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.

Actually no.
But you wouldn’t get it.
Parents are pissed off by the strikes.
But they won’t be emailing MPs because they v are maxed out with work and these strikes cause them massive problems.
For people who have been offered a pay rise.

Right, so things are shit at your school too, so you'll acknowledge that the strikes are not, as you sniffily put it, about 'lofty concerns about the future of education' but genuine concerns about the actual and current state of education.

Are you not worried that the unfunded nature of next year's pay rise could see you made redundant?

Middle class wfh parents ARE affected by teacher shortage though. Im in Hampshire where it has always been a challenge to recruit secondary teachers (outside London weighting but inside London commuter belt, no 6th form teaching). It is desperate this year, dd in Y10 has lost Spanish, RE and Food Tech teachers, she’s in a class of 35 for English and teaching is so lax I’m employing a tutor, she has one teacher for all three sciences. DS in year 8 hasn’t had a specialist maths teacher ever I don’t think. In my school in another Hants town we’ve no Food Tech teacher, we’re down a science teacher and we’ve been trying to recruit a head of maths for a year. These are both nice schools in mainly middle class catchments.

The worrying thing is it’s only going to get worse, recruitment isn’t improving, people are leaving teaching completely, often mid term. I’ve taught for 20 years and I don’t think it’s ever been like this. Another local school is offering 4 day week for ft pay, it’s costing the school £150k, and he’s still only getting 2 applications for a post!

This! Plus the May Bank Holidays and the additional one. My son doesn't know what a weekday is or a weekend or a BH or a coronation for that matter. It has sent us into crisis having last Thursday off, in Friday then off for four days. I was a teacher and I get it but it has been like a bomb in our lives. That's the point, I know.

I do not support the strikes because they completely obliterate the real issues. And before anyone says “teachers can only strike over pay” …. That’s bollocks. Teachers can strike over conditions ….the unions are just to fucking lazy to take this on as it would require far more work communicated this to the public. But as a few threads on MN have shown, if the general public knew how bad it was and that teachers were striking over conditions, I think support would massively increase.

The findings of the educational sub committee will find the same as every other study/survey done in recent times. It will find that the issues isn’t pay. I know from previous posts that OP blames ‘SLT’ for poor student and /or parent behaviour but most teachers haven’t fallen for that NEU divisive rhetoric. Most teachers recognise that most SLT are just slightly better paid teachers like them battling insurmountable odds trying to deal with exponentially increasing shitty, entitled ‘the-school-should-bend-over backwards-and-do-everything-for me attitude of an increasing number of the current school age generations through to abusive and sometimes quite frankly dangerous pupil behaviour and utterly appalling parental behaviour and expectations that go hand in hand with these children. Add to that exponential rise in SEN and the utter impossibility of any teacher meeting all of these need and the complete refusal of ofsted to recognise any of these three issues as factors that might effect results / outcomes and time and time again these are proven as the reason teachers leave.

Not one of the 300+ teachers in the trust I worked for cited pay as an issue before the ballot (every ballot failed bar the NEU) and yes I did ask! Pupil behaviour was always the first and foremost issue that lead to teachers leaving followed by parents. Then expectations to meet SEN provision, then ofsted. (Again most teachers recognise that any seemingly bonkers requests by SLT were usually driven by utter fear / despair of ofsted rather than megalomaniac SLTs that the disgraceful NEU likes to blame.)

I left at Easter and I’m slowly rebuilding my mental health, resilience and well-being having tried to manage those four issues - the govt could offer a 50 % fully funded pay rise and I wouldn’t return and everyone I know who has left /is leaving feels the same.

I do not support the strikes because they completely obliterate the real issues. And before anyone says “teachers can only strike over pay” …. That’s bollocks. Teachers can strike over conditions ….the unions are just to fucking lazy to take this on

Teachers can strike over conditions and they do strike over conditions. However, teachers can only strike about issues that directly affect them, so strikes about conditions are generally restricted to individual schools, bullying head, dangerous pupil behaviour etc. What set of conditions affects teachers nationally that they could ballot over? We're not allowed to strike about school funding or the collapse of CAMHS or SEN provision. What, exactly, could we strike about nationally? Not behaviour either, because schools have their own behaviour policies.

I know from previous posts that OP blames ‘SLT’ for poor student and /or parent behaviour

Literally no clue what you're on about here.

Hi Rishi.

My Year 12 daughter needs all the contact face to face time she can get so I am sad and anxious for her and what these extra days lost will do to her future prospects - 6 days lost so far - more in the summer, more next year.

The government don’t care and live in a weird bubble of their own.

I will write to my MP.

I too agree with the PP about it being about conditions rather than pay, and I also wish that this was publicised more in the media. I think staff in education are overloaded and it’s exhausting.

Not having enough teachers and GCSE and A Level specialist teachers is very concerning.

It baffles me that they need an enquiry
Visit any ten primary and any ten secondary schools not on the list of places they normally visit, and they will have their answers.

If teachers pay rise has to come out of schools currenT y budgets, you do realise that TA’s like yourself are likely to be the ones losing their jobs? The money has to come from cut backs and many schools are already not replacing support staff to save money. How about supporting your colleagues?

You are clearly showing your ignorance about the whole situation here. Teachers are striking as they want funded pay rises, not rises that have to come out of current school budgets. Educate yourself on the facts.

I'm a TA too and have a lot of sympathy for the parents who are struggling to look after their children at home when they are needed at work, and don't always have the luxury of sympatetic employers or the ability to work from home.

BUT - if you always look short term, nothing will improve long term.
I support the teacher strikes. And will vote Labour as fed up with theTory approach to state education that has led to schools being underfunded and short of teachers and TAs, with more leaving all the time.

in the private sector it’s only really possible to strike if you work for a big company so a lot of you strike at once. However in the private sector overall there is more scope for leaving and finding something else with better pay and/or conditions if you are unhappy as work places set their own wage rather than there being a pay scale. At the minute there is a recruitment crisis in most areas but private sector has more scope for increasing wages to attract candidates and putting up their prices to cover which works if all competitors are having to do the same.

Can support staff afford to strike though? They are very badly paid and whilst teachers may be underpaid for actual work they do it’s not quite on the same level of low take home pay thst support staff have. I have no idea how it works, are they able to claim more uc for example for pay they lose through strike

I left teaching in December and it was a huge relief, teaching was making me physically ill.

Our Head made a huge song and dance about going paper free, completely digital etc and how amazing and modern he was.... except in a class of 26 I had 25 chairs and 10 laptops.

8 EHCP kids who were supposed to have a dedicated 1:1 TA and I didn't even have a classroom TA. Plus kids with additional needs but no EHCP.

Does anyone think they could perform their job well in those circumstances?

I could barely teach because I was too busy trying to stop fights, find out why someone was crying, find out where someone had run off to, wake someone up.....

And if I wanted anything nice for the room I would have to buy it myself.

I was disappointed that support staff didn't reach the 50% required for us to go on strike too - for some TAs that was because they felt they wouldn't be able to afford to strike and lose a days pay.

However, can they afford to lose their jobs or more likely, get their hours reduced if the school is looking to make savings from September? Probably not.
Sorry I can't answer your question about UC.

I’m a governor. The main issue is that the offer from the government was the pay offer was unfunded, we had to fund the last one out of the budget. If we have to fund another one, then other things will have to be cut or more likely redundancies. We’re lucky and are fully staffed with experienced staff, but they’re experienced and costly however the pupils benefit enormously from the wealth of experience.

When the last pay rise was unfunded, everyone made noise to the government in the teaching profession and said this was unsustainable but yet they’ve done the same thing again. It comes on the back of schools funding more and more which really should come under other services - SEN, CAMHS, social services because they are on the front line and dealing with the children day in, day out.

I support the strikes and have written to my MP already.

I am one of those parents on minimum wage trying to scrape a living, (thankfully not in as shit as a situation as others but still well aware of the need to work. A decent ducation, however, is not a luxury - or shouldn't be - in the UK. It should be a right for all children and that cannot happen with the current situation. I don't want my children to be in this situation, I made mistakes and am now having to try and study/get into university as an adult with a family and a job - I want my children to have a better life than I do.

My eldest has suspected SEN and trying to get the right support for her is like trying to draw blood from a stone, unfortunately like many parents probably find - she does not respond well to me trying to fill in those gaps (in the limited time I can find). I am not a teacher or TA and home is not school. She should be getting the provisions she needs in class but while her school is fantastic, there simply isn't the funding there. The 4.5% offered would mean losing the TA that currently is there to help her and her classmates and would place her in an even worse position. Teachers wouldn't be striking if they weren't pushed to the brink.

I completely understand why they are striking and support them. Our government are breaking this country, they are the ones to blame not the teachers who do the best that they can every day.
I do feel really sorry for our children who are in their GCSE years, my DS is in year 10. His high school education has been so impacted already by the pandemic and now we have the strikes but they’ll be no mitigation or allowances for them. It’s awful. The government need to sort this and quickly.

I used to be a teacher. But pay and conditions were dreadful and actually made me unwell, so I quit. At some point, you can't keep running yourself into the ground anymore.
If that was just me it would hardly matter but sadly it's not. There are many more like me leaving, with their own well-being and families to consider and bills to pay.
Heads now find themselves to be very fortunate if they are fully staffed by September and not relying on cover. My children and your children deserve to know who'll be teaching them all year, not have a string of cover teachers. I don't want my kids in classes that have gone over numbers because there aren't staff, and I want TAs where there should be TAs. I want my children taught by subject specialists when they get to secondary school (we had art teachers teaching maths because there literally weren't enough maths teachers or even agency staff to fill the timetable), and I want my children to get their GCSE options because the subject specialists are available,
But I can't do it anymore. So I have to support those who can.