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?

The DfE had a £500k surplus this year but they're going to double that next year. How? Because that has to happen to fund the 3%.

Loads of teachers would've agreed to a fully funded 4.5%. The whole reason the strikes carried on was mostly because it wasn't fully funded.

And presumably this will be a new government needing to find these efficiency savings?

They probably would have

Maybe the extra % will also help on getting more teachers overall

It’s still a long way below inflation and won’t address the recruitment shortages which for me, as a mother as much as a teacher, was the motivation to strike. I think the unions feel this is the best we’re going to get, and they may be right, being below average private sector pay as well is a blow, that gap keeps getting bigger. I’m going to listen to the zoom meeting on Monday before I decide how to vote on it.

At the moment though I’m really disappointed.

@kirinm I really don’t have a lot of time for the NEU, but I do want to be reasonable as well. The unions (plural) focus on what’s best for their members and this is. The muddying of the waters has come about because a lot of teachers felt / feel unable to openly strike for more pay so felt that a ‘worthier’ cause was needed. While this is a lofty sort of ideal it was never going to work. If you go on strike for more pay then more pay is offered you can’t then say oh actually it wasn’t about pay!

Yes I can see what you're saying. The 'your child's education will suffer even more than it already is' rhetoric was always going to get more support than just pay.

But that lesson will have learned the next time teachers are balloted to strike - which is what Kevin Courtney suggests might happen next year.

We go again. And strikes at schools with compulsory redundancies. That'll go down well if these fully funded rises result in redundancies.

But they weren't lying. The offer was unfunded and your children's education would have suffered more of they had accepted that. The public knew very little about how horrendous the situation in schools was until the teacher strikes made that public. It's now for the parents to continue that fight as teachers have essentially come to the end of what they can legally do. The government has offered them what the independent pay body suggested, as well as promised to reduce workload. They don't have anything else they can strike about. I don't really like a lot of the unions, but I don't see what else they can legally do. They'll look very silly trying to do much else.

It's now for the parents to continue that fight as teachers have essentially come to the end of what they can legally do.

Well they will of course continue to campaign, but it would be an end to industrial action (for now).

@Foxesandsquirrels but what they now claim is funded isn't what many people expect funded to actually mean.

Efficiency cuts in budget that is already too low isn't what most parents thought the unions wanted.

They are doing what is best for their members and that is their job I guess.

@Mapples - it isn’t just MoD - lots of central civil service ( and other public sector) are in effect on recruitment freeze. Which of course means ever increasing workloads ( and certainly where I work for people who have been working through Brexit and Covid both of which causes insane hours. Weekend working and working until midnight/early hours pretty much every day almost entirely the norm now). Because it isn’t a fully unionised work force and tbh doesn’t really attract public support government is able to just ignore but things are unsustainable ( and where recruitment is allowed almost impossible to recruit). The whole public sector is in a terrible state.

Oh I agree. I don't know how they came to the conclusion that that was fully funded, but I suspect this is the best outcome they could get. Leaves schools in a frustrating position though. I really don't rate many of the unions, they expect people to just strike whenever, pay huge fees monthly but never provide financial support when it's needed by someone so they can actually strike. Then they accept deals like this which make a mockery of the whole fight.

I agree, its just the mod announcing a month long (with whispers it'll be potentially up to 2025) recruitment ban on the day the pay awards are announced is very suspect. There are of course issues across the CS which aren't helped by the media's spin that everyone is lazy and doesn't bother doing any work, when the reality is most are paid under industry rates for their work, there are significant gaps which mean they're doing double or triple the work and conditions are constantly eroded.

To add the 4.5% funded may have been accepted previously but if people had 6.5% offer now v 4.5% and had to tick one…

well I’d consider both if in that position but I wouldn’t judge people on choosing one over the other

I suppose we COULD accept the 3.5% funded part and reject the part that has to come from schools, but then it is possible to argue that might make teacher retention and recruitment even harder. Equally though, some areas are doing fine for recruitment thank you very much so experienced teachers looking for work in some areas / subjects may well struggle.

I just wish we weren’t quite so shy about brazenly pointing out that while lovely working conditions are a perk, really, if we want more teachers and more people to train as teachers then pay is crucial to that.

I just spoke to our headteacher - primary and in London and she is very very sceptical.

With regard to the offer or the acceptance of it?

The 'fully funded' bit and the assumption that schools could make the 3.5% work in the first place.

She did say that as we are in London and most London schools aren't full and people move away all the time, they often have less funding than other areas.

This only happened because one Mum asked if the offer was good news abs the HT was absolutely not jumping for joy.

@Mapples - oh yes defo re the MoD! I have no doubt there is some link ( although saying that never underestimate how disjointed central government is!).

It is all of course a massive problem for whoever is the next government.

Our school is one that was closed every strike day and contrary to what some on here would like to believe, had families alongside them at the protests. They perhaps know they have a lot of community support.

@Mapples - and yes on underpaid re comparison to private sector. My pay is now a third of what I could achieve in the private sector ( where I started out), less flexible and comparable hours. I think what is also always missed is that many people work for the public sector because they believe in it. But if teachers struggle to get public sympathy I don’t think ‘bureaucrats’ stand a chance!

I suspect most won't be. A lot of people in private sector have been less than impressed by the unions though. I'm slightly jealous of the train drivers in that area. That guy is amazing.

That's meant to say public sector!