Originally Posted by Unregistered

No need to be, but ask yourself how many hours a day you spend working, including after you leave the school compound? How many hours per week can you truly 'disconnect from work'? I bet you have marking and MYE paper setting to do this weekend.

Drawing 4-5k a month to bust your balls for 60-80 hours a week is not an outrageously low salary, enough to have a modest living, but it is based on the dangerous assumption that passion and love for the job is enough to keep people going indefinitely and ignore comparisons to the outside world. It might, for their first few fiery years, but after that we have to look at how to retain people who might have market value outside (surprise surprise, some teachers didn't join teaching just because they had no choice and needed a dumping ground).