Who earns what in teaching ?
“I’m down €600 a month, which makes a massive difference to me. Now, out of my €2,000 take-home pay, €1,300 goes on the mortgage. Everything else is gone. My savings are gone, I’ve no contingency funds, I’m paying my bills by credit card every month.
“Please, don’t think I’m complaining. I’m the first to stand up and say I was a fool to get that mortgage. I suppose my point is that I did everything I was supposed to. I went to college, got my postgraduate teaching qualification, I work really hard and at the moment I’m saying I did all that for what? What was the point if I’m going from month to month like this?
“I think that teachers and nurses and gardaí were once seen as stand-up members of the community. They were who your parents wanted you to be, but now it feels like we’re being attacked.”
* Jane is a newly qualified teacher who works in Dublin. She has full teaching hours covering a resource post during a maternity leave. Newly qualified teachers do not receive qualification allowances
Face-to-face teaching hours22 a week
Estimated preparation hours10-15 a week
SalaryAll new entrants will now start at point 4 on the reduced salary scale, so Jane would earn €30,702 a year, but her contract ends in April and she will not be paid during holidays. She does get some holiday pay as part of her fortnightly salary, but she has not yet received a payslip so is unsure what she will receive each month. Her gross estimated earnings this year will be about €19,000
Jane says:“I’m qualified to teach science and maths to Junior Cert level and biology to Leaving Cert level.
“As far as I know, one person out of my class of well over 100 has a full-time job in his own subject. The rest of us are doing whatever we can find. A lot of people have gone abroad. I’m incredibly lucky to have full hours while I have them.
“Now at least we know that we’re not getting allowances. They’ve boosted the pay a bit, but I’m still being paid less than my colleagues for the same work, simply because I qualified in 2012.
“I didn’t go into teaching for the money. I don’t want more money. I would just like equal money for equal work. If anything, new teachers work harder than everyone else.
“I love teaching. I’ll do this for the rest of my life, some way or another. I just wish that I was treated on an equal basis to my colleagues. Make cuts based on merit. I’d have no problem with that, but cuts based on the year you qualify? It’s crazy.”
