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.

Teachers tend not to leave mid year. If they are it's often because things are dire.
Teachers and schools didn't create lockdowns, or bank holidays

But your DS's class teacher leaving at Xmas is part of the reason teachers are going on strike. We want to be able to keep teachers in the job!

Would you say the same about nurses?

But your DS's class teacher leaving at Xmas is part of the reason teachers are going on strike. We want to be able to keep teachers in the job!

You asked if I was pissed off with teacher's strikes. The answer is yes.

@MrsHamlet no one has saved d teachers created lock downs or bank hols. But this is the context in which they are striking.

This shit show of a government don't give a crap. The parents are exhausted. Lids need to be in school.
The teacher left to live somewhere else with her boyfriend.

The strikes are designed to be annoying. They are annoying.

Apologies for my typos!!

I support the Teacher strikes (all of the other professions too apart from Train drivers!) but I am pissed off too.

How am I meant to work?! & to add to this, they always send ‘some activities to do at home’

If you are pissed off, PLEASE email your MP asking for your complaint to be forwarded to Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education.

https://www.writetothem.com/

@SpringTimeCartwheels I know the context. I am a teacher.
I also know that we are losing more than 10% of our current staff at the end of the summer... most will be replaced, but we can't replace their experience or expertise. And most are leaving teaching early or altogether.

Will do 👍👍👍

It's shit. All round. I'm not disagreeing.

👏👏👏👏👏

The number of teachers striking at my school started to tail off but today we barely had any in. I'm not hopeful that sending those emails will work because where they'll lose on education, they'll make some outrageous promise and gain voters elsewhere. I think the only way things will change is with some kind of boycott on applying for jobs in private schools. If private schools don't get the teachers, maybe the government will start understanding

I'm pissed off that my child is being left to fail because she can't get the support she needs. That's not the teachers fault - it's lack of funding. The school are brilliant but the funds simply aren't there, I have several family members who work in schools (teachers and support staff) and they work ridiculously hard and care so much but they are burnt out. One of them has been a teacher for 37 years, they say if they knew then what they know now they'd never have gone into the career because it is soul destroying.

I'm pissed off that if things continue the way they are currently going we won't have any teachers to teach our children - and I don't blame the teachers who are having to leave for their own welfare for that.

Do you have any sympathy for the children who miss out because there is a MASSIVE recruitment and retention crisis occurring in teaching?

Teaching professionals have no problem finding work in the private sector. So many have done so that there aren't enough left in the profession to run schools effectively.

This is a last ditch attempt (with loss of pay) for many teachers to try to get the government to listen before they vote with their feet and find a private sector career. They want to stay for the students but they won't be able to in the current climate.

So, at the next election, use your vote to elect a party who actually care are state education.

Teachers need to raise awareness now so that people understand the dire situation and can vote for something else. That is why they are striking. The strikes will stop when a government starts listening.

Just an awful situation for all really.
Sympathy for teachers… hard job…demanding kids and parents.
Striking… massive pain for parents. Kids losing out on education / being in school.
However, government don’t care. You only need to look at covid response around education to see that. Plus many MPs kids in private schools so not affected. Hardly any noise about strikes, not even really making headline news. It will just drag on and on and government won’t give the teachers what they want is my guess.

Solidarity with striking teachers!

I think the gov are relying on teachers being good people. Kind people. People who don’t want to let down their pupils and have exam classes suffer. So they’re limping on ignoring the problem in the hope it will fizzle out with exam season looming and then the summer holidays. The news of coordinated action into the autumn should surely make them stand up and listen. Surely?! Please!!

I am worried that parental support is waning so it’s good to see comments that show otherwise on these threads. I saw a comment on FB which said something along the lines of only having to look in the school car park to see that teachers don’t need a pay rise, all driving nice new cars. I mean, how short sighted can people actually be!

It will just drag on and on and government won’t give the teachers what they want is my guess.

The Education Select Committee is currently running an inquiry into why no one wants to be a teacher, so parliament may well start putting pressure on them too.

Turned it down because it would've meant TAs and other staff losing their jobs making conditions for children even worse than they are now and our job even harder.

I am a TA so I do have skin in the game.
However I work in a school in SE London which is predominantly ‘working class’ with parents who really are on their knees. The strike causes them intense difficulty. So those who say they should be thinking about their child’s future really have no grasp of what it is like to need to get to work TODAY in Primark. Lofty concerns about the future of education are a luxury that those in the thick of it just don’t have.
I really despair sometimes at this Mumsnet world where the ‘right to withdraw labour ’ is easy to parrot without any thought of those who need to pay rent and put food on the table today.

You want the same kind of instability for your own children that employment at Primark brings? Or you want them to do a bit better and the children need educating. It's the second isn't it?

Feel free to ignore how people’s lives actually are.

It’s a horrible situation all round. As a former teacher and a current governor I’m largely supportive of the strikes and do understand the reasons behind them, but I think that teachers need to tread very carefully on this, and that they’re in danger of losing the room as far as parents are concerned.

DD is in Reception and has missed 6 days so far. It’s been challenging but generally OK for us, but I’m definitely now seeing the fallout of the instability on the more vulnerable/disadvantaged children in her year - dramatically increased anxiety around attending school, more disruption in class, parents forgetting or starting not to bother with things like reading books and home learning etc. From having been mostly supportive - lots of positive emails to school etc - there are now many rumblings of discontent as working parents gradually lose their annual leave to strike days. Lots of families are now writing in to complain or are booking term-time holidays ‘in revenge’ for the strikes.

And as many have said the government really couldn’t care less. I doubt that even a concerted effort from all of the teaching unions will shift their position on this. A lot of their Boomer core vote don’t rate teachers anyway, so will lap up all the teaching-bashing Daily Mail headlines, and they’ve already factored in the loss of potential votes from young families. I think they regard this as their miners’ strike, and will dig in until all public goodwill for the teachers is lost.

I hope I’m wrong and the teachers get what they’re asking for - I’ve already emailed Gillian Keegan in their support - but I’m afraid I can see the public turning on them way before this happens.

Lofty concerns about the future of education are a luxury that those in the thick of it just don’t have.

What's it actually like in your working class school in SE London? Well equipped and resourced, with subject specialist teachers and lots of TAs? Kids not overwhelmed by lack of mental health or SEN support?