So each teacher earns £50,000 a year, right?
Well, right if you think that education is the business of a school, education is provided by teachers, so all that the school earns is earned by its teachers
But they need books & pens, papers & computers. A school secretary, a caretaker, a dinner lady. The buildings have to be heated, cleaned, repaired & maintained
By the time all those costs are taken care of the teachers will be lucky to get an average of £25,000 in their personal pay packet, or £20,000 after tax, National Insurance, pension ….
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Barristers are often said to earn high 6 or 7 figure sums, usually on the basis that someone adds up the total of the fees that have been paid for each of their cases
But barristers must pay for the rent of their chambers, the salaries of the clerks & secretaries, the computers & everything else a law office needs. How much is left for their personal pay check & do you subtract the sums they must pay for wig & gown, travel to court, maybe a stay in a hotel if the case is long & the distance away from home great, before or after it gets called personal income?
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Back to our school. Suppose it is in the private sector. The headmasters wife does a lot of the administrative & pastoral work & organises speech day etc. Is she entitled to her own personal pay check for this? Can the head employ his brother or his daughter as a teacher in the school?
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Now consider another type of ‘job’ – one which dictates which area you live in (but provides no actual accommodation) for as long as you hold the job, even though you have no contract of employment & are periodically forced to undergo what may be a very whimsical reselection process.
You are also required to work for a number of days each week in Central London, even though the journey from your home is too far, or takes up an unreasonable amount of time, for it to be done each day. So you need somewhere to stay in central London on the nights in question
It is unthinkable that people should be excluded from this job because of arbitrary rules which make it impossible for some to carry its responsibilities while making sure their family is cared for. All we can do is try to adjust the individual salary so that no one is excluded by the cost of all these requirements
We could attempt to write a set of rules which would be fair to everyone (including the tax payer) in all the circumstances which might arise, & would also be transparent & easy for everybody to understand
Well, we could, of course we could. One should always try
