Gillian Keegan wants minimum service levels for schools - don't we all!

[noblegiraffe]

Continuing the long-running government war on teachers, Gillian Keegan has invited union leaders to discuss minimum service levels to be in place during any future teacher strikes (which are inevitable given that they've just announced more school funding cuts).

If there is no voluntary agreement, she says she will impose minimum service levels.

Minimum service levels I would like to see:

A qualified teacher for every class (so far removed from current reality as to not even be funny)
School buildings that are of an adequate and safe standard (this would cost around £12 billion by govt estimates after a over a decade of neglect, and that was before the RAAC discovery)
Sufficient staffing to meet children's SEN needs. (We can't even meet legally mandated needs in EHCPs).

This seems a fairly basic list, and yet we are nowhere near meeting it. So I'd be very keen on guaranteed minimum service levels.

And perhaps Gillian should reflect on whether deliberately antagonising teachers is a good recruitment and retention strategy.

https://x.com/gilliankeegan/status/1715284791040331810?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

Can we add properly funded support services so there aren't ridiculous waits for CAMHS and SEN diagnoses?
And a LOT of investment in IT infrastructure if AQA think we're going online for exams?

Frankly this govt’s record on education is abysmal. Given they can’t get their own sums right even, I can’t understand where they’d get the notion that parents remotely trust them to not make the situation in schools any worse.

I’ll remember the Tories record:
-Crumbling schools with school building programmes cut and cut
-underpaid overstretched teachers & TA’s
-woefully underfunded mental health services meaning so many kids simply cannot access the support they need 😥

Everyone knows she lives in cloud cuckoo land. Just pat her on the head and tell her to get stuffed.

She seems to think that she has the powers to impose this.

I mean, this government talking about minimum service levels is a joke.

God what a bitch she must be. Asking for kids to be taught?! Yeah you're right she's a cheeky fucker eh. 🙄🙄

Interfactual- she is saying these things need to happen when there is a teachers strike.
Teachers are saying that we would like these things to be happening all the time- but she consistently underfunds education making it impossible.

She is indeed a cheeky fucker. We all want kids to be taught, but unfortunately her government has decimated the teaching profession and now there aren't enough teachers to go around.

Once again my school has Y13 A-level students having to teach themselves the course as the teacher left and couldn't be replaced.

Once again we have GCSE classes being taught by teachers who don't have a clue about anything to do with the subject.

And should we mention the kids who don't even have a school because it was in imminent danger of collapsing on their heads?

Minimum services levels. We haven't got them the rest of the year.

You missed the latest news that the few billion that they spent on the National Tutoring Programme, the only money they put into covid recovery for children, actually made them worse at maths.

https://x.com/mathematical_a/status/1715101066914607466?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

If it's any consolation she wants minimum service levels for universities too.

That’ll be the same tutoring programme that despite school knowing we’re a clinically vulnerable family and my daughter had more time out of school than most, that she hasn’t even been offered any tutoring! 😡

I’m very lucky to be able to afford to pay privately for tutors and she’s doing well but the continuing damage this govt are wreaking on this cohort of kids is so, so wrong.

She is utterly clueless

I think the state education sector would like to see a minimum service level from the government in return.
Not much to ask is it 🤔

Oh my goodness. When I think she can't get any more out of touch of what it's actually like in schools.

She's a bloody idiot.

Maybe we can start with having minimum service levels for politicians?

The breath-taking arrogance of this woman! The Tories have ruined state education and yet she blames everything on the teachers. I this is the woman who complained she was not been given credit for doing a f....ng good job.

How would minimum service levels even work in reality?

Drag us out of bed and tie us to our desks at school?

I mean, what is she going to do, sack us?

That kind of stuff only has teeth when you have thousands of people lining up to do the job. Right now, she can't fill the positions we have open at supposedly "full" staffing levels in non-striking times.

It's not even her own idea.
They said it about hospitals first.

Minimum service is more than we are all able to provide day to day thanks to the fucking Tory shitshow.

Whenever I hear minimum anything from a tory, I don’t think assurance of minimum acceptable standards, I assume, and am usually not wrong in thinking, it means minimum they can get away with for plausible deniability for loss of life.

We already cope every day on less than minimum levels of staff, resources, time and space.

What does she mean 'I will use the powers granted to me under the strikes act'?

I teach a mixed year group class with a reading range of pre-school to Y5. I have no TA support at all at any point in the week. How is that providing for children with SEND? And the reason we can't provide support is because we can't recruit because we can't afford to pay a decent wage so no one wants the job.