London’s TEFL workers can now easily compare pay and conditions at school across the capital! Read on to check it out – and contribute!
First the big news!
Our digital map of London ELT pay and conditions is now live and can be accessed here:
However, the map can be temperamental. This is especially true if you try to access it from your phone. If you’re having trouble, we suggest copy and pasting it into your web browser.
In the IWW, we have a slogan: “Help the work along”. So, if you don’t see your school on this map, help the work along by completing our survey:
https://forms.gle/hmeByzFY8qWF5oqPA
A disclaimer:
All the information in the map has been contributed by teachers and we cannot verify its accuracy. Similarly, the question of the “real wage” will be dependent on how many hours of preparation and marking each teacher puts in. But, we all put in unpaid time and we all know that the wages advertised by schools never take into account all the hard work we put into the job.
How we got here
Last may, the union held our first meeting to begin mapping pay and conditions for TEFL workers across London and we had an excellent turnout with inspiring speeches from Hugh Dellar and teachers at the British Council in Taiwan who just are preparing to strike.
Everyone who came filled out our survey and here are some key things we’ve learnt so far:
- Pay varies from £12.50 to £29.36 per teaching hour across schools
- The median wage is £18.75
- There isn’t a single school among those we’ve surveyed so far that pays for planning or admin time, so the average real wages range from £6.50(!) TO £23.00 with an average of £16.50/hr
- Some schools pay for meetings and CPD, but many don’t
- When asked what the biggest issues were at their school, the most common responses were low pay and lack of paid planning and admin, summed up by one teacher as “we should be paid for all the hours we work, not just contact time”
We need as may responses from as many different schools as we can get to make this data the best it can be, so if you weren’t at the event then go ahead and fill out our online survey here.
And if you were at the event but you have some union-curious workmates who couldn’t be there, then go ahead and fill it out again with them as a way to get you all thinking and talking about the issues at your work and across the industry as a whole. Especially with the more open-ended questions, it might be interesting to see what issues they raise and to think about how the union could support you all.
If you choose to use this information to demand pay that reflects the work you actually do, then join the growing raft of teachers who are already fighting for this by reaching out to us at [email protected] for the wealth of support and experience the union can offer.
At our May meeting we also discussed a list of next steps. Read on to find out how you can get involved!
Training
The IWW offers two main training sessions:
- Workplace organising, focusing on talking to your workmates about workplace issues and raising those issues with management.
- Union representative training, which is more legalistic and allows you to accompany workmates and fellow union members in formal meetings with management.
Delegate meetings
We hope to set up delegate meetings where active union members from schools around London can meet on a regular basis (most likely quarterly). This will be an opportunity to get union support with any issues at your school and coordinate action across the city.
Help the work along!
And as always, there are lots of ways that you can get involved in the union. These include:
- Helping out with social media
- Helping with leafleting
- Articles for the website (i.e. ‘My pay v. my expenses’)
- Submitting articles for the ‘Labour English’ section of our website
- Helping plan future social events
- Coming to a Tuesday working group to generally help out with union tasks
Our ultimate aim is to raise standards across the industry so that TEFL can finally be seen as real teaching.
The TEFL industry takes its workers for granted at best and treats them appallingly at worst, but the industry simply wouldn’t exist without its teachers whether we are newly qualified or have been teaching for years. We are the most important part of the industry and we deserve pay and contracts that reflect this.
So if you need help with an issue at work, and/or want to get involved in raising standards across the industry, fill out the survey and contact us at [email protected]