As I opened the email from the school’s finance manager that detailed this year’s salary, I prepared myself for the usual disappointment.
Predictably, as a part-time teacher, I am steadfastly fixed - ionically bonded - to the top of the main pay scale, without a hope of ever moving to the upper pay scale.
The email begins with: “further to the successful completion of the 2016/17 appraisal process...” which begs the question (and this may sound as though I’m splitting hairs) how can the process be deemed “successful” if my salary is as static as the Brexit negotiations?
I penned the finance manager an email querying this. I kept my response polite and passive, but what I really wanted to question were the more obvious reasons why my pay was yet to step over the threshold. Could it possibly be a result of the fact that:
- I work part-time?
- My teaching is sub-standard (though I have been told nothing of the sort, and surely this would negate a “successful” appraisal)?
- I have failed to meet any number of the teacher standards as a result of point one?
- Lack of funds?
According to the school’s pay policy, the pay committee - whoever they are - work in accordance with part-time workers to “prevent less favourable treatment”. Hence, my rate of pay certainly couldn’t be the result of less favourable treatment...surely not!
Part-time progression?
In their guidance to school teachers’ pay threshold assessment, the NUT teaching union (which has since become the NEU teaching union) suggests that “threshold assessment works alongside appraisal arrangements” and progression to the upper pay range happens “where these criteria are satisfied as evidenced by at least one, but no more than two successful appraisal reviews” and that “only the evidence provided by appraisal reviews may be taken into account in determining teachers’ threshold applications”.
With at least two “successful” appraisals in the bag, it seems likely that there is a different reason for my being confined to MPS.
A colleague did suggest that my lack of contribution to whole-school improvement might be a factor. Yet as someone who has taught three subjects to the vast majority of key stage 3, I would beg to differ. The same colleague also suggested - off the record - that when/if I did decide to work full-time, my pay was 99 per cent likely to suddenly leap over the MPS fence.
As a part-timer, it seems there will always be some excuse for maintaining my level of pay, regardless of the extra work I do and the time I dedicate to my role. There is no doubt that part-time teachers often get a raw deal and, in my experience, many schools just don’t seem to like teachers working part-time.
And yet, if more teachers were employed part-time then it seems to me that there would be a distinct possibility that there might be less ill health, better productivity and more feelings of positivity amongst teachers towards a profession that is currently facing a recruitment crisis.
If you were wondering, the finance manager has yet to reply to my email. Maybe it has been filed under “nonessential”.
The writer is a teacher in a free school
