid too little, everyone has a personal take on how society should value us. As it is we’re paid based on years experience, or leadership responsibility, rather than effectiveness and impact (which is hard to objectively measure) so perhaps if there was a way to pay teachers according to their ability (which the Union will never allow) people wouldn’t mind ‘better’ teachers receiving a higher pay, and less effective teachers earning a reduced salary - it seems to me that a major gripe on this forum is that people believe all teachers are on $120k for only working 3/4 of the year, which we apparently don’t deserve despite other industries having the option to wfh or receive annual bonuses. I acknowledge there are a lot of lazy teachers, but it’s also one of the lowest paying jobs that requires a degree, and some of us came to teaching after studying and working in other industries, so we’re not all low-skilled baboons. I think some of us probably COULD earn a better income in other industries, but we choose to do this because we think it’s the most important thing we could be doing (no doubt a lot of people would say that about their job tho, so I accept if we can seem a little self-absorbed at times) so of course we’re always going to dream about better pay and conditions. Heck, sometimes we’d just settle for kids listening to us and their parents not telling us how to do our job based on some anecdote they read on a Facebook forum.
As others have said, say no to everything after hours. Tutor and work school holiday activities for the extra $25k/yr.
Teachers on contract can't say no or they will never be made permanent. Permanent staff can't always say no, or they are likely to be force-transferred to an area/ school that is far from their home that they don't want to work in. (Not all states have the force- transfer system, but some do.) And much of the outside hours work is not something that you can just say no to anyway. Lesson planning, unit planning, marking, reporting, parent-teacher interviews, writing individual student plans, contacting parents, recording contact with parents and other professionals, writing letters and filling out forms for medical and other professionals, attending meetings with parents and other professionals about students with complex needs... All absolutely required aspects of the profession, yet none of these things can be done whilst also teaching a room full of students, so it almost all happens outside paid hours.
Steelfixing. Concreting. You will earn more money. Paid overtime.
Doing those jobs for a week the OP would probably be happy to go back to teaching and even with a pay cut
Rigging, boilermaking, carpenter, electrician….. the list of jobs goes on.
Some need apprenticeship some don't.
No no mate you don’t understand - teaching is harder than manual labour but they also refuse to labour.
On one hand, know your value. On the other - comparison is the thief of joy. I suspect it wont matter what job you do OP, there is a chance you'll still end up back at this point. But to answer your question, disability support work usually has a lot of OT going (and penalty rates) - but you will be earning that money. Which may work out well for you, if you do still want something that will give you a feeling of purpose and achievement along with that Sunday double time OT.
All careers come to the point where you question your dedication and enthusiasm. To the pay and work conditions that you have to endure. Some see the signs and bail before long term health issues appear. Some don't and find themselves without choices. If money is your concern then quit and find a job that pays you the wage that satisfies your needs.
Teaching is relatively well paid given the responsibilities, intelligence and knowledge requirements. It's the BS behavioral stuff from parents and students that make the job tough.
Have you thought about leveraging your teaching qualifications and branching out into adult ed, instructional design or eLearning? You will need to get a cert 4 in TAA. Keep in mind 112K is an OK income when the national average is 58k I think.
The median is like 65k or something. The average is like 93k.
Yeah and I think that is counting everyone, rather than full time wages.
I upvoted because those are options for someone who wants to get out of teaching school - but the money is not usually better, sometimes it’s worse. OP enjoys working with kids - and wants more money.
My partner is an instructional designer/learning designer. He has had a number of teachers talk to him about transitioning into it, and they all didn’t do it when they found out it would be a pay cut.
I teach adults. Workplace safety or emergency response depending on the day. Full time is $85-100k in our industry so a pay cut. BUT I don't take work home, and often a course is 6-7 hours long. So not doing a full week really.
We feel you in this household. My husband has a Master's in Teaching. I have no formal degree. I make $30k more and made more by $10k after my return to work after 7 years off... It's not just the hours that suck, but also the Dept of Education's policies and the lack of ability to discipline students when they misbehave. Also, being a male teacher, there's a huge risk in general of unfavourable accusations.
I had a similar discussion with my daughters teachers during parent teacher interviews. They are so hamstrung about what they can do when kids are misbehaving in the class. And increasing acts of violence by teens. It's no wonder teachers are leaving in droves. I am very appreciative of my daughters teachers. She has ASD and ADHD, so she gets a slightly modified curriculum for some classes. I am aware this is extra work for them, and may often performed outside of paid work hours, so them supporting my daughter so comprehensively is above and beyond. Teachers are under appreciated, overworked and underpaid. Especially the good ones! We need to protect them from burn out.
What do you do that earns more?
Dispute Resolution in finance.
Ah ok, thanks
There was a brilliant student in my master class. After he told my husband and me (CPA qualified accountants) his paygrade, we even felt sorry for him.
My wife is a teacher. It blows my mind that she knows every year she will be getting a pay rise and what that amount is. IMO teachers like to gripe, it’s a tough job, but they just ignore the significant advantages they receive over most of the working population.
Teacher here - private and catholic schools pay more so you can always move into that sector. I make it a point not to do unpaid overtime unless it's something that directly benefits the kids and I'm happy about it. E.g. preparing a student for an eisteddfod or something. To be honest, you kind of have to put your foot down with schools and if they're asking you to do unnecessary paperwork you need to ask for less teaching load to make up for it or it just doesn't get done. Schools are generally desperate for good teachers so it's rare they will even think about firing you. As far as paid overtime, I tutor in the evenings for extra money, it pays well and I enjoy it. If you do insist on doing unpaid OT then log everything so at least you can show the principal after a few months and make a claim for a lighter teaching load.
112k and you're probably 30odd You're doing pretty well. Teachers seem to think everyone in private is making 200k + lol Average wage is like 80k
That's because everyone on reddit is supposedly on 200k
everyone on reddit makes 200k in the same way teachers work 50 hour weeks - they don't.
This. Median income in Australia is $80000. Median income on r/Ausfinance is probably closer to $180000.
> Average wage is like 80k This includes people who are working part-time in jobs that require no qualifications. It's not a fair comparator.
You earn more than me and I hate what I do…
I'm sorry but... join the club. Plenty of professionals are working crazy hours, free overtime, high pressure, etc etc and not making $110k (myself included with a Masters Degree). The grass always looks greener. PS. Don't teachers get good holidays?
Go to casual / relief teaching. Pay rate is good and less stress with no reports / admin / meetings. You only get paid when you work though, so while daily rate is high, you only have around 40 weeks per year you can potentially work. You could look to tutoring for after hours - since you don’t have lesson planning / meetings after school anymore. Can also tutor on weekends / school holidays. Building your reputation up you could easily get $150/hour for tutoring based on what others have said they charge. Build a tutoring business up and you can hire people to work for you and further expand your potential income.
Another teacher here (PE - can't teach, teach PE eh?) I hear you - workload and responbilities are substantial. I love my job, often have to pinch myself that I get paid to play sport. Personally, I've pretty much given up on going the extra mile. I do my job well and see awesome results for those that at least somewhat give a damn. But you're right, it's relentless, unforgiving and no one besides yourself appreciates the effort you put into lessons at times. I really do try my best but it can be demoralising at the worst of times. I've only been in the career for seven years and have seen my pay increase nearly forty thousand in that time. On top of that, every ten weeks we get break - definitely one of the highlights of our job! I commend you for your efforts. Please try to find a balance that makes you happy.
Teachers are well paid but they complaint loudly. While i agree that the workload needs to be reduced and pay at the senior levels could be increased, the 112k is basically 130k private job allowance for the same 4 week leave. Before you complain that you work during parts of the holiday, private are actually working full time during that same period. Name another job that is paid 85k grad pay and 130k senior that is low stress and easy. Nothing is easy money, teacher is hard, jobs with overtime is hard, jobs that pay 150k+ are hard. You might get the occassional unicorn but in the real world most of us dont have unicorn jobs.
Yeah, I understand that it isn't an easy job but at the same time i'm a veterinarian working 50+ hour weeks making mid $70K. I wouldn't be complaining as a teacher on $112K, jesus
It pains me how badly paid the whole vet industry is. Seriously crap. Every vet I used to work with had a partner in IT/finance/corporate who was the breadwinner, meanwhile they studied however many years and were constantly stressed for a pittance.
I'm also on a 70k salary working in food manufacturing and I started off at 55k. Overtime is expected and the work is non stop. I've been told being a teacher is a better alternative to what I do and this thread is making me think about making the jump.
You love your job? Why would you want to leave a job paying $112k with all of the leave entitlements? Have you worked full time elsewhere? I was earning 90k as a civil engineer a bit over a year ago and quit due to stress. I turned my back on the industry and had very few skills for other industries, so I applied for jobs at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, Rebel Sport, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi. I was rejected from the defence force due to very minor medical issues. I must have applied for 30 jobs in retail and was rejected for each one. I eventually got a crappy job from gumtree of all places and I had to start at 5am in the morning to earn a measly $23 an hour. It was stress free though so that was certainly a win. I went back to uni to study part time while working full time and lucky for me I only had to complete six more units to get my 2nd tertiary degree. I just completed my studies in February and now I need to grind as a graduate accountant for the next three years to get anywhere near to back to what I was earning. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless you are truly hating the field you're working in. It's a tough pill to swallow. And everyone will ask you why you turned your back on a high paying career. What skills do you have that can be transferred from teaching to another industry? I suspect you would have to go back and study or turn to a trade.
You get 112? I’m on mid-90 here in Victoria despite technically being ‘range 2’. The problem is that there’s no scope for promotions, meaning an increase in pay per hour, beyond a certain point. After you hit the ceiling, there is no incentive to get better at your job, and every incentive to do the minimum to get by. This is the idiotic system that the AEU and friends have negotiated for us. How many other fields can you name where the average millennial employee holds a Master’s degree and is salary capped at 115-120?
I’m in NSW and they are constantly advertising for teachers to move to VIC. Um I’ll keep my 122 thanks.
Where are you teaching for 112k? That is almost 40k more than me a year
Good on you for posting your thoughts and question before you made a change given that you love your job (and I would call what you do a vocation because the continual learning and developing you will do over your career). 1. The grass is not greener it is just in a different yard. You will have the same challenges of work frustrations, co worker issues, bosses, pay, conditions and overtime if you go somewhere else. It won't change. 2. 110k is not too bad. You'll be lucky to get 80k for any entry level or unskilled work and skilled work is often 100 to 120k anyway. 3. If you LOVE what you do do not stop doing it as you will have exactly the same frustrations in every other job. 4. Have you thought about a management role within education to broaden your earning potential? This way you stay in a field you know using your previous degree and grow your income. BUT you will do more overtime..... Good luck
HR management ... Pays well if you're good. Psychologist but that's more study although you didn't say what you studied. You do gets lots of leave.
It’s a job that ware’s you out. You’re at the point in your career when people start to look at promotions as a way of getting out of the classroom. Problem is, there’s only so many of those positions to go around. For some teachers, teaching is what puts air in their lungs. They’re a tiny subset of teachers that seem completely unfazed by anything. They often don’t have much else going on in their life. This has become the benchmark, and almost nobody can meet it. I don’t know what the answer is for you, but I would try and take LWOP to go and do something else. Don’t overthink it. Just start applying
$112k is pretty great pay. Are you able to set some more effective boundaries and say no to extra things that are being given to you? Do you have to necessarily do all that over-time? Are you adding unnecessary work to your already large workload? It sounds to me like you might benefit from some more critical personal reflection, and assess where you might be ‘giving’ too much. You don’t always have to go above and beyond.
A lot of people in this thread don't understand the reality of working as a teacher. The stress and demand is insane and not worth the money or the mental health repercussions. I quit right after my graduation for reasons outlined with OP and never looked back. If you enjoy the work then look into becoming a behaviour therapist OP. There is some crossover but the pay is much better (~$90/hr starting rate), some companies will offer you full flexibility and autonomy over your schedule, and you still get to have the same rewarding feeling of helping the youth. Feel free to DM me if you want more information. Everything I'm speaking of is first hand experience.
Can you please advise which jobs pay $110K entry level and don’t need studies and are low effort? Super interested
You could make bank as a scaffolder doing FIFO work for the mining industry.
I like how most people who talk shit about teachers gloss over the fact that they are fighting for pay AND conditions. It's not just about the pay, I think you'd find that if you adjusted the conditions, the "whinging" would dissipate. 112k is good money but not when your working the hours that a teacher works? 12 weeks off a year? No. They are expected to do work for a portion of that.
And for clarification for the many who seem not to understand, teachers only get the standard 4 weeks paid holiday. The other 8 weeks is covered by pay being prorated to cover them. Teachers on shorter contracts are paid the same amount overall but receive more per pay as they aren’t paid during the holidays. And although these 8 weeks are unpaid, many teachers are expected or need to work during them in order to catch up with the workload. So realistically, these are unpaid work weeks.
What sort of teaching, i.e. high school or primary school? Public or private? Could you take on some students to tutor? Or become a HSC (or your state equivalent) maker?
Will you consider being a freelance tutor? I used to send my kids to this tuition centre called Northshore and they command quite a hefty fees from us parents
I worked at that company. I wrote their resources and taught the classes. Get a private tutor instead.
Less than half the fee goes to the teacher at most of those.
Teach in private school in hk or sg. Get paid big bucks
Crane operator. Try for dept of ed or other gov roles.
Find a non-teaching role. Check your states Department of Education for a curriculum development/policy/program role etc.
Mr brother in Christ move to a better paid school or take on extra responsibilities you're nowhere near the top of the pay scale in Australia. Many people in my school are over 150k
Teaching a bunch of kids all day sounds absolutely challenging and exhausting, but if you love it and are good at it, please keep it up because we need you! Myself and spouse are probably 10-20 years older than you and both have +5 years of uni. Neither of us earning as much as you do. My spouse works about 50 hours a week with none of it paid as overtime. I don't work with kids but I do work with challenging clients which like you, I enjoy, but it is tiring. Compared to us, your salary and leave sound quite good. If you also like the job, I think you are in a good position. My suggestion would be, if you want to earn more by doing overtime, just add some extra work on weekends/evenings/holidays. A family member is a retired teacher, when they used to work they worked in a different industry one day a week, and did odd jobs in the holidays. Also you can sign up for exam marking and things, tutoring, or do something totally different which gives you a mental break from the world of teaching. You can make a good chunk of change doing a 8-10 hour shift on a Saturday night/Sunday doing disability support, truck driving, bar tending, whatever! You also need to be really firm about your boundaries and just doing "good enough" in a teaching role. Because there is endless stuff you could do. Easier said that done, but if you practise saying no to spending hours marking/prepping during holidays and outside class times you can reclaim a lot of time to make some extra money on the side. My relative was a great teacher but was very efficient about their outside class time and therefore had lots of spare time to do other stuff.
112k a year for a job with like 10 weeks of holiday, must be tough. If you like the job why are you complaining about it?
Sounds like you need better time management. 112k is great pay for a teacher
Ppfft, why is everyone leaving then?
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Sure, go to uni and join the profession. We need LOADS more teachers
Look at the teach for Australia program
Go and apply mate.
Lol do it then come back and post about being attacked by mentally ill angry kids and how you want to quit. Most teachers don’t care about the lack of money but the inability to discipline kids is the issue.
I have two family members who are teachers, as well as some friends who found their way into the profession. From my experiences, the workload/enjoyment is mainly down to the school and management, like any job it varies. My brother is able to cram in most marking and planning in a few hours, has gotten multiple promotions in his early career from doing well, has free time in between periods to either work, or sit on his phone, takes the kids to activities, enjoy 95% of his holidays and barely works much overtime compared to the average job. I think many teachers have come right out of school, into uni, back into school and have a skewed perception of the workforce and “paid overtime” (which isn’t common) as well as how glamorous other professions are. Many redditors come to the defence of teachers due to misconceptions, but in Australia at least they are relatively well paid, exceptional annual leave, have free time in between periods (depending on the school) and are usually home by 5 with little to no weekend work. Looking at some of these comments are hilarious, no teachers are averaging 55 hours a week lol. Starting at 8 and doing some light admin after 3:30 till 5 is not a tough gig compared to most corporate places.
Workload and enjoyment down to management yes. Relatively well paid yes. Home by 5 and little weekend work, half right for some. I get home at 5.30 and live close to school, rarely work weekends. No teachers averaging 55, plenty do, but they shouldn’t, they should just stop at 40. Exceptional annual, yes and the the best perk of the job. Doing some light admin after 3, no that’s work, meetings and often the little uninterrupted time you get to do planning and marking. If your brother is cramming his marking and planning into only a few hours so he can sit on his phone he’s either been teaching for over a decade and has his shit sorted, or he’s short changing his kids. If you want to do a half way reasonable job you work a solid 8 hour day and go home.
You were right, in 2018. Then, it was 54 hpw. "teachers are working an average of 54 hours per week (43 hours at school and 11 hours at home)" 2018. Now there are less of us. https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-nsw-teachers-working-long-hours-to-cope-with-administrative-load-99453#:~:text=While%20most%20people%20expect%20to,them%20to%20meet%20compliance%20standards.
What a whine, do permanent night shift for under 90k with no 8 weeks holidays and breaking my back every night on 4 hour sleeps for far less than you. What an absolute whinge, doesn't pass the pub test in fact you're lucky you're not in a pub.
Move into the private system. Most elite private schools pay 135k+ easily, on top of which lots of extracurricular activities that will pay you for. For perspective I'm a classroom teacher + extracurricular which I take on. Gross is 165k. I could take on more sport and activities for more but not at this point as money isn't the only priority.
How’s the job security? Are you on a contract or ongoing? Also what are the parents like - I work at a high achieving gov school and they’re already pretty entitled…
Fine, worked in the private system for 7years now (across two schools). Permanent at both right away. Don't know a single private school (secondary) they would even consider hiring temp. First school I think other than the occasional behaviour management, I had one contact from a parent in five years. They didn't really seem to care tbh. Second school again, in two years maybe sent 3-5 emails at most to parents (no phone calls) and of those usually they were heads up regarding poor academic results because I submitted work and or assessment results. They just copped it on the chin and moved on I'm sure if you were at private highly geared academic schools like Knox Grammar it would be different but most of the students are at these schools for the experience and connections.
Wow that’s great, quite different to what I’d been led to believe - might have to look at jumping over to Private! How many hours per week do you put in, in order to get up to $165k? (That’s more than a lot of Gov AP salaries!)
- Base is 135k (8:30ish-3:30), normal school day. Rarely if ever take work home as department is very well resourced. - cocurricular commitments (usually must do something), Im an age coordinator for a sport. Glorified admin for a second, have automated most of the work that pays 5k. In season about 1hr a week of work. (Season is about 2 terms) - Have worked in a boarding house for once a week for the past 7years. Different schools pay differently, last one was contract, current is hourly. One night a week works out to be 25k EOY. I could take on more responsibility or cocurricular but am happy where I am at. It's a good work life balance. I have friends at some other private schools being paid 155k for a classroom teacher, with HODs another 20-30k on that. Additionally, we have longer holidays, works out about 3extra weeks per year (break up first week of December) + term 2 holidays is 3 instead of 2weeks.
Wow, this is extraordinary to me, I had no idea it was such a significant pay increase over Government - I’d always thought it was only about 10k more with significantly more responsibility and pressure. Thanks for detailing all that, very helpful!
The only entry level jobs that might pay $110K are in the mines. I did a Driller Offsider job in WA, 4 weeks on 2 weeks off, no lunch break for a 12-13 hour shift, working in the sun, rain, wind, doing tough physical work. You're welcome to try...
Thought about VET instead?
Okay. What do you like doing? What are are you talented at? What do you gravitate towards naturally?
Something i've wondered about - what time do you get paid until? Say classes finish at 3pm, what is your official end of day time?
I would think change schools before changing careers? If you love you job it might just be the workplace
Depending on your teaching level and subjects you could do tutoring. FIFO/dido may also be suitable. There may be some inhouse training companies. Look at larger companies training roles. I know our technical trainers get 150k+ Hell you could write training materials with field based guys Do some BS safety course delivery and go arround the state for that. Or you could simply become an operator and earn decent money.
If you want to make good money and don't mind long hours, and don't want years more study,go into business. Buy a business. Start a business. Not a franchise. You'll need drive, intelligence, the ability to listen to customers and the ability to find a niche and general purpose skills like initiative and communication.
Go private.
Up until I quit last last year. I transferred to an independent school for heaps more money.
What about moving into government or edu department roles? Both pay well. My parents were both teachers; one moved into being a primary principle early by going rural for 7 years, and one moved into a state department role before ending up in a state role working on national curriculum. There's also lots of consulting companies for edu in aus. I'm in corporate; to manage expectations my first role out of uni was 60k and it has been a grind to where I am now (over 200k package senior role). From the start I've never been a 40 hour week, every role has been unpaid overtime. Particularly now, I work big hours. There's also job insecurity which you don't face as a teacher once you are perm. One set of redundancies, or a new C-suite/manager who doesn't like you...start job hunting. The other big benefit that isn't mentioned often is LSL - as long as you stay gov, you can change schools and keep you LSL going. Such an amazing benefit! In corp, change companies, start the 7/10 year countdown again.
Set a damn boundary, don’t leave
Get a job on an oil rig. They pay really well.
I'm a software engineer which is usually held up as the gold standard of high paying cushy jobs for grads. For the first 6 months of my career I was working 30 hours a week for $500, for the next year of that I consistently did 80 hour weeks for 65k. During my entire career I have been paid for overtime once. I know engineers working at big tech companies making less in salary than a graduate teacher. Trust me, you're not going to get a better deal than teaching.
I can't complain before I retrained as a teacher, I was working in the chemical industry and pulling 80 hrs a week is normal for me. I was always on a temp contract and the pay was ok at the time. I am now enjoying the benefits of a teacher. loving the holidays. can't complain because I came from another place that was worse than being a teacher.
Do what you want with the comfort of knowing you’re in an industry that will still be there and easy to get back into should your new choice not work out. Just do it life’s to short for what if’s
What are the low effort entry level jobs making over $110K per year? What are the low effort entry level jobs that get the level of holidays that you enjoy? Do you feel ripped off over your employment conditions seriously? Everyone is looking for more money and thinks the other bloke is better off from lawyers that get shit money in the first several years of employment to then making lots of money but working endlessly. Accountants, and book keepers that get stressed around tax time. Your initial comment "I will preface this by saying I love what I do and enjoy going to work everyday." is one that many people would take less money for to be able to enjoy their job. Now to your question " I am wanting to branch out in an industry where I can get a lot of overtime that can increase my pay significantly." If you truly want to INCREASE your pay few jobs paying overtime will do it . To the question "What industry/career would you recommend me for this?" - if you believe in yourself and have a passion selecting the right product in sales and working on a commission will give you the income you seek. I wish you well but can't think of any other industry where teaching skills can be adapted for profit and that appears to be your goal higher income. I will read the comments below once posted and see if I have missed something that has been already been posted.
The pay is fine, for me it's the conditions. Pay for leaving 2:20 and 12 weeks holidays is fantastic. But dealing with admin and BS time wasting meetings is the annoying aspect.
I think the benefit of being a teacher is you can do it from anywhere, 110k might not be a lot in Sydney but you can live like a king in North QLD or WA. You also only work 40 weeks of the year, the salary is effectively 150k in any other industry.
Looks to me like you're conflating a few things which aren't actually equivalent, and/or taking a few rare anecdotal accounts, and drawing slightly unrealistic conclusions. **1. Entry-level jobs earning $112k** Where? Who? The median salary in Australia is around $70,000, so half of all people in Australia working full-time earn less than that. A salary of $112k puts you in the top 20% of all full-time earners in the country, let alone comparing specifically to unskilled entry-level work. I graduated Uni about a decade ago, and some of my friends who have been the most financially well-off are the ones who are teachers. Salaries are quite high, and the job security and union-driven workplace protections are great. **2. Overtime for shift work vs overtime for salaried work.** Its not only teachers who do unpaid overtime, the stock-standard for salaried roles these days is "salary X paid based on a 40-hour week but inclusive of any reasonable additional hours required for your role". I've seen that for engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, accountants, social workers, miners, etc etc. Paid overtime is primarily the province of casual shift-work or public service roles, which typically have a much lower pay rate. I have a friend who works as a park ranger, and her base rate is low, but she can pick up extra shifts occasionally on weekends or overnight to bump those numbers up to a living wage. **3. Overtime for more work vs overtime because you want to do a good job.** You gave the specific example of doing overtime to "make learning fun, engaging and inspiring". That is a great thing to do, but it has no parallels to the sort of overtime people get paid to do. * A retail worker doesn't get paid overtime to stack the shelves in a super neat, visually pleasing way that helps the shopper. They get paid to unload another truckload of product. * A nurse doesn't get paid overtime to pretty up the patients rooms and make the pillows super fluffy for a comfortable stay. They get paid to make sure people don't die overnight, change more dressings, and put in more stents and catheters. The teacher equivalent isn't "more fun learning experience", its tutoring or out-of-school-hours care. Both of which you can get paid for. **4. Sense of purpose and achievement.** Some people work just to take home a paycheck, others are lucky enough to find their passion and get paid for it. If you're passionate about teaching and earning a well above-average salary, it sounds to me like you're on a winning trajectory already.
112k isn't bad. I'm 8 years in IT at 120k with 5 years university. If you truly love what you do, I suggest you stick to teaching, and instead invest time into learning to use AI to do the unneccessary or time-wasting parts of your job. With that freed up time, enjoy life or find/study a side hustle if you require extra money.
Come again? 112k and 12 weeks paid holidays is pretty good not to mention actual teaching finishes at 3pm. You would have known every thing that’s involved in being a teacher and that requires you to work past 3pm like marking, class prep, parent teacher interviews ect. A pay rise won’t change your job title or conditions within the school.
Don’t you get like 3 months off every year?
I think your pay is pretty good for what it is and you're not paid that overtime and extra work because you get extra weeks off work every year that others do not. I think it sounds like a fair trade. How much did your degree cost? You get what? 8 weeks off a year cos the school is closed plus your annual leave right? Unless leave can only be taken when school is out?
Annual leave can only be taken over the summer break. Which, when you include all of the public holidays everyone else gets over that period, is about 4 weeks annual leave, and around one or two days of stand down. The stand down is usually spent doing mandatory PD.