As a music graduate I can help there...
1 year - HMV
5 years - Ringtones
1 year - Teacher training
Present - Teacher

On my current salary - the first pay spine for teachers - only now, after eight years would I be earning enough to start repaying a student debt, and that debt would have grown substantially due to further training required.

I'm unlikely to ever finish paying off the debt I do have, never mind the potential £27k it would have taken just to get through Uni. Add to that the idea of teaching becoming a Masters level profession and that would be another potential £9k a year for two years. On a starting salary just enough to match the threshold for repayments.

Apologies for inadvertently turning this into a rant but it seems to me that long term it's not just higher education that's getting fucked over here... Can't have an education system without any teachers...
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 11 Nov 2010, 21:57, 2 replies)

I respect anyone who goes into teaching...
...sounds riskier that clearing minefields sometimes.

Oh and the rant wasn't that bad...they look a lot shorter when stretched across the entire page :)
( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Thu 11 Nov 2010, 22:02, closed)

Not really that bad...
It's doing my first year of teaching alongside moving house, looking after a toddler and my second child being born four weeks ago that's tough. Job itself is ace.

Mind you, I'm in Primary...
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 11 Nov 2010, 23:05, closed)

what we would end up with is...
a raft of teachers who are incredibly well off and most likely of the horsey ilk who are really rather out of touch with the 'common' child. I reckon most teachers have had a pretty good experience with education or they wouldn't be doing it as a profession themselves. however, if most of these well meaning people can't afford the degrees, the whole schooling system will have a severe lack of 'soul'. I mean, the people who want to be there, the people who can actually relate to the yoof or whatever.

I fear there will otherwise be a teaching population of those with vast sums of money to pay for it, therefore coming from an abnormally privileged background and not really capable of dealing with/caring about those who don't come from this background. The flipside, those who take on the debt anyway and do it because it's the right thing to do. I certainly hope this won't leave these real gems feeling disaffected.

I don't really know any mega-posh teachers yet, probably because its not the glamour job befitting such mega-poshers. I hope it doesn't become the trend or we're going to have yet another negative consequence of social classes being further divided by these hikes in tuition fees.

Maybe with the academy schools the pay will cover this student debt, but even this is bad news. Numbers driven education is a complete fallacy. People are not robots - you need to enjoy the subject you learn and then you will truly succeed at it, leave with a positive attitude towards it and make the most of your life, buoyed by this experience. If you've been slave-driven into getting impressive numbers and you succeed at that, yet your experience of school was a bitter one, you're only going to pass this down the line to your own kids, thus muddying the waters of the future.

I worry about England, but I'm glad I'm Scottish. The whole attitude towards the population is a far cry from my 'bleed you dry' experiences I've had down here.

Rant over.
(ComradePotato, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 0:21, closed)

There's a small but significant number of teachers who only went into the profession because their degree was so poor they got rejected from everything else.
They often end up in the lowest-performing state schools and contribute a good deal to the general air of misery, soulless bellowing and high blood pressure.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 12 Nov 2010, 1:13, closed)

"I don't really know any mega-posh teachers yet, probably because its not the glamour job befitting such mega-poshers"
Yeah, that kind of blows the whole of the first part of your argument out of the water doesn't it? Do you know any teachers? Have you been in a school since you left it? No? Then don't venture forth your ignorant opinions. Thank you.
(TheFlyingOnion. looking forward to, Sat 13 Nov 2010, 9:51, closed)