Teachers balloting for strike action - school closures

[noblegiraffe]

A pre-ballot poll from the NEU suggests that the ballot will be in favour.

The NASUWT have announced that their ballot will open around 27th October in England, Scotland and Wales, and will close on 9th January, I assume that the NEU will be doing similar and it would be joint action.

Strike action would mean school closures around Jan/Feb time and obviously this will impact parents who need to start thinking about arrangements for this eventuality. Please consider emailing your MP asking them to forward any concerns about this to Kit Malthouse, Secretary of State for Education, as any pressure on him from parents to avert strike action by entering pay negotiations would be highly welcome.

The current pay offer of 5% for most teachers is unfunded, meaning that it has to come out of current school budgets. This means that the pay rise will result in cuts to education provision for your children. However, this offer is after over a decade of real terms pay cuts for teachers and with inflation at 10%, teachers cannot afford more pay cuts and to continue to shoulder the burden of government financial incompetence and deliberate running into the ground of public services any longer.

The unions are asking for an above inflation fully funded pay rise for teachers. A teacher pay rise, any teacher pay rise, cannot come out of current school budgets as this will mean a lower quality of education for your children. This could involve even bigger class sizes, even fewer courses on offer, even less provision for SEN children, fewer school trips and extra curricular activities.

School funding has been devastated by the Tory government over the last 12 years. SEN funding has been cut: the impact falls on schools and teachers to deal with. CAMHS funding has been cut: the impact falls on schools and teachers to deal with. Schools are being asked to solve more and more of society's issues, with fewer and fewer resources. It's unsustainable.

People will tell you that teachers are well paid and don't deserve a pay rise. However, we have a critical shortage of teachers, and the obvious conclusion is that if we can't get teachers for the pay that is on offer, then the pay is not enough. Market forces, right?

The government know the impact of increasing pay to attract and keep teachers; they have, this week, announced a big increase to the teacher training bursaries in response to the truly dire and alarming numbers of applicants to teacher training this year. They have also introduced early career payments in shortage areas. They have yet to extend this logic to increasing teacher pay to retain more experienced teachers - the ones who are crucial in training and supporting the new and early career teachers.

I'm not suggesting in the slightest that teachers are more deserving than other workers, or that we have it harder than other workers. If you have also not had a pay rise in years, that's unacceptable. If you are balloting for strike action, or undertaking strike action to try to improve your working conditions, then all power and support to you. I really hope that school support staff join us in taking action.

This government is ruining the country. I think everyone can see that now. Instead of proposing increases to public funding, they are proposing further cuts. But we've already cut everything.

They'll claim there is no money, but then propose tax cuts for the best off. They'll reject windfall taxes even when Shell is asking for them. They'll claim that higher wages will increase inflation so they can't possibly increase wages, while talking about how important it is to move to a higher wage economy. Not higher wages for the ordinary worker though, they mean the ones already on high wages. The ones who would have benefited from the 45p tax rate cut that they've already had to u-turn on.

The DfE have said that strike will damage the education of children, that they can't afford to miss out on more school. Teachers, if they vote to strike, will be voting for better education. We want a qualified, decent teacher in front of every class. This is absolutely not happening at the moment, and will not have a chance of happening unless teacher pay and conditions improve.

TLDR: Support teachers; the government are self-interested, public service destroying, incompetent shitheads.

We have a class teacher post and a leadership post advertised, no applicants for either!

@noblegiraffe I missed the post that said about you always starting these threads. I wish you didn't have to as well, but if someone has to, best it's you. You're very knowledgeable, informed, concise & easy to understand. You get to the bottom of the issue without patronising & importantly without alienating people.

Stay strong 👍🏻

The government needs to have its own agency where fees are not 100% of the daily rate
When l started teaching in in1996, all supply staff were controlled, co-ordinated and paid by the LEAs.

Supply agencies didn’t exist. There were no charges from the council.

And now, because of Tory, central government cuts to Local Authorities there is not enough money to staff our near crucial roles, nevermind running what would be a supply agency.
An LA with which I have close connections is working on a £5.4 million cut in funding to it's children services. ( children social workers, mental health support, school transport, schools, settings) on top of the last 12 years of meeting cuts through ‘efficiency savings’. There are no more efficiencies to make. Now it is bare bone. If an LA hasn't enough funding to keep schools in a positive budget and not enough money to recruit enough social workers, it certainly won't be running supply agencies. I've just read on here a PP linking teachers striking to the death of vulnerable children ( Arthur) PLEASE think how much more likely this is with less and less funding for children social care.

Conservative policy is to remove democratic local control through public service and to improve private business opportunities. Supply agencies are just another example, as is the academy system, the privatisation of children’s residential schools, school transport etc.
Remove LA responsibility and role through removing funding, a private business pops up...and can then charge extortianate fees to schools or back to the LA. Residential placements for children through the private sector are eye watering costly ( and I mean, can be £100,000 per year per child) for instance, but LA’s have a legal duty to provide the place, if that is what is deemed appropriate.

This government are making a wholly mess. We will be left with nothing!

Sorry, rant over, I'm too closely involved and like others not able to speak out publically. Please act to save your children’s education, to save the education system.

Personally I think my children would be best served with teachers getting a fair wage rise and remaining in teaching so I support any strike action.

In 2016 my old agency was offering £10 less per day/ potentially £50 less per week than in 2010 (for increased workload). It wasn't viable to return to supply teaching and pay for childcare to be avaliable for a very erratic supply of work. The previous term I'd already been struggling to manage work family life due to localised industrial action in a TA pay/ conditions dispute. I ended up teaching with DS in my classroom as there were no other alternatives.
Part of the lack of supply teachers is that for years, from New Labour bringing in Cover Supervisors and LA banks outsourcing to agencies, supply became increasingly unviable as a professional living. It has got worse since 2010, but the rot did start prior to that. Supply teachers were often not well respected by their colleagues or management. No wonder there are an insufficient number left. Casual supply became a pocket money job for professional skills, and it is a skill to walk into a different school each day, any subject and teach, and not one that many classroom teachers using routine and reputation are well adapted to doing.

Likewise academy chains that leach money out of the top end of schools and undermine pay and conditions originated with Labour before being expanded by the Conservatives.

The rot is very long and very deep. Some (not so shiny) schools are still paying dearly for bad PFI contracts. The New Labour days were undoubtably better but there was still an element of giving with one hand and taking with another and the foundations of many critical issues today originated then.

Strike action over the funding source of 5% is not even scratching the surface of working conditions and is more likely to piss off overstretched parents than trigger major change. The unions shot themselves in the foot with their stance over Covid shutdowns and condoning leaving children without adequate access to education for a minimum of 6 months. Good will is very thin on the ground and most people are in survival mode mentally as well as work/ life balance.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be realistic proposals of political reform in education from any party. Decent student funding, realistic performance management/progression, modifying OFSTED and target/ data culture, better SEN systems/ provision would all go a long way into improving the function of schools, but I don't see any parties seriously caring about it at present.

I've said it before on another thread and I'll say it here again:

The current unfunded pay "rise" will send my school bankrupt by the end of the academic year, especially as it comes on top of the huge fuel hike and more proposed cuts to the education sector.

I have to beg for books. I have 4 books for an A-level class of 14 students.
We are being asked to teach classes of 60 in the hall when someone is out as there is zero money for supply staff.
We don't have enought TAs to support all students with an EHCP, leading to huge disruption and to many lessons where those students cannot access lessons at a sufficient rate, but no time to go slower and I can't divide myself into 5 - there is only so far differentiation will go.

That's not even mentioning that I have worked about 15 hours this weekend, unpaid, to keep up with the demands, even though I already work 4.30-6am, 7.30am-5pm, and 7pm-9pm every day with barely time to pee in between. Yes, I'm middle management, but that only earns me an extra £4500 per year - without which I couldn't afford to pay my bills. I earn less than minimum wage if you take my actual hours worked into account.

So yes, pay is taking the piss. But more importantly, one of the reasons I work so much is because my school can't afford to pay the extra member of staff needed to fulfil part of my admin duties. 20 years ago we had an admin member of staff who did data entries, copying, displays etc. all of which are now part of my job.

And now I'm off to shower in the hope I get to work by 7am so I can get to one of the two currently working photocopiers, because the 4 that are broken can't be fixed.

When I worked in a school about 15 years ago they had a "pool" of retired teachers and people to do supply.

Instead of paying agency £200 a day (as it was then!) and giving the candidate £100 we used to meet them in the middle and pay them £150 direct so we got it for £50 less and the candidates got £50 a day more too. This was a primary with nursery attached ages 3-11.

We used to advertise for "cover pool teachers" periodically and as we were a "direct employer" cutting out the middle man that worked better.

Fwiw, I do agree that a strike over pay is only the start - but it's an opportunity to raise all the issues in education, many of which we can't legally strike over. Teachers can't strike over funding for TAs, for example, but if teachers and TAs strike together over pay awards that is pretty powerful.

I do think this is our chance to talk about how bad things have become. And it seems like a lot of people understand or are at least willing to listen. And it will hopefully make a point to the DfE that we won't be easily bought off with unfunded pay rises that actually made things harder in schools.

I disagree that unions shot themselves in the foot by protecting education staff as much as they could. Ultimately that is their job.

There isn't the money to pay even £150 a day though

Some schools still do this for longer term arrangements, where they can find teachers, however for shorter term, immediate the safeguarding checks are too onerous for this to work. Supply agencies have carried out all background checks for when a stranger has to work closely with children.

@BogRollBOGOF - you are missing some of the key detail and aims around labours academy programme. It has been reinvented by the Conservatives and is destabilising many aspects of education.

I have a child and don’t wish for her education to be disturbed but equally I support the teachers as this may the only way to get a change. There are mass strikes all over the country in different sectors because enough is enough!

Thanks, @FistFullOfRegrets !

I do not support an above cost of living payrise for teachers, that's crazy and demanding such will mean teachers will struggle to gain any empathy from the public, the vast majority of whom have seen no pay increases either and not all of us can strike for action.

What I do fully support however, is that a (moderate) payrise for teachers (in line with public sector) should be funded i.e. not taken out of the already stretched pots of schools.

The unions shot themselves in the foot with their stance over Covid shutdowns and condoning leaving children without adequate access to education for a minimum of 6 months.

I thought that covid really demonstrated to parents the problems that are facing the school system.

Parents complaining that private schools were doing stuff that state schools weren’t - well, yes! Resources, staffing and intake mean that they can offer a higher standard of education. Did parents really think that state schools were basically the same as private schools?

Parents complaining that their kid was just sent a worksheet and a picture of their teacher sunbathing - unqualified staff, absent or inadequate staff, poor resources, poor quality teaching. Parents complaining that other kids were getting tonnes of support at home while their kid was playing Minecraft all day while they worked. Parents complaining the work wasn’t suitable or challenging enough for their child, SEN provision wasn’t
met, there was no contact with home, there was no support for their child’s mental health.

Parents were very pissed off. And yet, those things are a feature of state schools all over the country, but as soon as kids went back to school, the assumption seemed to be that everything would be ok now.

Parents need to remember how pissed off they were about variation in provision during covid and apply that to the current situation.

Schools need more funding and resources, including qualified teachers, and it is going to cost.

Investment in education is vital to the economic growth we keep being told about.

The problems faced by schools will not be resolved by the government throwing money at them to bribe teachers to work. Obviously, more money will improve an individual teacher’s circumstances, but the problems will not go away because society has created a generation of children who cannot be controlled, and schools have no authority (for the most part) to do anything about it.

The government could throw billions at the education system, but it still wouldn’t resolve the issue.

Bribing teachers to work? That’s usually called paying them and is a fairly normal thing to do if you want someone to work for you.

It’s also pretty standard that if you can’t hire decent people because they get a better salary elsewhere that you raise your pay offer or accept that you won’t be able to properly fill vacancies.

It’s also normal to not expect people to do the same or harder job for years for less and less pay. That causes people to leave.

Education has a workforce problem. Pretending that pay isn’t an issue isn’t helpful, and the govt knows pay is an issue as they are already ‘throwing money at the problem’ in terms of trainee bursaries and early careers teachers payments.

No, increasing teacher pay won’t solve all problems, because the underfunding has affected so many areas of education, from the state of school buildings (which need billions in investment to meet basic levels of safety), to the external agencies that should be supporting schools such has CAMHS which have basically collapsed.

But teachers can’t strike about the other stuff.

Improving the teacher workforce by increasing the pay offer is a start.

You seem really ignorant about the issues in education.

It’s not that the children can’t be controlled. It’s that they’re in a system that can’t support their needs. When you were little, how many kids in your class were severely autistic?

Ah @EYProvider i don’t even know why I’m asking you, I doubt you’ll be brave enough to have this conversation.

If the government threw billions at education it would mean that children get the education they deserve. It would mean proper support from struggling youngsters, smaller class sizes, targeted intervention for learning difficulties such as dyslexia and memory. It must be nice to pretend it’s because children are someone more ‘bad’ than they were 100 years ago but it’s garbage.

I work in education, and in my experience, the children with EHCPs are supported very well. They get an additional £18,500 a year for that extra support - what more do you want?

It’s the children without EHCPs that are unsupported, and I do admit there are a lot of children with undiagnosed issues. But state schools get a notional SEN budget for children with undiagnosed issues, and it’s pretty substantial (£6000 per pupil, I understand). Perhaps the real issue is not that schools are not receiving funding, but that that they are not spending it well?

This. Absolutely this. There are businesses out there making a ton of money which could have gone directly to schools. It's the same with the health sector, social housing etc. We are directing money for those who need it most to those who want to make more profit.

If a school can’t help a child to make progress with an additional £18,500 a year allocated to them, the problem is with the school and not the system.

The threshold for an EHCP is ridiculously hard. Schools will have had to spend a significant amount of money supporting that child to even get the EHCP. Then you have the multitude of others who require significant intervention but have no chance of an EHCP.

£18 500 would cover one on one TA support and not a lot else.

Well, yes, that’s what the notional SEN budget is for.

The £18,500 is for 1:1 TA support. They are awarded extra for therapies, plus direct payments to parents.

EYProvider,

I think that you have misunderstood the funding.

Using your figures (I appreciate these may not be correct, but for the sake of argument) school must spend £6,000 out of its own budget on each child with SEN before any additional funding comes into play.

Per child school funding in cash terms, in 2022-23 was on average £6,970 (Gov.uk). I haven't, for simplicity, dug into the differences between areas and ages. That means that a school must spend all but £970 of the income that child brings them on their SEN needs. Which might be fine in a large school of 1000 with 10% of children with SEN - the fixed costs of the school might be covered. For a small primary school of 100 pupils, 35% with SEN (I have taught in a school where those were the figures), the figures just don't add up. As a result, the school has to spend much of its 'notional' £6,000 per SEN pupil on keeping the lights on.

And IIRC, funding given for EHCPs is usually only the 'over £6,000' cost, so for a child with £18,000 worth of needs, the school only receives £12,000.