I'd like a properly resourced, motivated and rewarded health service, teachers, clean safe streets and so on. (But then I do live in Brighton & Hove, which is a liberal fantasy eco-bubble ;-) )
Amen to that (and I'd also like to live in Brighton and Hove too, I love our little weekend breaks down there)
Speaking from a teaching perspective, no matter how much experience, time and effort we put in, our salary is capped at a maximum of £43,685. Any progression from there involves moving into management, which means a considerable reduction in teaching which is counter intuitive to the reasons we entered the profession. We're certainly not sitting around on our backsides waiting for a busload of money to turn up.
We have has a 5% payrise this year, but this is unfunded so has had to come out of the existing budget. Budgets are already cut to the bone, so this means a 5% reduction in teaching staff, meaning larger class sizes, and non specialist teachers (I'm teaching four periods of Geography at the moment to fill gaps). When I first started teaching we'd usually get 10 or 15 applicants per job vacancy. Now we are lucky if we get any - we are screaming out for teachers, but it is just not an attractive option any more. Ultimately, it's the education of the kids that suffers.
According to the IFS - "most teachers are likely to see a five per cent real-terms fall in salaries this school year, which comes on top of past real-terms falls dating back to 2010 and the start of ‘austerity’. Real-terms pay for experienced teachers has declined by 13 per cent since 2010, and that over the same period average pay in the whole economy has increased by two per cent in real terms. This adds up to a relative decline in teacher pay of -15 per cent. If the higher inflation calculation of RPI rather than the lower CPI were used, pay would decline even further. RPI shows teachers have lost 23 per cent in real-terms since 2010 and support staff 27 per cent.”
We need to encourage people into the profession, and pay them appropriately. As said above, properly resourced, motivated and rewarded. 30% of new teachers quit within 5 years. It costs an individual around £37,000 to gain the qualifications necessary to enter the profession (3 year degree and PGCE). £37K is around the salary you'd expect to earn after teaching for 6 years.
I imagine the same applies for many other branches of the public sector.
