Rishi triumphs over the teaching unions!

[noblegiraffe]

He has managed to beat the teaching unions into submission and to call off strikes by:

Offering them a pay deal worth more than double the original government recommendation

Giving schools extra funding to pay for it.

Well done Rishi, you really showed them!

https://twitter.com/rishisunak/status/1679462222655881218?s=46&t=vKGM6xpoeW3wdlaVVVagQA

Will it be backdated?

Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. That would be way too ethical.

Well, I'm confused.

The government education blog apparently posted something 2 hours ago about how the pay increase would be funded but they seem to have taken it down.

The BBC is reporting that the "hardship fund" for schools is £40million, which doesn't sound like it will stretch very far if schools are having to cover a significant shortfall from their own budgets. But I can't find any clear information about what funding will actually be allocated to schools to cover this. I expect that they are deliberately fudging it to avoid too much scrutiny.

I wonder where the NHS payrises will come from? 🤔

So this unfunded scraping around for money for existing DfE budgets is okay now there's a promised pay rise? How's that going to work out in the classroom?

Unless it’s fully funded then schools are still going to have to make massive cuts in order to provide it. From what is around at the moment it doesn’t sound like this is going to help schools ar all.

Is this teaching assistants too??

I think on funding what they are saying is that the extra 900 million in addition to the the extra funding that was announced in March means they can say the pay offer is ‘fully funded’ on an aggregated school basis.

The extra 9 million will have to be found from elsewhere in DfE budget. Which means kids again losing out in all of this.

However in reality I suspect for many schools an extra 3% won’t be enough. Be interesting to see what the unions say to members

In response to the title I think Rishi actually ‘won’ if the unions accept this ( is it just from next year as well? And has the extra £1000 this year offered with the 4.5 gone?).

I agree that the government has won and the unions appear to be relying on very wishing washy promises?

From the discussions with the 4.5%, the reasoning there was they only needed to provide extra funding for 0.5% because the other 4% could be paid for using the additional £2 billion promised to schools in the Autumn 2022 statement for Sept 2023.

So they reckoned that 4% was on average affordable because of the extra £2 billion

This offer is expecting schools to afford 3.5% using the £2 billion and topping up 3% to make 6.5%. So it’s better funded than the 4.5% as only expecting schools to pay 3.5%, not 4%

They also acknowledge that some schools still won’t be able to afford 3.5%, hence the hardship fund.

By “afford” they mean be able to pay without cutting budgets elsewhere.

This is taking into account energy prices coming down from this year, so schools tied into expensive contracts will need to look at this.

No, they are on a separate pay scale and I think their pay works April to April not Sept to Sept.

Rishi has won nothing, the govt wanted to give teachers 3%. Then 4.5% was their final offer.

And they’re committed to reducing workload too.

@noblegiraffe are you okay with this or not? I can't work it out.

You have through all of your threads talked about how the lack of funding is killing schools. That situation hasn't changed. The £900m is coming from an existing budget. So how is this at all positive other than for those getting the actual pay rise?

Ah you are okay with it.

As a parent to a child in a school relying on supply teachers and teaching assistants to function, I am definitely not.

The £900m is coming from an existing budget

Not schools funding it isn’t.

It was only about pay. You've got the pay rise but who cares about the kids.

Teaching assistants should not be sacked as a result of this pay rise….that’s the gist.

No, it was about the funding too. Hence all the discussions about funding.

They haven't called off their strikes yet and the devil will be in the detail. But - strange take. I'd say that the teachers have won for being strong enough to keep pushing. Ditto doctors, nurses etc.

I'm a teacher in NI UPS3 +1TLR - I will now be earning £8000 less than a teacher doing the same job in England - time our unions took a lead out of your book and campaigned for pay parity across the UK

I don’t think this will be affordable for quite a few schools and I do think it’s misleading to describe it as fully funded ( given the debate before). But let’s wait and see.

Taking it from other areas of DfE will have an impact in schools (I’ve seen mention of DfE surplus but that is misleading).

There’s a conflict though, because on the one hand the unions say they have assurances that the pay rise is fully funded: on the other Sunak is saying there won’t be more borrowing or taxes raised, the extra will be met “by efficiencies”. Which of course means cuts somewhere. So either teachers have indeed stabbed teaching assistants in the back, or someone else somewhere has. The question is where is it coming from.

The BMA spokesman I heard talking on the radio said exactly the same thing applied in health, and also that it does not make up for the imposition of debt and appalling working conditions. Naturally there was some government toady then saying the BMA were out of touch. There’s going to be a lot of propaganda and ‘nudging’ over this.

Who cares about the kids? I'd say the professionals that choose to spend their working life sleep deprived and skimping on family time, and frequently taking home less than the minimum wage per hour; ie, the teachers; are probably showing they care for the kids, wouldn't you?

I could earn double somewhere else!

It rather sounds to me as if the unions have done what unions did in the Blair years, and sold out.