What caught my eye this week.
Every morning at 9.30am in New York, a bell is rung at the famous Stock Exchange to signal the start of trading.
It happens again with a closing bell at 4.30pm – repeating a routine that’s watched by almost nobody in the actual business of investing.
Okay, a few hundred floor traders are prompted to think about which route they’ll take home. A giddy CEO from a biotech wonders if they chose a diverse enough team to join them on the platform for the bell-ringing ‘ceremony’ they coughed up for. A retired dentist in Florida watching CNBC growls as yet another day’s viewing has not revealed what sank her 3M stock.
Elsewhere, data whips around the globe. A high frequency hedge fund manager visiting a server farm coughs politely and suggests her cabling could be at bit closer to the wall. A thousand crypto bros ply their trades, day and night. And a fund manager in Tokyo curses himself for snoozing through his alarm and missing the US close.
Major currencies and bonds can now be traded all day and night from Monday to Friday.
But US equities can only be traded out-of-hours in a half-arsed fashion – via wonderfully-named ‘dark pools’ if you’re an institution, or even the internal markets of certain US retail platforms like Robinhood.
And that isn’t good enough for some people.
Be a part of it
24 Exchange – a startup US trading venue backed by hedge fund manager Steven Cohen – has been looking to take trading 24-hours for years.
Its latest submission is with the regulators. Meanwhile the New York Stock Exchange is polling interested parties about how non-stop weekday trading could work.
The Financial Times notes the survey is being conducted by the New York Exchange’s data analytics team, rather than its management. It seems like a fact-finding foray at this point.
And one can certainly imagine all sorts of technical obstacles – from staffing to liquidity to compliance – that would challenge a stock market rolling along for 120 hours on the trot.
On the other hand, doesn’t it feel sort of odd that we still have set market hours?
The whole show is run by restless machines these days anyway, while cryptocurrencies have given the younger human participants a taste for always-on trading.
Google news stories about the New York poll and you’ll find most of the coverage is from the crypto sites. Not a coincidence.
There’s even an intellectual argument for 24/7 trading.
A stock’s price is supposed to reflect all known information about that company and its future cashflows.
But if an earthquake happens in San Francisco on Monday evening, say, a US company’s price is basically a stab in the dark until Tuesday morning.
Investors who want to react to the news cannot do so – except via overseas proxies, the futures market, or those alternative trading venues I mentioned. All of which have their own issues.
It’s up to you New York, New York
Whether reducing these ‘blind spots’ in pricing overnight – and even, conceivably, at weekends – would produce more accurate prices overall is an open question.
Already out-of-hours markets are bedevilled with illiquidity and glitchy pricing.
Long-time commentator Felix Salmon warns “off-hours markets can be treacherous places for investors” and reckons any 24-hour equity market would be a ‘casino’.
Writing on Axios, Salmon also notes that institutions already do most of their share trading around the market’s open and close, when liquidity is greatest.
So most of them wouldn’t want anything to do with buying Tesla shares at 1am on a Wednesday.
That would make official nighttime trading the domain of retail punters – and of those who’d prey on them.
Which probably wouldn’t end well for the punters.
“As any casino will tell you, risky gambles are more popular at night,” Salmon concludes.
Contrarily, some European insiders are discussing actually reducing trading hours on the continent. European trading hours are currently two hours longer than the six-and-a-half hours seen in the US.
The aim would be to shore up liquidity, rather than spreading it even thinner over a longer trading window.
These little-town blues
Where any of this would leave the poor old London Stock Exchange is anyone’s guess.
For many decades London profited from being in a convenient timezone between Asia and the US continent – as well from its ultra-close proximity to Europe.
Would London have more or less relevance in an always-on trading world?
Or are we anyway on a path to one exchange – in New York, which is already home to around two-thirds of global listed equities by value?
Who knows, but in the meantime the London market’s struggles continue.
This week we saw DarkTrace, Tyman, and Hipgnosis agree to bids from overseas acquirers. The £2bn drug maker Invidior also confirmed previously mooted plans to shift its primary listing to the US.
All in a day’s work for the shrinking LSE.
AJ Bells’ investment director Russ Mould warns the volume of firms being snapped up means “the UK market is experiencing death by a thousand cuts.”
Still, it’s an opportunity to profit if you’re an active investor. At least it is if you can figure out what’s truly cheap and/or potentially attractive, versus what’s a conked-out value trap. (Harder than it looks.)
Needless to say, passive investors owning global trackers can ignore all this noise with a wry shake of their heads – and then continue to go about their business of compounding their long-term gains, regardless of how and when the underlying shares are traded!
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
Fancy a short duration index-linked gilt fund to guard against inflation? – Monevator
From the archive-ator: How to save money on travel – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
Homeowner pain as major banks hike mortgage rates – BBC
Charles Schwab eyes UK rollout for US-domiciled ETFs [Search result] – FT
UK rejects talks on EU-wide youth mobility scheme – Yahoo
IG Group faces criticism after clients hit by refunding errors – Shares
Pensioners’ fears over paying income tax – BBC
Paragon Bank reveals the top ten buy-to-let hotspots – This Is Money
London leaseholders told they face costs of up to £99,000 each – BBC
Many UK adults unwilling to travel to Europe under new entry/exit scheme – Euronews
KPMG UK cancels foreign graduate job offers after tighter visa rules… [Search result] – FT
…rules that campaigners say penalises couples – BBC
Products and services
The pros and cons of Monzo’s new paid-for accounts – Be Clever With Your Cash
Can long-term mortgages help solve the UK’s housing crisis? [Search result] – FT
Sign-up to Trading 212 via our affiliate link to claim free fractional shares worth up to £100. T&Cs apply – Trading 212
Blackrock is trialling a product to deliver paycheque-like income from a retirement portfolio [US but relevant] – CNBC
How does Co-Op Bank’s new 7% regular saver account compare? – Which
Outfox The Market’s new energy deal 13% cheaper than Ofgem price cap – This Is Money
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and you could get up to £2,500 as a cashback bonus (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
Aviva launches free pension tracing service – Which
Six questions to ask before taking out private medical insurance – Which
One year with a Tesla Model Y – Mr Money Mustache
Urban flats for sale, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Join the investor class as soon as you can – Downtown Josh Brown
Is it too late to invest in the gold rush? [Search result] – FT
All about the quest – Humble Dollar
Are you an investing historian or a futurist? – Morningstar
Risk seeking versus risk mitigating – Collaborative Fund
Large cap US growth dominance is mostly a multiple expansion story – Morningstar
Why do people make ‘bad’ financial decisions? – Of Dollars and Data
Volatility is a necessary evil in the stock market – A Wealth of Common Sense
Should a retiree keep paying life insurance premiums? [US but relevant] – Oblivious Investor
Diversification is a negatively-priced lunch [Podcast, nerdy] – Flirting With Models
Naughty corner: Active antics
Even ‘forever’ stocks have a shelf life – Micro Cap Club
Accounting numbers and cash have to add up…eventually – Capital Gains
Hedge funds have done better than we thought, but there’s catches – Alpha Architect
Retail investors trade riskier ETFs too much – Klement on Investing
How’s the private equity winter looking? [Search result] – FT
Risk parity has underperformed for years – Bloomberg via F.A.
Kindle book bargains
How to Read Numbers by Tom Chivers –£0.99 on Kindle
The Dip: Knowing When to Quit by Seth Godin – £0.99 on Kindle
The Pathless Life by Paul Millerd – £0.99 on Kindle
The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Conservation slows biodiversity loss, scientists say – BBC
High prices blamed for heat pump installations running behind target – This Is Money
What the heck is seaweed mining? – Hakai
‘Huge disappointment’ as UK delays bottle deposit plan and excludes glass – Guardian
What happens after your country runs on 99% renewable electricity? – The Verge
Birdsong no longer signals the onset of spring in Cambridge – Guardian
Robot overlord roundup
Daniel Dennett: “Civilisation is more fragile than we realised” – BBC
AI is the end of the web as we know it – The Atlantic [h/t Abnormal Returns]
Technological risks are not the end of the world – Science
Looking for AI use cases – Benedict Evans
‘Miss AI’ is billed as a leap forward, but it feels like a step backwards – Guardian
Age appropriate mini-special
Ages of the people we marry [Interactive] – Flowing Data [h/t Abnormal Returns]
More life advice from a super-smart septuagenarian – Kevin Kelly
Dollar cost average into your health – A Teachable Moment
The surprising data behind super-centenarians [Search result] – FT
Retirees are racing against the clock – Humble Dollar
Man, 110, has simple tips for a long life – Today
Off our beat
Hyperphantasia and the quest to understand vivid imaginations – Guardian
Discipline is underrated – Raptitude
The ‘holiday paradox’: how to slow down time – Life After The Daily Grind
No one buys books – The Elysian
The Silicon Valley gold rush started with… a gold rush – Asterisk
Who should pay when space junk falls through your ceiling? – NPR
“You can even kill them”: the UN and the rise of Singapore – Global Developments
How $61bn in US military aid to Ukraine will flow through the US economy – Yahoo Finance
The 80% solution – We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards
Countries with the largest happiness gains since 2010 [Infographic] – Visual Capitalist
And finally…
“Philosophy and theology give you the perfect background for investing. To succeed at investing, you need a philosophy. Then you’ve got to pray like hell.”
– Shelby Collum Davis, The Davis Dynasty
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Delighted to find this on Friday night – perfect for an early bird like me!
I quite like the idea of the stock market that trades once a day. The idea is everyone puts in blind bids before a certain time (for example midday), the matching is done, and everyone goes home til the same time next day.
(I think that Ben Evans link is wrong)
@Rich — There are internal markets for private shares that work a bit like that. Too clunky for me, though it’d be interesting to see how the illiquidity washed out in practice over the long-term across all participants. (Presumably it would average out?) Thanks for the link error spot! Fixed now.
@Martin T — Such an early bird that you wake the evening before?! 😉
It’s tempting to say that this would mean “adios” to the overnight effect, but perhaps its gone already, accounting for trading costs and being arbitraged.
Bearing in mind that Goldman Sachs estimates that Emerging Market equities share by global equity market capitalisation will rise to 55% by 2075; the future of US exceptionalism in stocks may eventually lie in the NYSE becoming a truly global exchange. Perhaps by the latter part of this century it will become the venue of choice for a new generation of Indian and Nigerian mega caps (?)
[NB: Whilst buying the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) at the close of trading and selling it at the next day’s market open yielded 670%, excluding dividends, since 1993 (according to Bespoke Investment Group) last year 2 ETFs designed to profit from overnight gains on US stocks shuttered after lagging their daytime counterparts (the $3.7 mn NightShares 500 ETF (NSPY) and the $1.4 mn NightShares 2000 ETF (NIWM))].
Happy Saturday!
Two more links worth sharing
1) Piece on diversification from Bridgewater
https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/where-can-investors-find-geographic-diversification-today
2) Investigation into broker guarantees:
https://www.bankeronwheels.com/broker-safety-should-you-rely-on-broker-insurance/
@Rich #2 > I quite like the idea of the stock market that trades once a day.
Isn’t that called an OEIC, available on any good retail platform near you?
As someone who is still guilty of checking share prices at 8:01am and occasionally throughout the day – all this extra trading time is an opportunity to lose more time looking at numbers.
Like when I could only check my email by logging in via desktop/laptop and now having everything in my pocket – it’s not clear if it’s made the world or my life any better.
It’s probably best to remember that the old money men of Wall St and the City used to “sell in May and not come back until St. Leger’s Day” – which is the best advocacy for passive investment that I can think of.
So 24/7/365 trading can happen – why not? – but I’ll try to tune out of all the noise.
As someone who is single and retired the thought of life insurance never enters my head, but the Oblivious Investor piece is an interesting take on the wisdom of continuing premiums on an existing policy.
I appreciated also the inclusion of the Age Appropriate Mini-Special section this week.
24 hour trading is a really interesting concept, I can see pros and cons though I think I’m in favour, on balance. The current system does seem antiquated and artificial, and I think some of the objections to 24 hour trading are overblown.
Salmon seems to be having it both ways: out of hours trading will be bad because only retail investors will be active, leading to low volumes and wide spreads, but it will also be bad because CitSec and Virtu will be piling in to “trade against” those same retail investors, even though this will lead to higher volumes and tighter spreads. (Incidentally “trade against” is an idiotic phrase – does he think the retail investors would prefer their orders to just sit on the book?)
There’s a separate interesting question about regulation of listed company disclosures. It’s quite convenient for companies to have a period where their stocks aren’t traded, for instance if they’re racing to agree an M&A deal, so they can agree the terms and sort out the deal announcement before trading opens, without anyone saying that they have allowed a false market to develop. Not sure how this would work with 24 hour trading.
Incidentally Matt Levine covered this a while back, always worth a read – he’s also more recently covered the regulatory piece I think, but I couldn’t find that one: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-06/why-not-trade-all-night
@GFF (#7):
What you describe even has a name; see Jevons paradox – which, incidentally, dates from the 1860’s IIRC!!
The centralisation of exchanges is a long term trend. Major provincial cities used to have their own stock and commodity exchanges, for example Manchester has buildings that were previously the Stock Exchange, Royal Exchange (cotton) and Corn Exchange. With better communication, the logic of better liquidity and convenience pushs to centralisation, and in practice towards the NYSE. In the long term, I can only see national and provincial exchanges surviving either if there is a political barrier ( unlikely that all Chinese industries will be allowed to move on to the NYSE ) or just for local trading. The London International Stock Exchange is surely doomed, although maybe some version of AIM might survive for UK micro-caps. Ditto for all other major exchanges in the US sphere of influence.
It is noteable that many of the smaller companies leaving LSE are going by take-over or private buy-out, and not ending up with quote on another exchange. Moving to NYSE is arguably just switching to a slightly less bad situation and doesn’t address the downsides of being publicly quoted in the first place. Even with Shell – the company certainly doesn’t need to raise capital from equity markets; dropping the reporting requirements and high public profile of a listed company would probably be welcome (no more Just Stop Oil stunts at the AGM). Private equity would be a good home, if there was enough capacity to do the deal. But it was reported this week that PE can’t raise enough even to take on the Unilever ice cream business in full, so Shell would seem totally out of reach. So what else could Shell do ? All they really need is a trading mechanism for share-holders. So could they set that up privately and manage it themselves ? Modern IT should allow it, or they can out -source to an existing exchange business or share register company. They get to make the rules w/o the hassles of large public exchanges.
Same is true for very many established companies – as businesses they simply don’t need more equity and don’t need public exchanges. While the exchanges are even less useful to start-ups and small companies these days.
Maybe after 20 years or so there won’t be much public equity around to invest in anywhere. You’ll be able to invest direct into a few large companies with market-like trading or into PE type collective funds.
@DavidV,
Perhaps Mike Pipers (aka The Oblivious Investor) book: More Than Enough is equally interesting. However, from a quick scan of the TOC it seems to have been written very much for the US. All the Amazon reviews seem to originate from the US too. Has any non-US based MONEVATOR reader ever read this book?
@Al Cam (12) Yep, I saw the book advertised on his page, had a look on Amazon and bought the Kindle edition. I also saw from the contents that it is very US-specific, but I think I understand enough about the differences from UK to be able to read across his general points.
@TI “….. repeating a routine that’s by watched by…..” ?
Somewhat related to this – the negativity on the UK stock market is very very high at the moment. There are plenty of stories out there regarding the shrinking market and companies choosing to list in the US etc.
However, interestingly, against this backdrop of negativity the FTSE 100 has manage to break out quite significantly on the upside over the last couple of weeks.
From a sentiment perspective, this much negative sentiment combined with a strong breakout in the opposite (ie positive) direction is quite often (not always of course) a precursor of a continued move upwards.
But who knows?
Gold rush: “We all want to keep the same lifestyle: sending your kids to good schools and owning two cars. When we talk to the middle-income people …”
Two cars? We have had six bikes but two cars? Apparently we were never middle-income. Some of our friends own two cars but they were in overpaid professions – local government, school teachers, that sort of thing.
Both Trading 212 and Robinhood (recently launched in the UK) offer 24/5 trading of US stocks Monday to Friday. Seems a good compromise to me. Companies can release earnings etc. on the weekend like Berkshire Hathaway does. What professional human traders that are left for now (before the bank AIs start trading against each other) can still have a weekend. Don’t have much sympathy for the view that we have to nanny retail traders that choose to make use of the extra optionality so long as the risks are reasonably disclosed.
@Dearieme
I’ve got two daughters both Teachers who haven’t got a pot to **** in. Both work harder than I ever did.
A snide ill-informed comment.
All excellent links as always. Thanks @TI 🙂
The 1st Morningstar piece linked to above (John Rekenthaler) is very deep in its implications and bears reflection. Market historians have it so much easier than do market futurists, but the payout for correct predictions is also so much greater than for accurate retrodiction.
Somewhat contrarianly, may I commend the podcast/transcript on the Rational Reminder community of this interview with Michael Green (on 25 April) here?:
https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/302
I’d also very much recommend checking out his “Be Better” post on his Substack yesigiveafig.com (March 26).
I’m not saying BTW that I necessarily agree with Mr Green on any potential liquidity/ volatility problem that he may perhaps have identified with systematic rule based (nondiscretionary) passive index tracker funds/ETFs at the level of the market operations as a whole; but, OTOH, if there is actually a problem here then it could eventually turn out to be a very big one indeed.
[Full disclosure: I’m ~90% in long only global equity trackers presently, so I’m not an active investment advocate talking his book here – but Mr Green’s reasoning does have me a bit worried for the long term.]
Excellent discussion on Martin Green over in the Bogleheads forum
Could someone provide a link?
His prognostications obviously of great interest to Index investors and Bogleheads
xxd09
@xxd09
As you’ve been reading the “excellent discussion”, what stops you from posting the link yourself?
Anyhow, I guess this what you were looking for: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=430546&newpost=7844074
Lack of technical expertise-in this particular area
Will get a grandchild to show me and then try and remember -too many grey hairs!
xxd09
@Dearieme OK, I’ll bite too.
Teachers are grossly underpaid for the hours they put in, not to mention all the paperwork, prep, everything else. My mother recently retired after 45 years+ as a teacher, regularly doing 60/70 hours weeks on top of unpaid DofE work, which involved weekends away. She did it because she loved teaching and seeing kids grow, not because of the ‘money’. Admittedly her pension is quite decent but she’s only just accessed that, and fair play after a lifetime of hard work.
Another friend is a head of dept at a local academy, again clocks over 70 hours+ a week in and out of school, barely time to see his own family or friends. Usually works holidays to catch up.
Please share with us more how teachers are ‘overpaid’ on, what, mid-five figures?
Taking £35k as the median UK wide full time salary for our starting point. In the public sector teachers will earn a minimum of £30k per annum. This rises to a max of £46,525 outside of London, £51,179 in London.
That number excludes increments for being a year head, subject head or similar. Include those and the minimums and maximums grow to £47k / £72k outside of London and £56k / £81k in London.
Become a headteacher and you’re looking at a max of £131k and £140k respectively.
Pension includes a very generous employer contribution of 28.6%, which is almost ten times the UK 3% average.
The above numbers come from the government’s getintoteaching website.
There are close to half a million working teachers in the UK (the earlier numbers for salary and pension were England and Wales only).
Even excluding the other advantages such as the extended holidays, options to work almost anywhere in the country (geographical arbitrage), job security etc I’m not convinced that teaching is an especially poor profession to be in.
Regarding the hours teachers put in I only have anecdotes from ex-bankers who were far happier with their new work / life balance, then covid and work from home upset the apple cart.
@ Azimino
Ok so all teachers will become heads deputy heads etc, or even move to London to get a real salary. Nah. Get real. Most have to drag themselves to the weekend. At least then,they can mark the little darlings books. As for the bankers comparison, not quite sure what you are alluding to. My own limited experience is I work/ worked with young reasonably skilled Technicians in their early 20s, who earn at least 10 k on my children. They are home for 3.30, and no extra work.
I am out of touch with current salary expectations, but nevertheless feel a teacher’s £30K starting salary doesn’t look generous for someone with a degree and a postgraduate qualification. The quoted headteacher salaries are for the very biggest schools and need to be compared with CEOs of businesses with 100+ employees.
Azamino. I agree. In salary terms, teachers are paid in line with private sector workers but that ignores benefits. The average private sector employer pension contribution is 4.5% vs. teachers who get 28.6%. The private sector employee averages 225 days/annum vs. a teacher at 195 days.
So, once adjusted for pensions and holidays, teacher compensation is around 42% more than a private sector employee on the same salary. To match a teacher on £35k, a private sector worker needs to earn closer to £50k to obtain the same daily rate.
So statistically, teachers are paid in the higher percentiles. A £45k compensation package puts you in the 70th percentile, £52k in the 80th percentile. You cannot simply ignore the huge value of the DB pension contributions. It also underlines though that average UK salaries (whether private or public sector) are lower than most people appreciate.
Whether you think that makes them under or overpaid though is a qualitatively subjective question.
Hi Griff, I cannot comment on progression but no one would expect to sit on the minimum for long.
Moving to London would be a serious error too when a teacher has the option of a lower cost of living area on a very similar salary.
The reference to banking is a simple one, it is what I know. At least three people I know moved from Equity Research roles to teaching. They all claim to work significantly fewer hours now than when they were in Canary Wharf or the City.
The standout number for me was the pension, 28.6% employer contribution.
I spent a year teaching abroad and looked quite seriously at teacher training in the UK before I landed my current job.
Wife was a Primary Teacher -son currently a Deputy Head in a Secondary school-so I have some hands on knowledge
Historically Teachers (like all professions)were paid an income that was guaranteed and secure so that they could concentrate on delivering their primary function which was educating children without having to worry where their next meal or rent etc was coming from ie a Vocation
Teaching is not a job to go into if your primary concern is making money-the security of the job does however appeal to some people especially in periods of hard times and unemployment
Buisness is where you go to make money -thereby generating tax to pay for teachers who are an actual ongoing cost to society
Educating children is not a place to be if you have different priorities-children can suss this out very quickly and make life very uncomfortable for you
If you don’t like children then you shouldn’t be teaching -there are few worse places to be than being in front of a class of kids 5 days a week that don’t like or respect you-hell might be worse-just!
At the moment certainly my son works 7am to 6pm five days a week (been known to start at 5am occasionally in examination times
Arguably teaching is one of the most important jobs in a society-ignorant children who then become ignorant adults are a societal disaster with many consequences-all bad
Teachers pay should be related to how much a society values knowledge and the educating of its young future citizens ie enough income to be secure but not enough to to attract entrepreneurial types who should be in buisness
Not a simple balance to strike
xxd09
@ZXSpectrum48k:”…You cannot simply ignore the huge value of the DB pension contributions.”
A teacher employee certainly can. What they receive has absolutely nothing to do with the employer contributions (and the employee ones for that matter). Broadly speaking, work for A years and receive an amount proportionately weighted to your average salary across that period of A years.
In any event, the employer contributions are simply recycling of cash within the public sector: cash goes from the Consolidated Fund to the employer (e.g. academies in England via DfE, or to local authority) then back to the Consolidated Fund (as ultimate financier of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme). DB Pension contributions in the public sector are meaningless. Azamino was trying to compare to a DC system which is invalid.
@Azamino et al
As ZXSpectrum48k rightly points out, whether teacher’s are overpaid is merely a matter of opinion. Yes, they earn above average salary but they are degree-level professionals these days so might expect to earn above-average ultimately. In any event, shouldn’t they be paid what the market dictates? Retention rates are fairly dire (30% have left within five years, https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england) and it would seem that only the pension is what keeps some of them: abolish that, ZX, and see what happens.
@Azamino: “They all claim to work significantly fewer hours now than when they were in Canary Wharf or the City.” And what happened to their remuneration?
Having left the teaching profession for early retirement, yes the pension is a good benefit, but after 26 years at the chalk face (I had another career before entering teaching at 30.8 – the prior career had no pension attached) I barely pay tax on my pension. (Under £42 last year) so do the maths.
The number of my colleagues who leave the profession every year is increasing due to the perpetual increase in the demands and stress of the job. Counting hours paid and doing sums does not equate to hours actually worked. Generous holidays? yes, but few enjoy the break without working to prepare for the next term – and those that do not prepare are in for some terribly long hours when the term starts.
When a small community in the north west of England (Fully geographically arbitraged) has to worry about its trainers and teachers choosing less stressful and better paid work with reasonable pension contributions in a large shipyard, perhaps we need to look at the true nature of supply and demand that drives these movements and come up with an equitable way of keeping well educated and experienced people in the roles that provide the future prosperity of our nation?
JimJim
My wife is a headteacher outside London. There’s some wildly inaccurate comments in some postings above. Her salary is just above mid 5-figures. She works over 100 hours per week. The 6 week holiday is actually more like 4 as she and her staff go in the week after the end of term and the week before the start of the next academic year. Quoting the employers contribution on a DB scheme is pretty meaningless since it’s not seen by the employee and in my wife’s case she has to contribute over 10% of her salary for each year’s membership. And as for job security – very little when you become a headteacher since in most Academies if you get a requires improvement rating from OFSTED (common rating in very challenging areas due to the demographics of the pupils and their families) you are sacked.
@all — Cheers for the mostly very civil conversation about what’s clearly a bit of a hot potato.
@Factor — Ack! I couldn’t get that line quite right in my re-writing, but getting it wrong is worse… 😉 Thanks!
Others have alluded to various statistics associated with the teaching profession, but coincidentally there is a summarising article at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/30/parents-voters-ministers-run-out-teachers-recruitment-schools which, more importantly for those of us interested in data, gives links to a number of sources. The one at https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/13813/pdf/ is a particularly interesting read with one statement (Q160) that 70% of those going through the Now Teach system (i.e., mature entrants to teaching such as azamino’s colleagues/friends) ‘suggest that their workload is higher than other sectors’ (1000 people went through Now Teach, but it doesn’t say how many of those provided survey answers, but is likely to be a more statistically significant population than 3 all of whom were from the same sector). From a quick read of that report, it would appear that teaching has similar retention issues to the police and the NHS.
I’m also minded of the phrase “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. For a smallish country with relatively few remaining natural resources, our human capital is what will keep us afloat in the future and education is a key part of investment (not cost) in our human capital.
At least I got the word ‘investment’ in there, so hopefully TI will allow this OT post 😉
Personally I think it’s high time technology did a number on education. (My bias: I hated the institution of school and going there every day, despite being demonstrably pretty good at it).
One can easily imagine a future where pupils together watch classes from only the very best ‘explaining’ teachers via some kind of live Zoom (with hundreds of thousands of other pupils watching at the same time) and then local teachers who maybe lean more towards empathy or one-to-one engagement talk through the issues with their class, on a group or individual basis.
Meanwhile every pupil has a ‘desktop’ with some kind of AI learning software — think DuoLingo but for everything — that rolls out the course at their own pace.
If parents need kids away from the classroom for a period they can continue to clock-in offline without any interruption.
And potentially vice-versa. (This kind of set-up would make Saturday morning extra lessons and even tutoring more accessible to the masses).
Obviously the potential for disaster in this transition is rife, and I’m only giving a rough sketch of one of various alternatives. And pushback from the incumbents (and unions) likely to be big, and not always wrong either.
So we’d probably see something wholesale like this in the US or Singapore or similar first.
I think it could be good for teachers, too. Getting rid of the whole course prep and rote marking burden would be a good start. (Duolingo-for-schools could handle the easy marking (maths etc) and maybe in time LLM AIs do a first-pass on essays etc).
*Maybe* some disruptive kids would be more engaged by tailored and gamified content, which could help with the lamentable need for teachers to act as classroom cops when they’d obviously far rather be educating.
(From talking to friends (who were once kids, obviously, and are now parents) classroom discipline seems to be one of the biggest practical differentials between giant comps like I went to and private education.)
If you think about other professions and how much they’ve been changed by technology over the past 100 years, I’m not sure having a digital whiteboard in the corner cuts it. (I know there’s more to it than this, just being rhetorically colourful).
All suggested with full humility as an education outsider. Doubtless a thorny issue 🙂
Disclaimer: Long DUO stock. 😉
“One can easily imagine a future where pupils together watch classes from only the very best ‘explaining’ teachers via some kind of live Zoom (with hundreds of thousands of other pupils watching at the same time) and then local teachers who maybe lean more towards empathy or one-to-one engagement talk through the issues with their class, on a group or individual basis.”
As a university lecturer (science), I implemented a number of ‘new’ approaches to teaching (it is not necessarily about the technology, which is just a tool, but more about the methodology) and e-assessment (the universities are probably about 10-20 years behind the schools in these areas). Freeing up time for individual contact, or at least, some interaction in class, is key, because it allows for feedback in both directions (i.e., it allows students to ask about what they don’t understand and it enables the teacher to determine what material needs to be gone over again). Even done badly, there are enough studies in the literature to suggest that these approaches are considerably better than the traditional university ‘chalk and talk’ lecture (which is a hang over from the middle ages when there weren’t enough books!).
Obviously, lab based subjects and those with a practical element will still need access to a central facility. Also, home might not form an ideal learning environment for some children nor, as was found in lockdown, does every child have access to a suitable computer/screen, but these are problems that can be solved.
Seems to me that the reason for the 24/7 trading is so that AI can just come in and run it all and the need for humans at trading desks can be reduced, if not go completely.
As more and more of the UK corps are consumed will there be any desire or need for an LSE in the future?