Pissed off at the teacher strikes?

[noblegiraffe]

There are three more NEU strike days (dates not yet decided) planned for June/July.

All 4 teaching unions, including the two headteacher unions, are opening ballots for strike action in the Autumn term. If the ballots are successful, this would be joint strike action (unprecedented!) and would close all schools.

If this worries you, please email your MP https://www.writetothem.com/ asking for your email to be forwarded to Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education, telling her to get back around the negotiating table with teachers and come up with an actually fully funded (unlike the last one) pay offer that isn't an insult to teachers, and won't take money away from already stretched school budgets.

The government is refusing to negotiate at all, and has no plan for dealing with the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Kids are increasingly being left without teachers, the trainee recruitment figures for secondary for next year are less than half of the target and the government don't care.

If NAS win their ballot then even if heads aren't out, there won't be many teachers left in.

I was going to retrain to be a maths teacher- completely put off after hearing the horrendous work place environments our teachers have to endure.

Huge solidarity from me, I support all the teachers, head teachers and support staff with striking. Although I do feel it
needs to be slightly worse for government to take proper notice. (Not sure what could be worse though).

Middle class working from home parents are not affected by the teacher strikes. People hit and hurt in the pocket are the minimum wage retail and hospitality workers. Scant sympathy for teachers turning down 4.5%

Scant sympathy for teachers turning down 4.5%

I think many would have been happy to accept the 4.5% if it were funded. As it wasn’t, it would have meant TAs being sacked to pay for it.

the job is undoable - hence the walking out

Well that's fine. Minimum wage workers for minimal thinking ahead it seems. Don't see any issue with improving your kid's circumstances from your own via education, those teachers with their book learning and skills, no, don't pay them a decent wage.

Grabby bastards etc...

4% of that 4.5% would have had to come out of school budgets.

What are you happy for your children's school to cut to pay for it? A librarian? IT equipment? Fixing the leaky roof?

FFS. Seriously? Most Tory supporters or kids of Tory MPs attend private schools so the strike action doesn't affect them. It is getting ridiculous now. I understand why they're striking, but I am going to have no annual leave left the way things are going to cover school holidays etc.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl
However, I also think heads going on strike would empower members of other unions who at the moment feel scared to go on strike to strike, etc.
Absolutely this! I hope it does help other members feel like they can go down the strike path.

There are few things with the 4.5%

1. It's not funded. So many head teachers were saying they'd have to make redundancies in terms of support staff or even teaching staff to afford it- how could anyone vote for that? Furthermore, if you work in a MAT, they don't have to give you national pay rises if the trustees decide it's unaffordable, so people would be voting yes to a payrise they might never see. Many people still haven't got this year's 5% either.

2. It is genuinely not enough. The most shortage subjects are things like Maths, Science, Geography etc, where graduates can earn considerably more in industry, for (in my experience of comparably paying industry jobs) less stress. If we want to recruit anyone in these subjects, we need to be paying wages that are at least somewhat comparable to industry, not just in Y1, but in Y5, Y10, and
   so on.

3. The offer made didn't address workload in any way, which is also part of the dispute.

Ultimately, the government has the power to prevent these strikes, by making a serious offer. We're striking for the future of education, so we can't just give up with an offer that would actively make things worse.

I'd also add there are a lot of high paying jobs in STEM that can't be done fully from home, it's not just minimum wage workers who are impacted. It also impacts a lot of small business owners and sole traders and so on.

Further more, I'd absolutely support any minimum wage earner in unionising and campaigning for better working conditions, indeed I've done so in the past.

They do more than their job thank you!! People like you think teachers have an easy job. Spend a week in a school and then you'd see exactly it is what teachers and other school members of staff do.

Yes, I think the impact will be much wider than the impact of the heads themselves not being in work.

Then you need to be asking the government to negotiate with us, before the end of June.

And you need to be aware that all the teaching unions are balloting/reballoting, so things are likely to escalate in September if a resolution is not found.

As teachers, we care about the long term future of education, as well as the immediate. I understand it's difficult for parents, but I don't feel we can just give up, knowing the substandard education so many students are recieving.

I'm guessing your children are primary age, but when they get to secondary school, would you like them to have subject specialist teachers in Science, Maths, English, DT, MFL, Geography etc?

Would you be happy with them being taught by supply teachers in their GCSE year? Would you be happy with them being left without a teacher for weeks on end in an A-level class?

The thing with Heads and senior leaders striking is that , certainly in primary schools, many are also the Designated Safeguarding Lead. Schools are obliged to have a DSL available, so, if they are on strike, the school should technically not be open!

NOT ALL teachers are choosing to strike ....

Don’t forget in addition to having to find the funding from within without the teachers personally buying from their own funds much of the classroom equipment whilst also working with no TA ratio meaning much of time taken by classroom management of behaviour rather than actual teaching your children would have also very little equipment.

The salary also doesn’t take into account their reductions, they end up with little for what is a highly stressful job, not so much from the children but from parents, tick boxing and management initiatives. Many teachers would love to actually teach but can’t.

Less and less teachers are striking in our school.
Lots out on the first day, that has steadily decreased.
On today's staff number, the school could have remained open and it's a large school, just over 1500 pupils.

Yes, this is a really important point. I am actually a bit concerned that some MATs would try to open schools in unsafe ways, given the ways they have behaved so far. I assume the heads unions would be ready to challenge this, though.

I completely understand why they are striking and what they want to achieve.

But I'm exhausted.

My autistic son doesn't know whether he is coming or going. With half term, strike days, inset days and closures because of polling his little head is all over the place.

This results in frequent meltdowns, major confusion, school refusal (which would be marked as unauthorised if I didn't somehow get him in).

I just don't know what to do anymore.

I just need a normal couple of weeks for him to reset.

Assuming from size it's a secondary school? The NEU agreed dispensation, for teachers to go in and teach exam years only. Many schools have agreed to the dispensation, which includes a clause about not opening to additional year groups.

The other thing is that the head or whoever cannot force teachers to tell him their plans. If the teachers who have struck previously refuse to tell them, they have to plan as if the teachers would be out on strike, just in case they choose to do so. The other thing is that there could be new NEU members since the last action, and the head may not know their intentions.

The head also has to account for absence etc, and the fact that some supply teachers won't work on strike days.

I do think a lot of people have found the last two strike days really difficult, and I actually think we will see more out in June. It also gives people a bit of time to save up pay etc.

Yes i'm pretty pissed off with the strikes when my child has developed anxiety about going to school following the lockdown & his class teacher leaving at xmas!
The 3 bank hols aren't helping either.

Yes. Agree with all of this.
But the striking is hurting the kids. Who are already suffering.
People need to stop voting Tory.
Why are there no protests?
My teacher friends went to the pub today.
Shit all round imo.

Yup

They do their jobs, over and above. Have you actually read anything about WHY they are striking? Or are you just worried that you’ve lost your free childcare?

@LadyPenelope68
It's not "free" is it?
We pay for it with out taxes.
From the poorly paid jobs we do!

This. 100%. Totally feel your pain!