Teacher pay rise/strike

Tbh the school Shouldn't be hiring qualified TA's to be 1:1 child support assistants there isn't any need.
Anyone can be a child support assistant it's not the same as a TA role and child support assistants can't cover classes.

I think GCSE could be slimmed down. Build skills rather than rote learning the correct formula to pass the exam. I guess A Levels could go the same way. Also the NUMBER of GCSEs students take could be reduced. International students come in having only done 6 or 7 IGCSEs which are already easier. Compared to British students 12 or 13. Why do they need to do so many?

BUT if you compare A Levels to IB Diploma (the KS5 level), they do 5 subjects, plus Theory of Knowledge, write a mini thesis. I mean, the level of teaching is lower, but the amount is so much heavier. At the moment, A Levels are the academic gold standard. Don't we want to maintain that?

Maybe AS needs to return to being a stand alone qualification, rather than just half of A2?

This is really not why attendance had become an issue. Factors include the post pandemic mental health crisis and spike in SEND, under funded schools with huge classes and not enough resources to support those struggling, cost of living crisis meaning parents are working more hours etc and not as available to support those struggling to get in, schools that are very rigid making them hard places for people struggling with SEND/mental health/wellbeing amongst a range of other things.

You can't strike illegally... You would get sacked. There are strict rules ..

That's interesting @MiserableMrsMopp I had thought it was due to GCSE curriculum being so dry it was putting kids off further study. In my county secondary is all 11-16 so I've had little interaction with A-levels.

Are they looking to reform the A-Level curriculum at all in the curriculum reform - GCSEs are far too content heavy I feel and it would help job satisfaction to have them slimmed down and leave some time for a bit of depth of study rather than being forced to race though the curriculum at a pace.

@wonderstuff because they keep marketing A Level English as English and then students crash and burn, when in reality, it's really linguistics. I had a head teacher once refer to it as the first year of a linguistics degree. So refreshing to find someone who really got it.

But a student with a mediocre GCSE English grade, or IGCSE English wouldn't stand a chance with A Level English Lang. A shame, because it is a GREAT, high quality qualification.

There are LOADS of very experienced, well qualified, GREAT teachers out there that might consider returning if working conditions were better. But who wants to work 80 hours a week, when they can earn a similar wage on a standard 40/45 hour week? Until the government wises up to this, there will be no resolution.

Well quite - we may need to reduce numbers in a few years, but we need to cover all the maths/science/geography/tech/English classes now. In my school they weren't even getting many candidates for the last PE vacancy, I know a couple of schools struggling to cover art - these subjects used to be massively over subscribed.
Very few kids taking A-levels in English these days, it's a real worry - where are the next generation of teachers going to come from?

I wouldn't worry about redundancies. The hemorrhage of teachers out and the lack of recruitment of new teachers will still out weigh any reduction in need.

I'm a middle leader in a specialist role, my pay is okay, but that is largely because my husband earns more than me and my mortgage is low! When I started teaching a few teachers in middle leadership had second homes in France to allow them affordable holidays for the summer months and would retire fairly early on a good pension having paid off their mortgage. There's no doubt the standard of living for your average teacher has declined - I'm sure when I stated the salary was about the same as the average UK wage - now it's definitely below. Average wages have gone up just over 5% in last 6 months, so an annual increase of 2.8% is low and unfunded as others have said will have a knock on effect on our workload and ability to do our job effectively.

The biggest issue for me is that we are simply not attracting enough people into teaching, schools can not fill current vacancies with quality appointments. This in turn makes everyones job harder. How many schools are there with at least one science teacher vacancy, kids just having supply every lesson, it isn't just devastating for their learning in that subject, but behaviour becomes poor and that then has a knock on effect on the rest of the school and the rest of the learning.

We talk about persistant absenteeism, well if there isn't a teacher, or there is likely to be 20% of lessons where no learning happens because of failure to appoint or appointing teachers simply not up to the job, you can understand why families start to value attendance less.

So despite the fact that I personally have a reasonable standard of living, I do support strike action because the whole system is currently underfunded and undervalued.

There's been a lot of work put in on here over the past couple of months putting down teachers, so it's nice to see it's been a little bit in vain and actually teachers do have support

I support anyone taking collective action to improve their pay and working conditions. Needing to strike is a clear sign that the contract between staff and employers isn’t working as it should and workers have very limited ways to redress that balance. Teachers on strike is inconvenient to the general population, but having poorly run schools and burnt out educators is disastrous in the long term.

YANBU

But... as some people lack brain cells and think teachers earn £49k a year and only work 9am til 3pm term time, then trying to get this across might be rather tricky!

Schools are already stretched financially, so awarding a pay rise that the school has to foot the bill for is ludicrous!

You know a lot of stupid parents - I make no apologies for calling them that.

Teachers value education, which is why they are striking:

What would your suggestion be then?

It's a stupid and ignorant way to see it though. Teachers strike for better conditions FOR the students now and in future, not just themselves. There is a purpose of the strikes, to make sure kids get funding they need. Kids sitting at home doing f all is not quite the same thing. If oyu cant see a difference then you cant be helped.
It would be the same if teachers decided to go on a holiday term time to also save on flights. Which they dont.

Exactly.

Good lord.

Yes, because teachers going on strike to pressure the government into giving schools enough money to give your child a decent education is really the same as you taking your child out of school so you can get £100 off your flights to the Costa del Sol.

Education is key to social mobility. Given their history and all they supposedly stand for, Labour should, out of any of the political parties, be the education sector's biggest supporter.

However, they are expecting schools to fund a (paltry) pay rise and increase in NI contributions out of existing budgets, which ultimately means staff will have to be made redundant, and/or supplies, facilities and trips for children won't be able to be funded, which all equates to children getting a worse quality of education.

Those of us who have been teaching for a long time can see the difference over the past ten years - we used to have full supply cupboards, cover supervisors, TAs, plenty of trips out and lots of experienced, well educated teachers on UPS.

Now teachers are providing the coloured pencils out of their own money, schools are filled with ECTs with crap degrees from crap unis who can't spell or add up, and TAs are teaching classes when teachers are off.

If we value social mobility, we have to value education. We have to fund education so that it's an attractive profession for well qualified, intelligent people, that's competitive to get into, offers good promotion and pay rise opportunities, and allows teachers time and space to plan and prepare properly within the boundaries of the working day. While we continue to pay teachers peanuts, we will get monkeys - in my experience, the quality of entrants to the profession over the past ten or so years has been declining rapidly, and this will only get worse if the pay teachers receive remains at current levels. If parents like @Flowers1985 want their kids to be taught by people who can barely spell or add up, then they're going the right way about it by not supporting strikes.

I know this, but it's not 1 rule for 1 and 2 for another. It's how plenty of parents see it.

I’m a leader in a primary school and we have been told by our LA that we will be worse off next year than we were under the Tories. This shouldn’t be the way under a labour government. I know that education didn’t form a big part of their election campaign but I naively thought we’d be ok!

We can’t not have teachers teaching classes. About 90% of our budget goes on staffing. When schools aren’t funded, it’s support staff who are at risk. This obviously also puts further pressure on teachers. I will be striking if it comes to it- not for the salary for the 60 hour weeks I do but because they are not planning to fund the pay rise they are suggesting and we are constantly being asked to do more for less.

It’s not teachers fining parents for removing children for a day- it’s local authorities. School heads have no powers to authorise absence in the vast majority of circumstances.

Support staff absolutely should be paid more. However, rules around industrial action govern how strikes can be carried out, and teachers can only strike regarding their own pay and conditions . This can only happen once correct ballot procedures have been followed.

Support staff need to encourage their own unions to ballot the membership if they are keen to take action- wildcat strikes by teachers on behalf of workers who are not members of their own union are not allowed.

However, if the strike action by teachers is effective it would benefit support staff indirectly, because the strike action is to push the government to fund teacher pay, rather than expecting schools to cut provision.

Only the thick ones…. I’m sorry but I’m not sure what the alternative would have been during the pandemic- we had little to no choice.
And striking would be a last resort of teachers standing up for the children’s right to a decent education. Hardly the same as not bothering or thinking it’s unimportant.
Go make your digs somewhere else.

I'm nor against teachers getting a pay rise and I think it's well deserved, but this is partly why attendance is so bad in schools, all the strikes plus covid closures, parents think well if they can cancel a day's education like it's not important then so can I. It can't only be important when they decide, it's either terrible if they miss a day or it's not, can't be terrible for me to take my child out for 1 day but ok for gov/teachers to cancel learning for a day

This is disappointing from the government. They would be better to say "here is 1% funded as that is all we can afford" and then see what teachers do with that. An unfunded pay rise is what I expect from the Tories.
Poor teachers.