Career as Teacher

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Above median based on what?

National average? Or university cohort average?

If you want to compare national average, compare with income-less students, retirees, the non-grads, any uni-grad will easily earn above median salary after a couple of years in the workforce.
If you want to top 30% income earners (uni grads earn more in general), to live the lifestyle of those at the median, the 50th percentile people, yeah, sure, they earn more than enough to median lifestyle (4rm hdb flat in non mature estates, no car, 1 or 2 kids at most)

But if you compare with peers of similar profiles, just among the uni grads, can even fine tune to comparing with people from your course, with similar gpa or honours, teachers are not well paid at all. Below median even.

Salaries taken from smartwealth.sg.

Median salary by Age range - for a male in their 30s, median salary including employer contribution is between $ 5850 - 7020. Most teachers in that age range would comfortably fit within that range. Iofcourse, this does not differentiate by education.

Now if we look at a breakdown by profession, the same website puts median professional salary
as $7722. Now this would definitely be skewed by professionals in their 40s and 50s who skew the Median upwards.

So, looking at those 2 numbers, in what world can we say that a teacher in their 30s is earning below median income? I've brought some stats to make my case. For those who insist that teachers are underpaid, what do you have other than 'trust me bro'

Originally Posted by Unregistered

JC female teacher here

Inform your RO and SL

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Agree, assuming both husband and wife are teachers, with kids won’t have much money left at the end of every month, which is going to pose problems in their retirement life.

Yea... for husband-wife teacher couples, money matters aside, can't even imagine how tiring it is leh. long working hours, emotionally spent, come home still have to spend time with their own kids etc. some of my colleagues who are mothers suffer from mom guilt cos they don't have energy and physical capacity for their own children when they get home.

is the $ worth the exhaustion?

that day i saw this book on a teacher account on ig. went in to get a copy cos sounded interesting. my favourite part is chapter 6 - importance of secondary income ha ha

sharing here in case anyone interested
s://.kobo.com/sg/en/ebook/getting-to-geo-3-how-to-survive-your-bt-years

happy first day of term tomorrow~

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yea... for husband-wife teacher couples, money matters aside, can't even imagine how tiring it is leh. long working hours, emotionally spent, come home still have to spend time with their own kids etc. some of my colleagues who are mothers suffer from mom guilt cos they don't have energy and physical capacity for their own children when they get home.

is the $ worth the exhaustion?

that day i saw this book on a teacher account on ig. went in to get a copy cos sounded interesting. my favourite part is chapter 6 - importance of secondary income ha ha

sharing here in case anyone interested
s://.kobo.com/sg/en/ebook/getting-to-geo-3-how-to-survive-your-bt-years

happy first day of term tomorrow~

s://.kobo.com/sg/en/ebook/getting-to-geo-3-how-to-survive-your-bt-years

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Its between 150- 200k TC per couple! This is the general range of a couple in the early 30s who are both teachers. Why are you only assuming a single income household, when the OP was about a teacher couple.

Not enough retirement income? Lol, please do the maths when it comes to just cpf savings please. And then add on the savings from take home income. That's more than enough to cover the needs of retirement. It's just that people are just dooming instead of admitting that they're bad with money.

I think previous commenter was talking about the fact that they have to support their own parents as well. Eldercare is not cheap if parents have specific needs that a regular helper cannot fully meet. And if they have no siblings to split the financial load with, it's no joke. Their spouse may have their own responsibilities to their own parents.

All this is even before they have to manage their own children, if any.

True nowadays median income will still house, feed and clothe you and your family, but it will not guarantee you can retire at 65.

You MUST have secondary income streams. Passive income is the gold standard, but tutoring on the side is not too shabby either.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

To hit 100k without connect plan, assuming 16 month package (13th month, 1 month variable bonus, 2 months PB which is very generous, given that C grade is around 1.5 only), this will require a monthly pay of $6250.

Promotion increment is around 10% only. Annual increment is around 2-5%.

Unless you are scholar, or somehow very stellar performance, can get Bs and As every year and promote like clockwork, and the economy performs well all the time, it is very unlikely for a guy to hit 100k by 30.
At 30, the people who can start work the earliest are the NIE degree batch, who graduate at 25. They can clock 5 years of work experience.

Those who need to go through pgde, can only commence work at 26, 27 (depending on how long they have to do contract teaching). At 30, they would only have 3-4 years of experience, barely completing their bonds.

Those from poly backgrounds can add an additional year.

Furthermore, excluding the salary revision last year, the annual merit increments and promotional increment, and also pb quantums, have been cut the previous 3 years between 2020-2022. Which means even if you can promote quickly, the increase in salary is lower than the pre-covid cohorts.

Also, slowdown in promotion pace also means that salary growth is slower.

All in all, 100k without connect plan by 30 for male is extremely unlikely, unless there are other salary components which are not disclosed

thanks for shedding light, really helpful.

what would you say is most reasonable and plausible TC for a 30M? Based on your variables, I guesstimate it to be ~90k.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Salaries taken from smartwealth.sg.

Median salary by Age range - for a male in their 30s, median salary including employer contribution is between $ 5850 - 7020. Most teachers in that age range would comfortably fit within that range. Iofcourse, this does not differentiate by education.

Now if we look at a breakdown by profession, the same website puts median professional salary
as $7722. Now this would definitely be skewed by professionals in their 40s and 50s who skew the Median upwards.

So, looking at those 2 numbers, in what world can we say that a teacher in their 30s is earning below median income? I've brought some stats to make my case. For those who insist that teachers are underpaid, what do you have other than 'trust me bro'

sorry, not the same person whom you're arguing with

just that since we're going into numbers, it's probably highly relevant to go deep into the working hours as well, in order to ascertain whether the salary is indeed comparable.

the most accurate way is to go into the salary per hour based on average weekly working hours.

the ambiguous thing here is that there may be great variation across different schools. but my guess is that a week's worth of work is probably around 50 - 60 hours? this includes any other work done at home e.g. marking, setting papers, lesson planning, consultations, communications with parents etc.

If things are really as rosy as many people here are saying, I wonder why the attrition rate of GEO3 and GEO4 officers is so high... hmmmmmmmmm

Not all ex-teachers start printing money once they jump to the private sector, but the fact is, the earnings per unit effort/unit time worked as an MOE teacher is a VERY low bar to clear, especially for recent cohorts. Don't talk about GEO5 HOTs from the previous era.

Year 3 GEO3 here. Clicked apply for SH and HOD roles in workpal just to test the system. For SH/ST roles, the error message was “subgrade does not meet minimum requirements” while for HOD, it is simply “you do not meet the minimum criteria for this position.” Based on this, I can assume my CEP is probably SEO1. Can use this to check your CEP