Govt declares war on teachers again. Fucksake.

[noblegiraffe]

The Telegraph front page tomorrow is reporting that the DfE is preparing an 'army of supply teachers' to keep schools open in the event of a teacher strike.

Is that like the army of volunteers they failed to raise to keep schools open during the covid surge in January?

Changing the law to allow agency staff to cover for striking colleagues is a shitty move, an opportunity I can't imagine agency staff in general would be leaping at; but using it as some sort of trump card against teachers?

1. supply teachers would most likely be in a teaching union (they'd be mad if not)

2. WE CAN'T GET SUPPLY TEACHERS NOW BECAUSE THERE'S A CRITICAL SHORTAGE OF TEACHERS

If they've got an army of supply teachers, where are they fucking hiding them?

If the government think children have 'suffered enough' during the pandemic then:

1. fund schools properly

2. stop haemorrhaging teachers by e.g. not treating them like shit in the national press

3. improve working conditions and reduce workload by e.g. funding children's services like CAMHS, SEN services, social services so that schools aren't picking up ALL the slack.

That would improve the situation far more for children than shitty headlines in the Telegraph deliberately antagonising the few teachers the country has left.

twitter.com/samfr/status/1539717032043859968?s=21&t=uLvLET4xftQW31sTEKBaLg

If the teaching unions had any power, we wouldn't have had nothing but pay cuts for the last decade.

Unions only have power when their members are willing to take a stand. For too long teachers (and nurses, and others) have given in to guilt trips about how much their students/patients/etc rely on them. At some point we need to say enough is enough and stand up for ourselves. We also need to recognise that as long as the profession is so shit we cannot recruit or retain sufficient staff the kids we teach will suffer.

And if the education secretary thinks there is an army of supply teachers willing to fill in for those on strike he will be in for a very rude awakening.

Unions only have power when their members are willing to take a stand.

I think that idea was comprehensively disproved when teachers went on strike in 2011, nothing changed and we got slaughtered in the media.

Since then teachers have been quitting rather than taking a stand, because that's the only thing that materially changes anything for them (as individuals).

Obviously that means that we are now critically short of teachers.

I see Nadim has graced us with his presence.

I'm a union rep in my school. Colleagues depressingly regularly come to ask me about issues which I could and would take up on their behalf. Most of the time, when I ask "would you like me to discuss that with the head on your behalf?", they say no.

Such an ignorant view. The ones who didn't listen at school are so easy to spot.

It doesn't matter whether people think teaching is a cushy number or not, the fact is that cushy or not, people don't want to do it.

And so kids are being left without teachers.

I was listening to a sixth former the other day talk about how their A-level exam had gone badly, how they'd had no teacher for a lot of the course and were left to teach themselves and how they were worried about their university place.

It's heartbreaking to hear this stuff.

Well I’m guessing you have absolutely no idea what a teacher does daily, which is outside actually teaching

My local Aldi are advertising for full time staff. Wage £10.10 rising to £11/hr once established. That’s £20,000 a year for a 38 hour week, with scope to earn more with extra shifts.

£25,000 starting salary for a teacher is a pittance and may have been acceptable 15 years ago, but definitely isn’t today.

Boots announced an 11% pay rise for their newly qualified pharmacists this week - starting salary is £42,000 now. Ok, not quite comparable to a teacher as more years training and probably more risk if things go wrong. Boots are not the best employer for pharmacists and are often putting profits ahead of service, but even they can pay a decent wage for a skilled graduate. It is still more than a teacher with 10+ years experience. Pharmacists would work a 50 hour week in that job and high stress with the volume of work, so comparable in one sense.

Can I ask how the Government is going to pay for this army of teachers? Because I don’t know of any schools locally who can afford supply anymore, that’s even assuming they can find any.

They have to spend that surplus saved by Brexit somehow.

They have to spend that surplus saved by Brexit somehow

just spat my time out over that one!

we have our humour….hanging on by the fingernails!

I’ve just had a safe guarding course and first aid course cancelled because the school cannot get agency in to cover me!

They’ll probably draw them from the massive pool of volunteers they were going to round up to run schools during covid. (Did that ever get into double figures?)

The upside is the kids. Actually teaching them. Seeing them learn and develop and grow as little people.

The downside is how all your time, drive, energy and enthusiasm to teach those kids is consistently hindered, undermined and sabotaged by: Government (do even parents believe that knowing grammatical terminology is more important than reading and writing with joy and meaning?), Heads (every new head is a new broom, let's do it all differently - colour coded marking dialogue with every child for every lesson anyone?), SLT (all asking for endless evidence for their assessment portfolios), backstabbing colleagues trying to show they can meet the demands of the Head and SLT better than you can and, occasionally, parents who don't appreciate that a teensy bit of time actually supporting their children with homework would benefit them a lot more than coming in to complain that it's too hard, or too easy, or not personalised enough.

This is why a work to rule would be better, because it avoids the disruption to parents and keeps them onside.

Remember the value of collective action. If one person tries working to rule and refuses to continue marking late into the evening or on weekends, a headteacher may try to discipline them. If on the other hand half of the teachers in the school do it, the head can't feasibly discipline all of them otherwise the school will be severely understaffed, but they wouldn't be allowed to make an example of just one individual because that would be victimisation.

If it came to court, you end up with a legal argument over what constitutes "reasonable additional hours", which I'm confident that 70 hours week-in, week-out would not be in the eyes of any sensible tribunal judge.

PAHAHAHA
Shorter hours than what?
Do you think teachers only work when the children are in the class?
When do you imagine everything else gets done - planning, organising resources, marking, reports, meetings, etc etc.
If you think TA's do all the photocopying and putting displays up too you're wrong.

This is why a work to rule would be better, because it avoids the disruption to parents and keeps them onside.

How exactly would refusing to work late into the night influence a national pay dispute?

My department has a sensible marking policy, I don't spend hours doing pointless marking. If a different school wants to take action to dispute their school's marking policy, more power to their elbow.

However, local action can only affect local issues. The teaching profession is in crisis so any action to address that would need to be taken nationally, and be disruptive so that the government can't just ignore it.

That said, teachers haven't been balloted yet.

I'm not sure people understand the point of industrial action if they think that avoiding disruption is a key target to be met.

Part of the issue are those that can't see beyond their own children's time at school and don't think long term.
The conditions in schools at the moment don't jut affect your children but will affect every child after them if its not sorted.

Oh, I have just seen the proposal that primary colleagues get paid less than secondary colleagues because there are fewer recruitment issues in primary.

That will go down well with my primary colleagues who generally work longer hours than secondary and with a wider range of pupil needs.

schoolsweek.co.uk/teaching-pay-vacancies-recruitment-problems/

@DontBlameMe79 as always, please come and join the profession. We need fresh blood. There will definitely be places on a training course near you. You’ve established that it’s a dead easy job, completely family friendly with those short hours, so what are you waiting for?

If you have a relevant degree, you’ll be qualified in a year and accessing that huge £25k.

I have just seen the proposal that primary colleagues get paid less than secondary colleagues because there are fewer recruitment issues in primary.

FGS. I've taught both and was more exhausted in primary.

I trained to be a primary school teacher. I never handed in my dissertation. By the fourth year I was fucking exhausted and nearly in tears at the prospect of not having a life. Some days working all day teaching and then starting up until 1am to sort out things for the next day to then be up again at 6.

Needless to say I've never qualified and I do feel for the teachers in England they have a shitty time of it.

That really made me laugh 🤣

What?
That's utterly ridiculous.
(And I was secondary).