Teachers

[kirinm]

I have and always will support the strikes but have a couple of questions since the announcement that the government will accept the recommendations re pay rises but will not increase funding.

Will you still strike in light of the fact the pay rises are not being funded?

What sort of impact is this going to have in schools do you think?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Times_Rich_List here they are, 1,000 of them anyway. Should make a good start.

I personally don't think any teacher is striking just to line their own pockets as there are so many issues in education that make the job unbearable. But so fucking what if it was just for pay? It's a job at the end of the day, not a service to society out of the goodness of people's hearts (although you have to have a tonne of patience, passion and whatever else to tolerate it); they should be paid enough to live and with rising costs that's hard. Same across the public sector- of course not all is peachy in the private sector but they can strike and lobby their employers (who aren't the government).

TA pay is being debated in Parliament next Monday.

I do hope that you responded to the call for evidence for it, given that you're so concerned.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4834739-if-you-think-that-teaching-assistants-should-be-paid-more

If they award teachers a pay rise, and give schools the money to pay the pay rise, I will vote to accept.

If they award teachers a pay rise, but do not increase the budgets to cover this, leaving Headteachers to find the money through further cuts, I will vote to reject.

Quesiton @noblegiraffe can headteachers strike over the overall funding? Or are they also restricted to pay and conditions? I wonder if their strike action will be cancelled too- I have a strong suspicion they'll meet the threshold.

I don't think that anyone can strike about school funding levels as it's not really an employment related matter but a political one.

From discussion tonight with my union rep, 3% is coming from government and 3.5% from school. Our school can’t afford 3.5%

Email from the NAHT - headteacher union. Clarification.

That offer centred on a 4.5% pay uplift for 2023/24, the majority of which schools would have to fund themselves from existing budgets. It was the rejection of that offer that led to the national executive to decide to ballot members over industrial action.

The new offer being made by the government can be summarised as follows:

• To accept and implement in full the 6.5% pay uplift for all teachers and leaders that are subject to the STPCD, as recommended by the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB)
• The government has committed to provide additional funding for schools to help cover the cost of the increase by funding the first 3% of the pay award. It is anticipated that most schools will have been advised by their LA or trust to budget for a 3.5% pay award from existing resources, as this was the recommendation originally made by the government to the STRB in February 2023
• Establishment of a £40million ‘hardship fund’ for schools facing specific financial difficulties as a result of this offer
• A commitment to urgently establish a workload reduction taskforce with the unions with initial recommendations by October 2023
• A commitment from the government for talks with the unions, Department for Education (DfE) and the new chief inspector due to be appointed shortly to review all aspects of inspection.

@LacieLane Very helpful, thank you. The £40mil won't touch the sides. That's a budget to cover the deficits of a county, not a nation. However, it sounds like it's better than anything else they were going to get.

@noblegiraffe thanks, that's good to know.

The £40mil won't touch the sides.

Mary Bousted seems to think that the vast majority of schools can afford the 3.5%, where are they getting that info from?

Gillian is hosting a webinar on Monday to explain it all. Last time the heads absolutely blasted her so it'll be interesting to see what they say this time.

This was the graphic they used last time for the 4.5% offer.

So they say that school budgets for September have a "headroom" of £2400 million - That's the extra £2.something billion promised from the 2022 Autumn statement.

The graphic on the left was the estimates they submitted to the teacher pay review body.

The graphic on the right was the latest figures - reduced energy costs on what was expected and a better pay rise for support staff.

This graphic was heavily disputed and they were forced to concede that it only worked on average.

So in March they thought school budgets could handle a 4% pay rise and this was widely disputed by headteachers. The DfE then conceded that it was only affordable on average and some schools couldn't afford it.

So they are now saying that schools can only handle a 3.5% pay rise (and this is, remember, using extra funding already promised, not existing school budgets) and basically giving schools an extra 0.5% of funding on the March offer. They are again conceding that some schools can't even afford that and are offering the hardship fund.

I will be very interested to hear headteachers' opinions given that the headteacher unions are saying they should accept.

@noblegiraffe I'm quite surprised all the unions have accepted to be honest, esp head teachers. I can see they have to be reasonable, but the extra money from Sept was meant to boost schools overall budgets for resources, not staff salaries. It seems crazy that overall school funding isn't accepted under working conditions. The lack of funding in schools has a huge effect on working conditions. How has the government come to the £40mil figure? Have they asked schools what they can afford and based it on that? I can't imagine £40mil will stretch further than a single London borough! Our school can't afford any staff rises. They can't even afford the current salaries.

I agree that the £2billion is needed to fill holes in budgets left by 13 years of underfunding, particularly last year's pay rise. But when the 4.5% was offered, it was generally agreed that there were some schools that could afford to fund the 4%. Some MATs seem to be in a better financial position than others - we know funding isn't spread evenly, some schools have got better deals on their energy bills etc etc. If this is being funded more generously than that offer, then there will be more schools than in March that will be able to afford it.

I know bog-all about school budgeting, so I've been keeping an eye on headteachers on twitter, and there are certainly some who are saying that this is workable, and some who had budgeted for a higher pay rise who are actually relieved.

What I do know is that we were on strike last Friday, and the unions were all urging members to vote yes in their strike ballots in preparation for Autumn strikes. Today they have all said that they would recommend accepting this offer to members. This can't just be because the government said 'or you won't get anything' as the NEU were very quick last time to tell members to reject when that threat was made.

It's way better than any previous recommendation, and way better than even recent news stories about cabinet discussions were suggesting.

Well said @noblegiraffe . I also do really trust Geoff Barton and Mary Bousted.

The schools I work at budgeted for a 4.5% rise so those heads will be pleased with an extra 3% as they managed to balance the books for year 1 at 4.5%

But i have to say its a bit late as in order to get ready for september, the budget went in in april and staffing changes were prepped in january as thats how long redundancy processes take or negotiating changes to hours.

That’s good if they have extra

They must find it late each year? As public sector seems to be announced at a particular time

@Foxesandsquirrels

Teachers can only strike for pay and conditions.

As I recall it from union comms during a handful of disputes and ballots a while back when I was working in the private sector, nothing to do with teaching, that sounds about right.

The view was an employee can only legally engage in Industrial Action over their own T&Cs, they can't strike over other issues, such as for example the way a company is run.

Continuing to strike over funding when the T&Cs aspect of the dispute has possibly been addressed might put the Unions in a difficult position legally...

Any legal beagles/union people out there know the chapter and verse of the law on this?.

Yes the admin ataff pay deal is often not settled until december and is then backdated which throws things a bit. But generally the unions there arent asking for very much different than the pay offer and support staff are a amaller per cent of the whole budget so it has less impact.

I dont recall not knowing the teacher pay rise earlier than this normally. But generally, over the last 10 years there hasnt been much of a rise anyway!

The education secretary has said that the rise doesn't 'necessarily' mean cuts - which means that it does.

Also, why when schools are in the state teachers on here have set out, is there even an underspend at the DfE?!

The MOD which is already short staffed by a fair number is having a recruitment freeze currently to help account for the armed forces pay rise, its all a load of crap and public sector workers deserve better.

Tbh, it’s got a bit silly.

We went on strike for pay because we couldn’t go on strike for other reasons, so now they’ve offered us more pay, so we have to accept, so we’re still not happy but the government have us over a barrel?

Or we went on strike for more pay, we’ve got more pay, it doesn’t resolve the other issues but then it never would.

I think the unions will have done a good job if they can persuade their members that a pay rise coming from efficiency savings made by the DfE when schools are massively underfunded equates to a funded pay rise.

Didn't teachers strike for a fully funded pay rise? It's how you interpret fully funded I guess.

I suppose the offer could have been 4.5% fully funded say.

Would people be happier with that or this or prefer it as it is?

I don’t really mind, but I’d like the idea that low pay is stopping recruitment and retention to get addressed as part of all
this otherwise the same arguments continue

And for the funding to be more ok, which it seems to be