Here's one for Maths and Physics PhD students and graduates in the United Kingdom. Thoughts?

If you have a maths or physics-related PhD and are prepared to foster links between schools, universities and industry in a non-selective state school, you could find yourself on a starting salary of £40,000.

The last paragraph is a very telling statement about doctoral training in the UK though.

Ian

Nice article! But this may seem unfair to existing maths/physics teachers or even other teachers?

love satchi

I am not a Maths or Physics graduate, but, as a Secondary Teacher of English with eight years experience I would question the willingness of post-Docs to get involved in behaviour management in schools when they realise British kids don't give a @#?* about education and just want to swing on their chairs, argue with the teacher, fight with each other, watch DVDS and just generally be horrible little spoilt brats. How many researchers want to deal with that? Is that why they did a PhD? Not to mention curricular changes, horrific politics, general exploitation and extremely elementary levels of learning, abuse from parents, inspections, logging of everything relevant or otherwise for no particular reason, bullying, lack of funding, resources and effective workspaces... buildings falling down and rain water dripping onto classroom PCs... etc etc... ad absurdum... ad infinitum. This is not why people do PhDs. It is a good idea in principle but it will never help education or post-Docs too much I don't think. Cynical but true I think. It just sounds like a way to maintain corporate control over education and our schools.

I'm a teacher who left to do a PhD. I think children get like that as many can't see a point in education when they are told it will lead to a job and they know it won't. If someone said to you, "come to me for 5 years, do everything I tell you, don't step out of line, take work home with you and at the end you'll be lucky to get any job".....would you do it? (Oh yeah we are we're doing the PhD ha ha see even we've bought in! lol.) To change attitudes towards education the goals of education should be more hollistic - to be happy, be enlightened, better mental wellbeing, socialisation. IF you knew it was about those things and not just about jobs maybe there'd be a better 'buy in'. There's more to learning than earning! I value my education more than what job I'll get at the end and that's why I chose a PhD, it's probably/certainly not going to make me rich ha ha.
Education for social mobility through employment is also an unobtainable farce. I mean if everyone social climbs who's going to do the jobs at the bottom, and what's wrong with the jobs at the bottom!!! you're condemning those to being thought of as failures :( You can see from this that we are still stuck in education for employment mode and the types of mathematics and science they are talking about are heavily tied into capitalism and economic production. Who's to say that music and art aren't as important! What makes us human is our imagination after all. It makes me sad. I'd also be right peeved at a PhD swanning in and earning twice as much!

I wouldn't want to do it for the reasons stated above, but I do think it's a pretty good option for those who have considered teaching. 10k more than a good postdoc rate and fewer research positions available? I can see a few people buying into that. It's win-win.

I also don't agree with the comments I've seen elsewhere about people with PhDs not be able to teach. Maybe they can't off the bat, but I bet they learn to a lot quicker than other many other teachers do.

Here is some more information on this. I think it is quite a good idea, especially as it's A-level teaching and provides time for research, although I don't see how one would survive on a salary of 17,000 pounds in London, since presumably this is taxed...