Doing some sums...

This week being half term, I had a bit of time on my hands and sat down and did some sums. Now, Maths is not my strongest subject, but given a pen, paper and soundproofed room, I get there eventually. The sums in question related to my income, such as it is, and it turns out that my calculations last year when I started this job were a little out…actually, WAY out. On paper, my salary is great, or at least far better than most support staff get. But then you reduce it because the job is only 3 days a week (no choice about that)… and reduce it again for pro rata (i.e. I only get paid for term-times, which reduces the whole thing by about 25%, although they split the salary into 12 equal monthly payments)… and then take off tax… and then factor in the travel costs (petrol and car maintenance) for nearly 70 miles a day, three days a week, 39 weeks of the year, at 40p per mile. And that’s when I winced. So I looked at how much I earned in the last year with my extra work (and the last 12 months have been quite good). And, frankly, it doesn’t make much difference. What it boils down to is that when T moves to secondary school in September, I’m not sure I can afford to go with him.

That is a hugely difficult decision to be facing. On the one hand, I absolutely love my job, and I’m getting to develop some great resources which I might be able to market in the future (though that’s never going to make me rich!). On the other hand, I get no training, very little support, and I have student debts that really need to paid off and a household to contribute to. After 3 years working in deaf education, I have no better BSL skills (on paper) than what I came in with, and the Cued Speech training was largely done in my own time, at very little cost to the people I was working for. I’m not very much more employable than I was when I started. And backing out from this job would almost certainly mean leaving the sector all together, because there just aren’t the children out there with enough funding for reasonable salaries. My only hope is to have a chat with the Big Boss and pray that he can find me two extra days of work closer to home. Fingers crossed.

I feel really angry about this. We have a child who has been failed by the system, who is finally getting the support he needs (most of the time), but only as long as highly-skilled people are willing to do the job for a wage that you can't live on. I am very good at what I do, and I could be better, but they simply will not invest in the sort of support or training which would keep me in the job and stop me from burning out. Since they send staff from elsewhere to observe me (which is hugely disruptive to the entire class) and learn what to do with their kids, surely they can see that a bit of investment into me might be a good idea?!

But no, wait, this is the education system. Since when did intelligence come into it? Silly me.