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

Minimum wage is £10.50/hr
X 55hrs a week is over £30k

It's more than new teachers get, and they're often doing 70hr weeks.

Now clearly it relies on 55hrs a week being available but gives an idea of teacher's hourly rates.

£25k at 55hrs a week (so under average hours for an ECT) is £8.74/HR.

It's a bit shit in 2022. I got £21k in 2004 as a new teacher!!!

Teachers initial pay looks comparable to many other graduates for newly qualified teachers. But compare it to many other graduate professions five or ten years down the line ( ignoring for a moment the unbelievably huge drop out rate in the first five years of teaching) and it doesn’t look nearly so good. Limited ability for progression especially in smaller schools, additional pay increments earned by experience and training are not portable, no bonus schemes, no perks like medical insurance as in many other professions, little funding support for additional training . The pension scheme isn’t what it was either!

1)Teachers pay and conditions need a huge radical overhaul.

2)Retention rates need immediate investigation.

I wonder if the two are in any way related!

Those suggesting ‘work to rule’ are not familiar with teacher contracts. Here’s the bit in our Terms and Conditions that make refusing to do tasks a possible disciplinary matter, and therefore make ‘work to rule’ have extremely limited impact unless you want to risk your job:

51.7. In addition to the hours a teacher is required to be available for work under paragraph 51.5 or 51.6, a teacher must work such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher’s professional duties, including in particular planning and preparing courses and lessons; and assessing, monitoring, recording and reporting on the learning needs, progress and achievements of assigned pupils.

Teachers get paid a rubbish salary for the hours worked. I am a supply teacher now and often get asked if I would stay at the school or am I looking for a permanent job - NO! No way do I want to go back to the shitty hours, endless marking, constant bitching from strangers about how I swan around an have endless fucking holidays. My pay is okay as I work in the private sector, but I don’t get any holiday pay. I get inflation but if teachers were paid for the actual hours they worked we would all be able to live above the threshold. On the point of the imaginary army. I am inundated with work and schools are often saying to me they booked me ages ago to get me as they cannot get supply staff.

That’s the difference between a salaried and paid per hour role. A salary is paid with the expectation that it covers any and all hours required to do the role within loosely defined parameters, pay per hour covers the tasks required.

It has historically worked quite well but there are a lot of roles now that have the expectation of the work ethic of stock brokers for a retail wage.

Army of supply teachers!!

I left teaching as could not be a good parent and a good teacher, the workload and pressure was huge, nothing was good enough. My inbox is full of agencies with jobs they are trying to fill (and taking a huge chunk of money off schools which is not passed on to the teacher). No I won't supply, I support children who are not in school. There is a huge rise in children not in school - they can't be supported in school, they are being failed.

So we have teachers leaving, 1 in 8 leaves in their 1st year, older teachers are pushed out as too expensive and experience doesn't seem to matter. We have children whose needs are not being met in school; teachers and children are not being supported. The education system is on its knees and the minister wants 100% attendance come September, with not enough teachers to actually educate our children. All this whilst he sends his children to private school - he doesn't have a clue.

Our teachers need to be better respected, in both pay and conditions.

People saying that they are worried about the future of education really should be worried about the current state of education.

So many children won’t have a qualified teacher next year.

True!

Maybe regard it as a badge of honour, or some sort of recognition that your work is important OP. They wouldn't bother saying anything if it was nail technicians or double glazing salesmen taking industrial action.

So many children may not have a school next year, because there won’t be people to staff them.

Train drivers aren't striking

I work to rule. It’s the only way my meagre salary feels fair.

It really feels like more wide spread strikes are coming. In the case of teaching striking could well result in an increased pay package, and deservedly so but realistically even increasing the basic pay to £30,000 a year and top end to, say, £48,000 is unlikely to do anything about recruitment and retention in the short to mid-term and hence the spiralling of more and more leaving. Even recruiting TAs to cover classes will not be possible in sufficient numbers.

Serious question - does the government think we should be educating our kids at home rather than school? Although I don't agree with it, I can kind of see the pathway for abolishing the NHS and let private providers sweep in, but schools aren't the same, are they? Lets ensure we make the (mostly) women stay at home again to educate the kids 🤔

There are no supply teachers!

As a working parent I would actually support teachers wanting to strike. It would be a huge inconvenience to me but they simply aren't paid enough at the moment. I want my kids taught by good teachers and good teachers cost money. If you want monkeys pay peanuts.

@noblegiraffe I understand what you are saying and actually think that paragraph is outrageous! Is there a definition of what is stated? Surely one persons 'effective discharge' of duties is different to someone elses? What is the measure?

The problem is that I do think finding something other than striking is the way to go. The poster who said teachers don't like doing things that disrupt the children is all very well but unless you are going to do that it won't be effective will it! Surely the objective is to minimise what the children see as disruptive ie.a child might be upset if they can't go to school because their teacher is on strike but won't be upset if the tasks and lessons plans are quite as well thought through and delivered!

That's the issue @Noisyprat , there is no measure! It can be for anything and any amount of time.

Also about changes to the pension scheme, which will lead to staff working 3 years longer and getting a smaller pension, and job cuts, including to station staff and guards.

Station staff and guards are important for the safety of travellers imo. I would hate to have to get off a train at an unstaffed station late at night.

I heard on the radio about this 'Army of supply teachers' and had to apply a LOT of bladder control.

I don't have the words for this idiot!!!

Apparently the Govt are planning on replacing the RMT staff with agency staff too.

Where are all these qualified people coming from?!!

What's the upside to being a teacher? Genuine question. Because I've been reading about how awful the teaching profession is for the last 20+ years yet still people choose it as a career, knowing all this.

The kids.

You don't speak for the whole of the general public @Noisyprat .

Teachers will certainly have my full support should they take industrial action, as do the railway staff currently striking on certain days. And if paramedics, firemen, local government staff and any other public servants do the same, they will have my full support too.

The public sector has been shafted by 10 years of austerity, as have the general public. Our public services are in a dire state, they need better funding and decent wages to attract good staff.

Bwahaha, I like this.

Don't strike - instead, tell the government that every lesson from now on will be tailored to teaching the pupils how awful the Tories and their policies are.

The key word there is "reasonable". Surely any half-decent lawyer could make a case for anything above 48 hours being unreasonable.

Being a teacher is still a pretty cushy number though. All those holidays off for starters and shorter hours. Pay may not be great but I’m just saying there are compensations.

Further to my previous post, where average hours mount so high that you would be pushed under the minimum wage, again a school disciplining you for refusing to cross that line would be on shaky legal ground.