Why are bloody teachers striking AGAIN?

[noblegiraffe]

Because, dear hearts, the government, when they offered us a pay rise of 4.5%, mostly unfunded for next September and all 4 teaching unions thoroughly rejected it, Gillian Keegan said that teachers would then have to take their chances with the independent pay review body and that there would be no further negotiations.

So teachers did. And the independent pay review body, who seem to have rather more of a handle on the current crisis in teaching than the government, recommended that teachers should get a 6.5% pay rise to introduce some stability into the system.

We only know this because the independent pay review body findings have not been published, but this figure was leaked.

Calls for the government to publish the report have been ignored. Most recently, a freedom of information act request to the DfE for the report was rejected, because the DfE says it's "not in the public interest".

Why is it not in the public interest to know what the independent pay review body has recommended? This report is published every year.

In the meantime, Rishi is briefing the press that he will reject the independent pay review body's recommendations, after making a huge fuss about how he always accepts independent pay review body recommendations.

Why should this matter to parents? Because headteachers are currently trying to write their budgets for September. The end of term is approaching. This job is currently impossible because headteachers don't know how much more they are expected to pay teachers next year, (6.5%? 5?% 4.5%?) and they have no idea how much extra money their school will be given to account for the pay rise (all? some? None??). This makes a massive difference as staffing costs account for the vast majority of school budgets. Should they be planning to cut GCSE subjects? Make staff redundant? Or will they actually be able to plan in some literacy support? That they don't know is intolerable.

A senior government advisor said that school budgets last year weren't worth the paper they were written on because of this same issue, and that it shouldn't be allowed to happen again.

Yet here we are.

The government are trying to drag this out to the summer before they make their pay announcement because then they'll be on their holidays and the 4 teaching unions' ballots will have closed.

Maybe academies were a really crap idea. Lots of bad things have happened in schools which look unlikely to ever be reversed; for example, none of the schools round here having a playing field as they were sold off.

My school has a head and a deputy. The deputy is virtually full time in class.

I've written to my MP, who was briefly Ed Sec

I think they've all been, at one point. Utter contempt for the sector to have a constant revolving door of Ed Secs.

Your list of cover teachers doesn't sound that unusual, unfortunately. My Y11s were telling me how they hadn't had an English teacher all year - in their exam year!

Op was trying to lure us with a misleading title

Beyond caring springs to mind 🥱🥱

@wonderstuff

"I will leave it to others to work out where the money comes from, but it does need to come from somewhere because education is suffering and will only get worse unless something changes."

++++

But you absolutely do need to figure out where the money comes from. I mean I would like a bigger house but realise I cant afford it.

You could raise the money by cutting spending on the two largest expense items namely the NHS and state / public sector pensions. But any political party that has as its policies a) restructuring the NHS with less money or b) increasing more rapidly the state and public sector pension age is pretty much guaranteed not to get elected.

The sad truth is that children and young people don't vote, older generations and pensioners do. So spending on education is always going to be a lower priority.

And as per your post the result of this will be worse education impacting the economy but in short termist politics they just won't care.

It is very simple - "If you’re not happy with your salary, and your employer won’t offer you any more, you always have the option of going elsewhere to earn more."

Yup. 44,000 state school teachers made the 'simple' choice to leave the profession last year, with less than 10% of them retiring. Teacher recruitment targets are being missed across the board, and currently 13% of newly qualified teachers leave within 1 year of qualifying, 20% within 2 years, with that figure set to rise. I would imagine that lots of teachers are also leaving to get a better work/life balance for the money they earn.

So teachers ARE simply voting with their feet, leaving many thousands of children not having qualified teachers, especially in Secondary. You win, Efficacious5. Well done. But childrens' education loses, something that you don't actually seem bothered about.

Also this method of partial walk out is inconvenient to parents but perhaps not quite enough of a pain for anyone to listen.

Would be better completely unscheduled and for longer. Or if parents staged some sort of walk out and stopped sending kids for a period. It feels it just isn't working as it's being done now. It's almost pointless.

If you could get over to parents more about how education iscompletely fucked! Revolving door of teachers, lack of decent teachers, huge gaps in staffing etc and less moaning about the 6% then you might have some more on your side. I'd happily be up for some proper revolution/protest if I thought it would benefit my kids.

Thank you for your detailed explanation of the situation at your local secondary school. Similar to most up and down the country I’ve no doubt.

Your reason for striking differs from that of the OP who is all about money.

Do you really believe that striking is going to provide a satisfactory resolve for either of you ?

If you could get over to parents more about how education iscompletely fucked! Revolving door of teachers, lack of decent teachers, huge gaps in staffing etc and less moaning about the 6% then you might have some more on your side.

<sigh> Teachers have been trying, parents haven't been listening.

Your reason for striking differs from that of the OP who is all about money.

Flat out lie.

Your problem here is how the media reports the strikes.

Teachers are more than happy to lay out the problems - just look on here. We explain it again and again.

But Ministers are invited onto the usual politics programmes and are allowed to spout their rehearsed, misleading lines with no challenge and the Daily Mail does it's usual job of painting strikers as work shy and greedy.

What more than strike, shout on social media and stand on a picket line would you like us to be doing?

I'm probably asking a dense question here! At my DC school only 2 classes are closed for the strike. Why is that? Is it that only those 2 teachers chose to strike? Or something to do with the union? I genuinely don't understand!

@noblegiraffe I agree Governments need to invest in education as they need to invest in healthcare. Both are key priorities.

But there simply isn't the money in the Treasury to pay for any of this. The net deficit was £611.8 billion at the end of April 2023 and central interest payable was £9.8 billion in April 2023, £3.1 billion more than April 2022.

It may be an investment but it still must be financed year on year. The question I ask is how? Governments cannot borrow endless monies. All monies borrowed have interest payment implications which must be taken into account in terms of affordability.

Assuming it can't all be debt financed, then that leaves two options - reducing funding to other sectors (whether that is defense, agriculture etc) or raising taxes.

On tax raising - taxing the richest few more will ultimately hit all taxpayers hard. In terms of taxing the largest companies more - the UK has a high (and arguably not very competitive) corporation tax rate already. If this were put back up from 25 to 30% (as it used to be) - companies will relocate - causing job losses etc. There is already a lot of anti-avoidance legislation in place with multi-national agreements aiming to tax profit in the jurisdictions where that profit is earned (effectively a risk reward model). There is also a digital services tax.
So if taxes are to be raised - it will hit all of us in one way or another.

I wish I had the solution but I don't. Politically any party who can promise the payrises and back it up with how that will be financed will be onto an election winner. It's not a case of making empty election promises which will have to be later withdrawn due to inability to finance that promise.

They're probably the only teachers in the neu which is the union currently striking. Nasuwt are balloting at the minute for strike action in the the autumn term but didn't reach the required number of votes cast to strike this time round (possibly in some way because of disorganised admin from the union and the postal strikes around the dates of the ballots)

I'm really sorry you have experienced this, it is horrible.
I live opposite a playground/area. I've noticed since covid years the behaviour has deteriorated.

Yes, the cancelling of Building Schools was a disastrous decision. So short sighted of the government not to realise how more it would cost in repairs. My company at the time had a full order book for building the new schools, and as soon as it was pulled we all lost our jobs. Bad for me and my colleagues personally, but much much worse for the consequences on school infrastructure. Ridiculous.

I’m in full support. My daughter loves it. She does work at home and gets to relax. She loved covid school closures too. My other daughters primary school have never striked much to her annoyance. I just hope it eventually results in a good outcome for the staff and pupils. This government needs taking OUT.

I completely agree with @noblegiraffe who has time and time again articulately explained why we are on strike. More money is part of the solution, you can't tackle an acute staff shortage by cutting wages again and again, it's simply not going to work. Clearly the threat of strikes hasn't brought the government to the negotiating table, and I'm sure Keegan will continue with her tactic of ignoring the problem following these strikes too, but we need to raise our voices, we need to keep campaigning. Maybe in autumn when all the unions will hopefully join the NEU in having a mandate for strikes the government will start to listen. The headteachers union is balloting for strike action at the moment for the first time in their 150 year history. Maybe they will continue to ignore the issues, but at some point there will be an election and I am sure that letting schools become so underfunded they are falling down and can't attract staff will poll poorly.

Behave! It's the same with doctors and nurses leaving the country! There will be nothing left if this carry's on. But then I suppose you would be happy to continue to pay taxes to a government that donates it by the back door to their mates? Because let's face it, if that stopped, like the billions that disappeared during covid on dodgy contracts, there would be the money for proper public services wouldn't there?

I am an employment lawyer representing school staff. The number and severity of serious assaults on primary teachers is increasing rapidly; my practice take referrals from all over the country and the rise is both notable and consistent throughout England and Wales.

I think it could be argued that the 6.5% payrise is cost neutral if it saves on recruitment and cover. At any rate, I hope someone is doing that research. Endlessly advertising vacancies is expensive. I know some schools are unable to get cover but my London comprehensive has 4 or 5 supply in every day. If SLT are spending a lot of time on recruitment/cover situations that also frees up their time to do more productive stuff.

In the long run investment in education produces return on investment, as better educated countries are aware.

Thank you, @Forestfriendlygarden.

Whoever replaces them will be just as bad - a load of false promises at the start, then the same old garbage once they're settled in.

Well, I’m quite prepared to give anyone else a shot. The years I spent teaching under Labour were ten times better than the last 13 years have been.

It was about time for us all to pull our fingers out our asses and actually start protesting shit about 3 years ago, and it seems even more vital now.

But the English are spineless and we will sit here and whine about it and complain about protestors who DO have the gall because "disruption" and "greedy, selfish nurses/doctors/teachers" and wring our hands about keeping our jobs rather than getting out there en mass because "I've got mine" or "what good will it do".

So we will just sit on mumsnet sipping tea and crying about it in threads like this, and then cry some more when we are forced to pay for healthcare and schooling. 👍

(and before anyone says it I DO get off my ass and strike/protest and if we ALL FUCKING DID IT something might change.).