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?

Personally I can see why perhaps parents whose children are coming out the other end of the education system ie year 11 plus are less engaged with strikes and more frustrated because it can impact their exams; but for anyone else its about investing in the long game. Scarily it's no longer a given that schools will keep going over the next few years let alone the next decade or so as we know them. Although it's a nightmare with work and appreciate some lose money if they have to stay home with their children, its bloody important that funding is sorted. Not just for teachers but for pupils present and future too, I think lots don't realise how ridiculous the situation is in schools and hospitals.

I am with teachers as I genuinely don't think it's a job you can do if you don't care for the children and their education. You certainly don't put up with the media and public criticism, the below inflation pay, the ridiculous targets, working well over and beyond your contracted hours, the red tape at every turn and whatever else if you don't give a shit- but similarly it should be recognised that its a job. To entice people to train and more importantly to retain qualified, experienced and valuable staff pay needs to be fairer and funding needs to be more realistic. This won't be achieved without parents support, but many just take for granted that things will be fine and what's the problem which is a shame. If you care about your child's education rather than the odd day the next few years are far more important.

Not lied at all!
Teachers wanted a fair pay rise that was not funded from an already stretched school budget as that would have significantly impacted all the other things you’ve listed. As this offer will not come out of the schools budget, so is in effect fully funded, they have achieved what they set out to do.
The only remaining issue is that of workload. Unions are still supporting this issue, which is in reality down to individual school leaders. If school leaders expected teachers to work within the school teachers pay and conditions, workload would decrease. But they don’t, and teachers are too scared to work to those conditions.

I had the impression the opposite was true actually, that London schools are better funded than most of the country.

I do think one of the problems when these sorts of things are discussed is just that: schools are as diverse as the states of America with regard to funding yes but also to ethos and how things are done. To give a ‘for instance’ my school are notoriously petty and refuse to let you have time off - so recently I had a hospital appointment (and we all know how hard they are to get) and the school refused to allow me to go to it even though it was in my PPA. It was real brick wall stuff - ‘arrange it out of school’ ‘I can’t’ ‘arrange it out of school’. I’ve never known any other school be like that, in fairness.

As a result, it isn’t uncommon for teachers to say quite correctly that ‘this is the state of things in education!’ when what they actually mean is ‘things are like this at the school I work in.’ I also have to say something I do notice is that when, as happens fairly regularly on here, people post asking advice as to whether to send their child to private school or not they are often advised not to with the usual cliches about state school plus, bright kids do well anywhere, and lots of stories about thriving, happy children in seemingly well run state schools. Then we have threads about teacher strikes or pay and it’s all collapsing buildings, classes charging around schools teacherless and sullen, morose youths who have lost all hope for the future.

That probably sounds like I’m taking the piss and I’m not: I think the important point is that we see what we want to see and in fact both are true or have some truth in them. My own school seems to have become increasingly chaotic over the past couple of years - partly due to changes in staffing and because of a difficult Y11 cohort who have thankfully gone now but are not forgotten!

I was talking about this with a friend yesterday and I wondered if more time would make the biggest difference. Most FT teachers will have between two and a half and three hours a week for planning. I plan well, in fact, it’s one of my strengths but I’ve never been very good at planning a long way in advance and my best lessons tend to be done under pressure. So advance planning with TAs (because I’ll be honest here, I know I don’t really use the ones I get in the best way because I never know if they are coming, who is coming etc.) would actually make my job harder, rather than easier. Ideally I suppose I would be able to sit with the TA before the lesson and say I have planned this and can you sit with suchabody and keep them on task and … but I can’t see how that would ever really work.

Then we have a building set aside from the main school where vulnerable students are taught. They are sweet kids, but I teach there twice a week. The nature of their needs is they are often absent so I can go two or three weeks without seeing them. The cost of that must work out as a lot as I only have three to a class, but since I don’t have a lot of time planning with their other teacher(s) tends to be hastily exchanged emails or quick conversations.

I don’t know that there are solutions there as such, without having teachers teach only around 70% of the time! And as I’ve said above we have to be realistic. But that’s why I largely don’t think being too high handed works: it’s easier to swallow scurrying around after school for two hours when your pay reflects that.

Will this pay rise entice people into the profession? Honest question. A £30k starting salary sounds okay but does it rise by much after that?

My industry make a big song and dance about how much people are paid on qualification but fail to mention pay then pretty much stagnates / very small pay rises.

@Hereinthismoment I'm obviously not a teacher and my DD is currently in reception so my knowledge of schools and the problems they face are very limited and, actually, opinions formed by what I've read on MN.

I know a lot of people moved out of London during and straight after covid and then a lot of kids leave in year 4 to go into private schools (-/ explained to me by a parent who teaches at the school). And I think London can be quite transient. We are fairly close to central London so maybe that makes a difference.

They aren't allowed to strike about anything else!
They can't strike over the other issues in schools unfortunately.

It’s really hard to say. I think the big problem is that while we talk of a teacher shortage what that really means in translation is a shortage of teachers in some subjects -
mostly maths and science, and a good graduate of maths or science has a lot of very well paid options open to them.

There are quite big incentives to train in these subjects I believe, which does indicate it isn’t just about money.

@Soontobe60 but it comes out of the overall education budget

How are work level pressure going to be resolved or improved? By cutting out what teachers are expected to do or by employing more assistants. They won't have the money to employ anyone so cuts are surely the only way things can improve on that front.

I think the unions and its members should be absolutely clear. They were were striking for better pay themselves and that is what they've achieved. This will not improve the dire state of schools as described by many teachers on this website.

It should never have been claimed we were.

@kirinm - historically London primary schools were better funded for a number of reasons and some of that remains. But yes in the last 5 years there has been a loss of children from London ( Brexit and Covid) which is impacting London school in particular due to the way school’s funding is largely attached to pupil numbers.

The transient nature of the London population does also create issues that are more apparent in London - so as you note far more children moving in and out of schools rather than a consistent cohort throughout.

I would be wary of forming too many opinions on schools from Mumsnet. It is far better to monitor your immediate area imo. If you live close to the centre, I am not surprised your head is not happy. Pupil numbers are very low in that area and pay is highest. Population is transient and if a kid leaves a day before the census, the money you've spent on them for the last 6 months doesn't get given to you. The other problem is people just can't afford to live in London on the salary of a teacher so the recruitment crisis is hitting London and SE particularly hard. The only area that's really not being that hard hit is the NE where incidentally housing and living costs are far lower.
Kids tend to leave in Y3 for privates. State till 8 they call it. Y4 is an unusual entry into private sector unless it's a cathedral school or somewhere niche like Sussex House prep.

I think the unions and its members should be absolutely clear. They were were striking for better pay themselves and that is what they've achieved. This will not improve the dire state of schools as described by many teachers on this website.

I think that you’d be foolish to assert that nothing has changed for schools in terms of funding as a result of these strikes.

Last year’s pay rise was unfunded. The pay offer from March was only funded by 0.5% extra money and the govt said when making that offer that it was funded ‘because they knew how important it was to teachers’. That offer was overwhelmingly rejected by all 4 teaching unions, and the general impression is that if the funding had been better, the offer would have been accepted, even though 4.5% is shit.

The pay review body recommended 6.5%. The govt had some choices - not give the 6.5% despite it being recommended, give the 6.5% but fund it at the same rate as the 4.5% offer, or give 6.5% but fund it better than the 4.5% offer.

They wanted to go for 1) but ended up being forced to go for 3). Politically they couldn’t do 1), and in terms of strike action they knew 2) would be rejected by teachers because of the funding.

So without the action of teachers to highlight how important school funding was to the pay offer, school budgets would have been screwed back in March if we’d accepted, and if not then because teachers wanted more than 4.5% and weren’t fussed about the funding then extra funding beyond the March calculation wouldn’t be on the table now. You can thank teachers for that extra funding for school budgets.

North west generally does OK for recruitment as well. Elsewhere, it depends. Primary is mostly fine: secondary maths and science is definitely not fine, secondary maths and science in the south east is pretty wretched!

All subjects at secondary are looking wretched next year bar PE, history and classics. This isn’t just a ‘stem shortage’ situation any more.

And just to add to @noblegiraffe point. If teachers had accepted the March offer, parents would be up in arms in Sept once they realised their schools were more than broke. Teachers would be called greedy and selfish. So whilst yes, teachers care about their pay and the overall situation in schools (why the hell wouldn't they, they're the ones teaching in winter coats dodging punches everyday) they are also under no illusion that England on the whole doesn't like them very much. It was interesting seeing the increase in support for teachers in the strikes after March, but that only happened because it was made clear that this is about the overall picture, not because teachers are too greedy to accept a crappy 4.5% increase. It is sad that we are reverting back to teacher hatred and name calling. This will do no favours to your kids education.

Breaking it down by area would be illuminating though. I know there aren’t many vacancies advertised where I am, even in peak season (couple of months ago.) Selfishly, a combination of lots of keen new teachers and increasingly expensive experienced teachers against a backdrop of not fully funded pay rises might emerge as a somewhat poisoned chalice.

@Foxesandsquirrels he could have said before year 4. We have a lot of private schools around us but not many great state secondaries so I can see why it happens. How everyone affords it, I don't know.

I will be much more cautious about forming opinions based on teacher experiences described on here but there are difficulties at our school too. One year group doesn't have a full time teacher and had supply teachers the entire year. And my DD rarely reads with the same person every week - and it isn't her teacher anyway.

@kirinm many schools use parent volunteers to listen to children read, hence they will read to different people.

Many schools won't be advertising vacancies, not because they have a full staff quota, but because they can't afford to pay another member of staff, so they will muddle through with the staff they have, or if Secondary, possibly drop a subject option.

NEU has accepted I believe

They all did.

The lack of teacher is awful and not ok, but reading to someone different is very normal. In fact reading to someone is quite uncommon. Most schools don't do this anymore.

I hope you read with your dc at home. They will massively benefit from it. About 90% of my class only read with an adult during school. Last year I had a parent complain about her dd’s progress in reading yet batted away every suggestion about fitting reading at home into the routine, saying she was too busy. IME the children who read regularly come on in leaps and bounds.

No one has accepted, it is being put to members who will be balloted to accept or reject next week.

@Gilmorehill yes we read a lot. She come home with 3 or 4 books a week which we read most nights.

The only reason I care about her reading at school is because it's only on those days she gets new books.

Yes that’s pretty normal in most schools. Believe it or not, it’s quite time consuming to get round a whole class to hear each child read.