Govt planning to screw over teachers again

[noblegiraffe]

The government have recommended to the independent pay review body (late, they missed the deadline) that teacher pay rises should be 'more sustainable' this year. They haven't suggested a figure but looking at budget this would be 1-2% (i.e. another below inflation pay-cut.)

In the meantime, their commitment to reduce teacher working hours by 5 hours per week has been a complete failure as teacher working hours have actually increased in the last year:

"The latest wave of the working lives of teachers and leaders survey shows full-time leaders’ average working week in 2023 was 58.2 hours – over 11 hours a day – up from 57.5 in 2022.
The survey polled more than 10,000 workers, and found full-time teachers’ average hours were 52.4 per week, up from 51.9 in 2022......Teachers and leaders’ job satisfaction has also plummeted. Only 46 per cent were satisfied “most of the time”, compared to 58 per cent last year.

At the same time, the number of teachers quitting is increasing, and recruitment is becoming an even bigger issue due to the lack of people starting a PGCE last September who should now be applying for jobs.

The government gearing up for another war with teachers is clearly something they see as a vote-winner in an election year.

However, many voters are parents and can see the impact of the state of education on their children's experience at school.

NEU and NASUWT are currently consulting members to see if they want another ballot for strike action.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/keegan-calls-for-return-to-more-sustainable-teacher-pay-rises/
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/heads-and-teachers-working-longer-despite-workload-push/

imagibe how amazing it would be if your DD’s science teacher was an Oxford Biochemistry graduate? Imagine how much it would advance our country if teaching was filled with top graduates?

Being a top graduate, whatever that means, is not something that automatically leads to being a top teacher. Teaching is a skill which, to sn extent, can be taught and learnt, improved over time, developed. Much of teaching success is down to personality, ability to communicate, willingness to be flexible, ability to (continually) self- reflect. Absolutely we want people who know their subjects in schools but assuming that top graduate is the only pool from which we should pull teachers is as dangerous as pretending subject knowledge isn't important. What we need to attract to the profession are those who want to make a difference to children's lives with the best set of qualifications possible. The talent to nuture is the teaching talent above everything else.

We had an ‘Oxford history professor’ join the staff at my school when I was doing GCSEs. He was really bigged up to pupils and staff as being amazing. He was dreadful-I’m sure he knew his stuff, but he couldn’t engage the pupils (this was a nice girls grammar so no particular issues) and his lessons turned into chaos. He left the room crying one Tuesday and never returned-this was before October half term!

We need good staff who know their stuff, can engage the kids and are qualified teachers!

I have gotten to the point where I couldn’t give two-hoots about what the public think of me. (Secondary teacher)

I realise many parents and public are grateful for my efforts. They appreciate what I do and support us.

Many parents and public are ungrateful, spiteful, moaning arseholes, who either don’t see or don’t care about the hard work we put in and in that normal 2024 way, are just super entitled about what they think we should be doing and earning. Especially if they aren’t getting a similar wage or pay rise.

I know my value. I know how well the kids in my class do, how important my attendance, effort, planning, marking and motivation of them is. I know the difference I can make to their lives. Doing well in my subject at A level has gotten pupil’s scholarships into universities to study for wonderful careers.

I also know how much I should be earning, what pay rise is fair. The hours I need to do to get results and…that I absolutely WILL strike for better pay and conditions regardless of what people (who have no clue) say about me.

If they haven’t realised yet that the only people who will suffer - are their children, being taught by cover supervisors and unqualified staff, then there isn’t going to be much you can say to them to change that, because clearly they simply don’t have the understanding or critical thinking skills required to make those connections.

Our politicians allow the independent pay review body to set ministers pay rises at 10, 11% and then public servants get 1% 😂 We had two years of better pay rises, following over 10! Years of 0%. We are not valued. We are being used like cattle, to do a far more important job and a far better job than any of them lot do.

So first I’ll try striking and then I’ll try leaving. And we’ll see at what point the country ‘gets it’.

imagibe how amazing it would be if your DD’s science teacher was an Oxford Biochemistry graduate? Imagine how much it would advance our country if teaching was filled with top graduates?

I worked with lots of teachers who were doctors. Didn’t make much difference to grades.

This is quite interesting. I can only find it up to 2021. It shows how much public sector pay has dropped. Teaching has dropped a lot.

That graph makes little sense without important context, such as how much of the drop is relative (and to what) and also how much of the drop is down to many schools only recruiting reasonably inexpensive ECTs. But I don't deny the numbers themselves.

I've said this before, but staff car parks are now full of old bangers rather than reasonably new, reliable cars when I started 20 years ago, even if most teachers didn't drive flashy cars back then, either. It's a good indicator of how well our staff are off now.

Teaching is not an attractive profession these days and, like it or not, the government will have to throw money at it in some way to make the profession become attractive again. Be it by reducing what schools have to do and actually investing in social services and mental health care, be it by paying staff significantly more for what they are asking of them, or be it by providing schools with the money to hire far more staff to share the workload.

Something will have to give, and until it is, schools will continue to lose staff.

I'm about to change schools again and I was pretty much able to name my price, as well as determine my start date (which is not in line with Burgundy book guidelines), because I am capable and in a shortage subject. Years back employers were able to insist staff stayed their contracted terms and were able to determine pay that they saw fit. The thing that's changed is how many people are willing to put up with the crap conditions now on offer, one of which is low pay for the hours worked and skill required.

The only teacher I ever knew who didn't have a degree due to the cert way in retired 5 years ago.

Several colleagues have done MAs and one did a PhD.

When Labour were in power iirc they'd started to say they wanted all teachers to have MAs (as a longer term plan.)

As a parent who has a child going into secondary school I applaud this. I want decent teachers who care about my child's progress. Teachers are gas lit all the time, by people who aren't teachers. Being in the classroom isn't like anything else. When I was teaching, I used to love inset days as they felt like a break. Weekends never actually felt like time off as my mental load was still on the job

I have an MSc. I hate covering that subject as I disagree with the syllabus. There's always a risk of overcomplicating things and confusing the kids. I am best covering subjects in which I have A-level/ first degree.
But contempt for cover teachers is a problem. I have had kids chant "you're wrong" at me (I was right), or tell me they hadn't learnt anything in the last lesson "because we had a sub". Parents - and teachers- talking cover lessons down undermines the kids' confidence in us.
I'm not sure why, when teachers agree it's the conditions rather than the pay, that you are asking for a higher pay rise - do you not want a process to deliver better conditions?

Thank you to the majority of posters who are supportive.

Why do the minority think they are experts on being a teacher? Is it because they have been to school many years ago or have children in a school? I’ve been on a train several times but it doesn’t mean I know what it’s like being a train driver.

Yes, other jobs are hard but it’s not a competition. Schools are incredibly tough places to work at the minute. I’ve read some accurate descriptions here of what it is actually like. Our children deserve better, and as a country, we should be up in arms about the state of education and how it is shockingly underfunded . All parents should be contacting their MPs about their experiences- we should all be working together.

Always used to say it was workload not money that is the issue but not anymore. With the huge rise in my mortgage, childcare bill, shopping , bills etc, I’m afraid it is pay that is causing me and other teacher I know to rethink if we can afford to do the job.

This is why there is a problem recruiting teachers- the never ending bad press the job gets, and the never ending bad publicity from teachers themselves.

Young people aren’t going to get as far as looking into the intricacies of pay raises and inflation- they are going to know that it’s a shit show where you will be working with horrible kids who have horrible parents and all your colleagues and the atmosphere will be soul destroying.

Teachers should have pay increases in line with inflation (as should all public services), but they will never be paid enough to entice kids into a job where everything is shit all the time, where everyone hates you and you hate everyone.

never ending bad publicity from teachers themselves

I wouldn’t call it ‘bad publicity’-that makes it sound like teachers are saying stuff that isn’t true.

I think telling people exactly what the job entails, is important-people should know. I wouldn’t want my kids (or anyone else) to decide to go into teaching then get 4 months into the training and be aghast that nobody had told them what the reality of the job was like.

No, I’m not saying teachers shouldn’t share their experiences, or that what they say isn’t necessarily true- I’m just saying that when no one has anything good to say about it then it’s never going to be an enticing career choice unless the pay becomes an awful lot higher, which it won’t.

No, that’s true. I do think a lot could be done about workload though. But again, it would take money which apparently there is none of, except when it comes to buying shit PPE or Rwanda.

https://hwrkmagazine.co.uk/the-retention-of-older-women-in-teaching/

This is an interesting read-going back to the previous poster who claimed that her school was staffed by 50% of people without a degree (meaning they were in their 60s). I find that quite difficult to believe-this article sums up the experiences of large numbers of colleagues and friends.

Sorry to quote my own post, but I would be interested to know if any serving teachers (or escapees) agree with my points.

What could actually be done to reduce workload?

If I was in charge of the primary education system for a day I would:

Ban all primary homework apart from reading. Give free access to a maths app like Maths Factor and loan devices to those who might need them.

Take down almost all classroom display boards in primary, leaving just one per classroom. Better to have one board that is fresh and meaningful for the children, than 6-8 boards that the teacher struggles to maintain.

Remove subject-specific comments from pupil reports in primary. The only text should be a paragraph about behaviour and attitude towards learning. A grade that corresponds to a statement should be more than sufficient.

Consider far greater use of workbooks in primary, especially for foundation subjects. No, they don’t meet all needs but used intelligently they can go a long way towards meeting the needs of a core group of pupils.

Actually, de-emphasise the foundation subjects altogether. Maths, English and Science, plus a cross-curricular topic, is ample for a class of primary children.

Might come back with more!

I agree with all of those. I don’t think you need to teach every subject every week. If you are doing a science topic for a half term-then does it matter if six year olds don’t do any history for a whole 6 weeks?

Workbooks or textbooks (or free QCA SOW!) would be a good idea. You would need to ensure that the curriculum doesn’t change every ten minutes though. Same for a free widely available evidenced based phonics scheme. We could call it Sounds and Letters, or something along those lines.

Remove the need for learning objectives or deep marking for children unable to read them. objectives can go on the planning, but the children can just have a heading saying ‘story writing’.

Cull 1/3 of content off the primary curriculum-there’s too much, there’s not enough time to consolidate and children feel stressed and don’t enjoy learning. Bring back happiness and a love of learning. Then do some studies to see if there is less EBSA.

Remove the need for ‘evidence’ in books which entails teachers taking photos, printing photos, cutting out photos and sticking them into books, with a learning objective and a Comment. I know some heads are sensible and don’t expect this, but many others will until someone from Ofsted actually spells out, ‘we don’t want to see this in children’s books and if we do, we will think you don’t care about teacher workload, don’t trust your teachers and will mark you down accordingly’

PPA at home. I know lots of schools do that-many don’t. Schools near me use TAs to cover the PPA and expect the teacher to return at the end of the day to see the children out in the hope that they might not realise the my were taught be a TA for the afternoon. This means PPA can’t be done at home.

I’d scrap the phonics screener and government baseline as well. Obviously we wouldn’t stop teaching phonics-we never have but Nick Gibb claimed it would eradicate illiteracy. Has it? Or has it just made a whole generation of kids hate reading?

Obviously things like more PPA but that needs a fuck tonne of cash. And huge reforms in Ofsted.

A lot of these things have been addressed already, in my school, @AnonyLonnymouse

Ban all primary homework apart from reading. Give free access to a maths app like Maths Factor and loan devices to those who might need them.

Home work is reading, Maths and Spelling - I actually like Maths HW in Yr 5 because it is deliberate practice for the children. It also helps the parents see where the issues are.

Take down almost all classroom display boards in primary, leaving just one per classroom. Better to have one board that is fresh and meaningful for the children, than 6-8 boards that the teacher struggles to maintain.

I have 2 display boards, backed in white according to school policy. 1 has art work done in Sept which stays up all year. 1 is RE and is changed termly - faith school. The Maths and English boards are whiteboards and used as working walls.

Remove subject-specific comments from pupil reports in primary. The only text should be a paragraph about behaviour and attitude towards learning. A grade that corresponds to a statement should be more than sufficient.

We now only comment on Maths, English, RE and Personal Development. It takes less time than previous formats but is still far too onerous, especially as we have to do parent meetings as well a week or so later.

Consider far greater use of workbooks in primary, especially for foundation subjects. No, they don’t meet all needs but used intelligently they can go a long way towards meeting the needs of a core group of pupils.

We have workbooks in Maths. We use 'Maths No Problem' which is massively expensive and confusing for the children. I hate it. I much prefer 'White Rose'.

Actually, de-emphasise the foundation subjects altogether. Maths, English and Science, plus a cross-curricular topic, is ample for a class of primary children.

I DEFINITELY agree with this.

My recommendations:

Get rid of Medium Term Plans. Take forever to write and only used to check up on us - look in the damn books.

Specialists for PE and Music.

No MFL in Primary.

Schools or units for children with autism who are academically able but can't cope with large class sizes, social interaction etc...

More autonomy for teachers. Why does everything have to be 'consistent'? Every ounce of flair has been beaten out of me over the last 5 years.

Many, many, many more Ed Psychs.

Alternative provision for those children who can't read and write (and there are many such children despite many hours of intervention over several years) to improve their self esteem, keep them out of trouble and utilise the skills and gifts they do have.

More PPA.

A GTA for every class as well as 1:1 for those children with SEND/SEMH.

Go back to advisors rather than OFSTED.

More autonomy for teachers. Why does everything have to be 'consistent'? Every ounce of flair has been beaten out of me over the last 5 years.

I so agree with this! I worked for a head who wanted to observe across year groups and see exactly the same lesson being taught in the same way, with the exact same words at the same time in each classroom-it’s just so unnecessary! As long as the children are happy and engaged and learn the information/skill, does it matter if it wasn’t done exactly the same way as Mrs X next door?

More PPA.
A GTA for every class as well as 1:1 for those children with SEND/SEMH.
Go back to advisors rather than OFSTED.

I think if you did these three things, it’s quite possible that hundreds of the teachers who left would consider coming back!

The pay issue-as in experienced teachers are not wanted/valued as the school has to manage its own budget and needs to keep the wage bills down-is a huge issue though. If pay was centralised (as I’m sure it used to be) so it didn’t matter if you had loads of experienced teachers, then that would have a hugely beneficial impact. There seems to be hardly any classroom teachers over 50 left in primary!

I diagree with no MfL in primaries. British people are so far behind many other nations when it comes to learning languages it's laughable. If anything, that time should be increased - BUT more specialists need to be trained for this and MfL should be taught exclusively by MfL specialists. Yes, I know you cannot even recruit them for secondaries at the moment.

One thing I noticed, by the way, looking over my current and future contracts:

Sick pay has been massively eroded by MATs and the academy system.
In a maintained school, it was 6 months full pay, then 6 months half pay. Hugely helped a colleague who was going through cancer treatment.

Neither of my contracts come anywhere near this, and both are staggered by years of service, too. Even on the highest allowance after 5+ years of service, they don't pay that much. I know that people used to take the piss, but it is now way easier to deal with that through other means looking at you, Bradford score and threat of disciplinaries as a result, for genuinely ill people.

We've had lots of secondary teachers move to FE - taking a pay cut in the process. They think it's going to be a breeze compared to school but are faced with less money, longer hours and less holidays.

The behaviour is awful and there are no sanctions. Can't see us getting a payrise next year either. I'm 20 years in, looking to get out this year.

I don't think teaching is badly paid but I do think it's a horrific job these days and teachers bear the brunt of awful behaviour / parents / severe unmanageable SEN. I would prefer to see this sorted out - smaller class sizes and more in-classroom support for a staff - than just a pay rise. I'm strongly against teachers striking but take the point that recent governments aren't helping.

I do recall several poster stating clearly last year that if we accept the deal being offered would would be back here next year. Correct!

'posters'

It was openly acknowledged by the NEU. Their view last year was that we should accept the 6.5%, pocket the win because there was no way we were going to get any more than that, and that we should then gear up for another campaign this year.