To be really worried about proposed teacher strikes.

[katedan]

In England not Scotland for context. My twin daughters are year 11 and I am terrified about the impact of teacher strikes on their GCSEs. They have not yet covered the curriculum and every day counts to get them exam ready so strike days will be disastrous for year 11 and 13 pupils ( and lots of other children especially those who are vulnerable) these kids have had their education impacted by covid and now strikes. This will make the divide between state and private schools even bigger. Do you think they will go ahead or if a safety net will be put around exam years if it does.

It's not 4 concurrent days. It's 4 days over a month or so.

Simply in terms of hourly salary. The amount I earned per hour as a qualified teacher was roughly £1 more than I would have earned at Asda for doing unskilled work. That’s once you factor in all the unpaid work I had to do as a teacher. And remember I had four years of not earning and student loans to pay off too.

Yes working in a supermarket is “another world” to teaching. That’s the point. Teaching is supposed to be a skilled profession. But currently it barely pays more per hour than Asda.

Jeeeezus - in secondary?!!

That shit needs to be on the front of the National papers - it's utterly scandalous!!

I'm curious, will there be an expectation of online learning? Who sets this work?

Can we have some examples of these jobs please? Ones requiring a level 7 postgraduate qualification, obviously, so we know we are comparing like with like.

For all the people who think teachers get such a great deal, why not come and join us? If you have the right degree, then you even get paid to train (in some cases a lot of money).

But there's a national shortage of teachers. In a free market economy, that means you either have to pay teachers more money, or accept less good provision for students long term (meaning things like larger class sizes, less time with subject specialists- perhaps no time at all in KS3, long periods of cover etc.)

If people want a decent education for their kids, then teachers need decent pay and working conditions- it really is that simple. The salary has to be competitive for all grads, including maths, science etc.

Otherwise, it'll be far more than 4 days lost teaching (it already is for a lot of students).

Be prepared for weeks/months of industrial action..... Sunak hasn't lifted a finger for the train drivers, nurses or para medics and he wont for teachers either.

It'll be militant leftie unions and hang on until current mandates expire... he 'll have his anti strike laws in place, inflation may well be 5 or 6% and he will then pretend prices are falling and a 3 or 4% pay rise is "reasonable"

It's very common nowadays for employees across many sectors to be working on after shift unpaid. It's not right of course! But it's hardly something unique to teaching.

In the real world, plenty of hard-working, qualified people are working in stressful full-time positions where they don't get 13 weeks to recover from their shit stressful jobs, and they are earning £25 k too, but that's not a term time salary in their starting year.

Why aren't they all queuing up to be teachers?

Are you saying you don’t think teachers work full time? A lot of your posts seem to imply that you think teaching is a part time job, with part time hours during term time, knocking off at half past three in time to get home and mow the lawn, and long lazy paid holidays.

Teachers in full time teaching posts often work 60 + hours a week, well over the Working Time Directive. Not all, admittedly, but most will be working 40 to 50hours. There are guidelines for the number of “directed” hours , ie directed by the HT that full time teachers have to work. (Most work more.) These are the hours that teachers are actually paid for.

Teachers ,like all workers , are entitled to statutory holiday pay. Any additional time ie when schools are closed for holiday breaks, are not technically paid for, since pay is taken up by directed hours. For administrative purposes a teachers salary is divided into 12 payments, so although it then looks as though August is a paid holiday month (whoopee!) it has actually been “earned”. Many of the people who call for shorter school holidays and longer school days fail to realise that this would probably bankrupt the country in weeks once the extra pay for teachers, TAs, admin staff, caretaking staff, catering staff and cleaning staff was taken into account , not to mention increased heating, lighting and other utilities, increased spending on consumables, loss of income from lettings, wear and tear on buildings and furniture and fittings ……………

Teaching pay and conditions have been negotiated over many years and are contained in The Burgundy Book. It’s a riveting read.

Workload has increased massively so that’s no longer a carrot. Teachers used to accept lower salary than other professionals in exchange for favourable hours. Now they no longer have favourable hours so why should they continue to accept a lower salary? In fact they work LONGER hours than other professionals now, for less money.

My son was out of school 3 yrs due to a panic and and anxiety disorder, he still passed all his exams and got the highest grades, teenagers are more than capable of self studying from home, no tutors, or online school needed, all of the relevant information is free online. The world has moved on.

I see you're not replying to anyone making real points in response to you, just pushing on with your biased agenda.

These graduates you speak of would not have the opportunity of attending university if it wasn't for teachers. We train for years, have huge skills and experience and absolutely knock our pan in, only to be derided by people like you. It makes me so fucking angry.

I'm definitely applying for that train driver job- my BIL says it's a piece of piss and sits on his £55,000 salary happy as Larry.

In the past the teachers and support staff still go in without the children and do admin tasks

No they don’t. I was on the picket line.

As for all the comparisons with Asda. A teacher is (still) a degree profession which takes 4 years at university.

This!

Are you comparing that to a part-time worker in Asda? Sorry, I know teachers don't work part-time, but they do work term time, whereas an Asda worker is unlikely to be term time.

Regardless of whether you think the salary is too low, if people aren’t prepared to do the job for that pay, it IS too low.

I read that it will be 4 days max per school,my daughter had her GCSEs last year after missing months of school in lockdown and still did brilliantly,it will be fine 🙂

Teachers on strike are not required to set cover work, and nor are they required to mark any work completed whilst they are on strike.

Teachers also cannot be asked to cover non-striking colleagues, so in the event of a strike, it should not be a case of e.g. the one NASUWT teacher in the department teaching all classes via teams.

In some departments, all teachers are members of the same union, so there would be no-one available to do this, anyway. And of course some departments e.g. drama/music can be just one or two teachers.

Teachers do not have to declare their intention to strike before the day of the strike, and heads do not necessarily know which teachers are in which union (and teachers can be a member of both, too), so this would also be very difficult to co-ordinate.

Thank God I teach in Scotland. It's also a shit show here but at least teachers need a degree in their subject. That C at A level Maths teacher is a tragedy.

Thanks, I just watched a head interviewed on BBC news comparing strike days to covid learning- didn't seem right given how much work went into digital learning.

It's very common nowadays for employees across many sectors to be working on after shift unpaid. It's not right of course! But it's hardly something unique to teaching

No it isn't, examples please or your just making stuff up.

As with nursing... doesn't matter what you think, teachers are voting with their feet and leaving.

My sis was teacher, went PT as it was so stressful but all it meant was she was doing 40hrs per week instead of 60+ for half the wage... retired early.... would never return.

They tried ‘work to rule’ a while ago. It was pointless. All that did was harm the children. If you don’t mark/plan/assess in your own time then it won’t happen. And who is put out by that? Just the children.

Will the strikes apply to special schools?

Fuck me. You won’t make many friends with that attitude.