There is hope for teachers who are still battling to pay off student loans, writes Sean Coughlan
An awful lot of pompous nonsense is written about how to handle money, but the real challenge is how to handle not having money.
Anyone can make money if they already have money. But it takes skill to juggle overdrafts, bank loans, accommodation costs, repayments for student loans and credit cards, and to get the timing just right so that everything manages to fit in with the arrival of the monthly pay cheque.
And for some teachers April meant another monthly bill, because this is an annual starting point for paying back student loans, at the rate of 9 per cent of earnings above pound;10,000 per year.
This burden of student debt is a tough load to carry for recently qualified teachers. For instance, a teacher working in a school in the West Country has written to explain his financial difficulties. In addition to the official student loan from a first degree, he borrowed pound;6,000 from the bank to keep him afloat during his PGCE year. This was followed, when he began work, by another loan for pound;4,000. This is not unusual - and after repayments, he says, there isn’t much left over. He has been forced to rent a cheaper room in a shared house. What can he do?
The Government is currently putting forward legislation proposing to pay off the student loans of teachers of shortage subjects, including English, maths, science, modern languages, design and technology and ICT. And there will shortly be a more fundamental review of all student funding which could see an overhaul of the whole system of loans and fees.
This could lead to an improvement for some teachers. But it could also create awkward anomalies between colleagues, with the legacies of the different student funding systems making a big impact on earnings.
If everyone gets a 3 per cent pay rise, it’s not that much fun if you’re the only one in the staffroom paying 5 per cent of your salary into loan repayments.
And today’s young teachers won’t want to be remembered as “Generation IOU”, which got stuck with paying the whole bill, if many of tomorrow’s teachers are promised a subsidy.
s.coughlan@virgin.net
