SCITT (salary)

Hi all,

I am currently coming to the end of my second year and as a mature student I am thinking about my life in 12 months time. I am fully aware I want to be a primary school teacher however I really want to do it on a salaried route which I hear is available. I currently work 4 days a week with 2 days on placement and 2 days in uni and it is killing me as I cannot remember my last day off. So for my teacher training year I just want to be able to focus on that.

Can anyone give me some advice on achieving a salaried teacher training position?

Thanks

Reply 1

TraineeLynsey

Look for school direct salaried courses.

Do be aware though that for some subjects and degree classes, you can find yourself better off financially on a non-salaried route relying on loans, bursaries, grants and scholarships.

Reply 2

fluffyowl

According to an information event I went to, only the courses with the big scholarships (maths/physics/chemistry) work out better to be on the unsalaried route. For primary, you are better off doing the salaried route if you are eligible and can get a place.

I think Primary School Direct places are heavily over subscribed, so you need a really great application to stand a chance of getting one. I am not 100% sure, but I would have thought that most of them go to people who have been working in schools as TAs for years.

Reply 3

TraineeLynsey

Original post by fluffyowl

Not necessarily true. Salaried places pay about 18k, but are taxed.

I got 4k bursary from gorvernment, 4k bursary from my university partner, 4k maintenance grant and about 3,500 maintenance loan, plus a loan paid my fees.

Broken down into monthly income, it worked out about the same as the salaried people. If I'd got a 1st in my undergraduate degree then the government bursary would have been 9k I think, making it more profitable than a salaried route.

Reply 4

fluffyowl

Original post by TraineeLynsey

Surely you are still worse off because you have the maintenance loan and fee loan. You still have to pay that off! So you got 12k in bursaries/grants, but if you had a salaried place you would have got just over 15k after tax etc and wouldn't have any extra loans. So although you were better off in the short term doing the un-salaried route, you now have more loan to pay off in the future, so you will get less take-home pay in the long run.

Most people won't get an extra bursary from their university, and not everyone is eligible for a maintenance grant (depends on their parents'/partner's income), so even if they have a first, they will probably not be better off doing the unsalaried route for primary.

I, myself, would be eligble for the 9k grant as I got a first and am doing a PhD currently. My partner's income would mean I was eligible for 2.5k maintenance grant (the max is maintenance grant is £3387). Assuming I can't get anything else from a university, I would get 16k in total (including a maintenance loan). To be honest though, I would probably go with a salaried route if I was eligible because the 1k difference in take home money for the year actually equates to a 13.5k+ difference in the long term because I have another 13.5k in loans to pay back plus interest.