Teachers Pay

[Scorpio]

I do not just THINK that they are wrong. I know that they are wrong. I already told you so.

As i have already said, primary schools in ireland are open for a minimum of 183 days (did you not read my initial posting?).

Only pay rates (in dollars, for some obscure reason) which would take me too long to research and days worked (which is inaccurate)are compared.

Because of the blatant inaccuracy in one of the two items compared, i have no faith whatsoever in the accuracy of the other figures, no respect for the person who produced the chart and less for those who use it without questioning its accuracy & limitations.

In my experience, debate works like this: people make reasoned arguments based on facts. They listen (or, in this case, read) what others say before responding.

The answer lies in the source, the OECD.
On days worked, teaching is more than just primary - what is the average across primary, lower and upper secondary, which are the OECD's three categories?
On dollars, the OECD tends to produce everything in PPP US$, so that we know amounts are being compared like for like, and relative to an individual's purchasing power. (Sorry, from teaching economics, I unfortunately know this like the back of my hand!)

Faith restored by any chance?

[Ernie Ball]

I've pointed out in my comments on Ronan Lyon's original thread here and here and here why his statistics are misleading to the point of verging on dishonesty, particularly that graph that someone here thinks 'says it all'. Ronan doesn't seem to have much in the way of a response other than to insist that his figures are relevant.

[Oppenheimer]

that graph says it all.

Unfortunately, without any indication of median, SD or error, or indeed, as others have stated, comparable sources for the data used, any maths teacher will tell you it does not.

[Dreaded_Estate]

Unfortunately, without any indication of median, SD or error, or indeed, as others have stated, comparable sources for the data used, any maths teacher will tell you it does not.

The mean still tells enough to make a fairly informed judgment.

[Oppenheimer]

The mean still tells enough to make a fairly informed judgment.

You're kidding right? Averages quoted as single metrics of any dataset are not worth being made into ar5epaper. In this case I know of teachers, for instance, doing the same job, for approximately the same number of years where the gap in pay is $15k, it does not take too many variances in the set of data to have a very large distribution about the mean and a skew to higher numbers.

The debate on the teachers, for the most part is also being skewed towards their pay, there are very real concerns here about the quality of education that these cuts are going to bring about, but the teachers' unions aren't incentivised by standards for pupils, just the remuneration of their members and the media haven't the intelligence to accurately report the impending reduction in quality of the education system so two main drivers of the debate are actually covering up the real problem and reporting of the like that is in this graph is adding more manure to the already well rotted heap.

I am not a teacher by the way, just a concerned parent that wishes we would call the politicians out on the real evil of their doings - they could not give 2 f*cks about this debate being where it is as every other commentator's bile is focussed on the teachers and not these bad ba5tards.

[Ernie Ball]

The mean still tells enough to make a fairly informed judgment.

Yeah, except for the very item being graphed--per diem pay--is irrelevant in the domain of teaching where pay per contact hour is of much greater relevance. This is because 'teaching days' vary widely among OECD countries. 'Contact hours' also vary insofar as class sizes are different. So the best measure would be student contact hours. Even just taking pay per contact hour, Ireland is in the middle of the OECD pack. Given the class sizes, if one took pay per student contact hour, Ireland's teachers would be an outright bargain.

[Conor]

Ronan Lyon's graph focusses on the daily rate earned by teachers, for some reason. I'm not sure what it's supposed to demonstrate, and I'd be grateful if one of the posters in this thread who consider it significant could tell me why.

That OECD report also has a list of hourly earnings (after 15yrs experience, adjusted for US$ PPP etc), broken down by Primary, Lower Secondary and Upper Secondary. I've taken a simple average of the three for indicative purposes (with apologies to Oppenheimer for my statistical sloppiness).

Just looking at the Eurozone countries for which figures are available (and, again, a simple average of the two Belgian entries), we get a leaderboard that looks something like this:

Luxembourg 123.8
Germany 69.1
Finland 65.2
Belgium 64.4
Netherlands 63.3
Ireland 61.9
Austria 60.3
Greece 58.0
Spain 56.0
Italy 49.1
France 47.7
Portugal 43.1

OECD average 57.5
EU19 average 60.4

This excludes the pension levy, which would take Ireland's position down a bit.

If anyone's good at graphs, maybe they could do a bar chart or something. It might get into a blog then.

[Dreaded_Estate]

Yeah, except for the very item being graphed--per diem pay--is irrelevant in the domain of teaching where pay per contact hour is of much greater relevance. This is because 'teaching days' vary widely among OECD countries. 'Contact hours' also vary insofar as class sizes are different. So the best measure would be student contact hours. Even just taking pay per contact hour, Ireland is in the middle of the OECD pack. Given the class sizes, if one took pay per student contact hour, Ireland's teachers would be an outright bargain.

I agree the number of hours per day would be useful to include but I'm not sure contact hours is a valid comparison.

[wexfordman]

Yeah, except for the very item being graphed--per diem pay--is irrelevant in the domain of teaching where pay per contact hour is of much greater relevance. This is because 'teaching days' vary widely among OECD countries. 'Contact hours' also vary insofar as class sizes are different. So the best measure would be student contact hours. Even just taking pay per contact hour, Ireland is in the middle of the OECD pack. Given the class sizes, if one took pay per student contact hour, Ireland's teachers would be an outright bargain.

If teachers pay was actually based on pay per student contact hour, we might not be hearing so much about class sizes, almost like commission based teaching

[Dreaded_Estate]

You're kidding right? Averages quoted as single metrics of any dataset are not worth being made into ar5epaper. In this case I know of teachers, for instance, doing the same job, for approximately the same number of years where the gap in pay is $15k, it does not take too many variances in the set of data to have a very large distribution about the mean and a skew to higher numbers.

It could make a big difference on mean pay for the whole economy when you have lots of big outliers that can distort the average.
But when you have a fixed salary scale ranging from €30k to only €80k or so the average will give you are pretty good idea of the distribution.