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.

I think you meant to say non-striking teachers cannot be asked to cover striking teachers? Not vice versa!

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.

I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here. Teachers work term time because that’s when schools are open - they can’t tell their employer they’d like to work all year round and be paid accordingly. An ASDA worker can chose to vary their hours according to their circumstances - lower their hours to accommodate caring responsibilities etc, teachers are limited in how far they can do that.

Of course many/most professions work additional unpaid hours, but my sense is it’s the cumulative effect of reduction in resources (teaching resources, support, increased work load, working hours, salary) that has brought us here, but the only thing workers can really strike over is pay. And that’s what they are doing.

My salary right now is £25k (I am temporarily part-time since I had to come back from Mat leave when my son was only 8 months old for financial reasons)

Typically, I arrive at work at 8am, and I leave around 6pm, unless I have parents night etc, in which case I can be there until 9pm or even later (typically once every 6 weeks)

I also check my emails and do maybe 1-2 hours prep work on my non working days.

I also do marking in the evening as required (I try to only do this once per week)

Id say I average 30-35 hours a week.

Last month I took home £1250.

A warehouse worker in Asda gets 11.92 ph, so if I go by my lower estimated hours, approx £1430 per 4 weeks for the 30h I work, so approx £18.5k salary (based on 13 pays per year for four weekly pay)

Including 5% pensions, someone on this salary would take home £1241 per four week.

Not to mention that I’d also get universal credit towards childcare costs (based on our figures and my Asda salary I’d get £90/week towards childcare costs)

Also, if I had known this 10 years ago I’d not have bothered with uni and the associated £16k debt I now have hanging over me.

@Roseberry1 - teacher contracts are funny old things. You are focused on the directed time bit, but not the undirected time bit of their contracts. I find it helps to think of it more as an annualised hour type arrangement. I have a proper term time only contact, and its a very different set of trrms and conditions that work in a different way.

I know.

Yes, that's what I was saying. Teachers aren't going to accept shit pay and shit working conditions. There doesn't look like there will be any improvement in conditions sadly, so they will have to get paid more.

What is your issue?! You're determined to imply we work part-time and are lazy for having 6 weeks off in summer. It's our terms and conditions. My cousin is a firefighter, have you looked at their holidays and rest days- they're very generous. My brother retired from the police on a huge pension for the rest of his life at the age of 53. My friend works in IT projects, she's often on gardening leave on full pay for 3 months at a time. Are you getting your foot into these professions?

You still haven't given the examples of graduate jobs that pay less than £25k .

English schools wouldn't be able to staff their maths departments if every maths teacher had to have a maths degree. Or their science departments. Especially if you started insisting everyone who taught physics had a physics degree.

Most MFL teachers are expected to "offer" two languages too, and some have no qualifications in their "second" language- this may not be as bad as it sounds, e.g. I know someone who teaches French and Spanish, her degree is in French and she lived in South America for years, but she has no formal qualifications in Spanish.

Equally, I know someone who is qualified as an English teacher, but is teaching mainly KS3 science this year- with no relevant qualifications or expertise. And PE teachers teaching maths. Because the schools can't hire anyone more qualified.

When I refer to full-time in my posts, I am referring to someone on a 52-week contract with however much holiday, usually in the region of 6 weeks per year, give or take. Teachers are mostly part-time as in term time or pro rata, so their pay is pro rata and not considered full-time in payroll. That's not to say they are slacking off at 3 pm mowing the lawn. They work very hard and work a full day. But for the pay, they don't do badly considering its term time considering a full-time time worker is often earning the same years into their job.

The whole education system is in disarray. My primary school child has a mix of supply and different teachers at their school, there is no consistency, my secondary school child has had a subject removed from the curriculum until the end of the year because they don’t have teachers to cover that specific subject and my other child at Sixth Form often has lessons cancelled and one teacher is on and off long-term sick.

Yes. Because missing a day when the entire school is closed is exactly the same as missing a week of learning.

Hope my kids school strikes.
Every tax payer should pay an extra £100 a year to fund education so we can have a world leading education system.

There'll be no teachers left to teach your children if things keep going the way they are. It's 2 days. My husband is reluctantly planning to get out, he's a science teacher. Two people have completely left the profession since Sept in his department. My friend left teaching 3/4 years ago, she was the top of the payscale for normal teachers on about 38k, she was killing herself with the long hours, spent weekends working, basically had no life (much like my husband). She retrained and has a job in technology and is on 60k, plus a bonus, 9-5, mon-fri, working from home. She has her life back and is much better off. My husband is looking into doing the same.

Something needs to change, not just the pay, they are losing so many brilliant teachers, this can't carry on.

Given everything you are saying, why do you think there is a massive shortage of teachers then? Why do so many teachers quit within 5 or 10 years of qualifying- including those who have worked in other industries, even in the private sector?

Regardless of whether you think the wage is fair or not, we're not attracting enough qualified people to the profession, so what is your solution?

Another issue with pay is that you can't just look at the starting salary. You have to look at what alternative sectors with similar qualification levels are paying 10 years down the line. If your starting salaries are similar but other sectors have much better pay progression then that also makes teaching uncompetitive.

Could it be that many of them have looked ahead and realised that while their first year salary is£25,000, their salary takes a huge jump when they take their second job a couple of years later and negotiate a £10,000+ increase and private medical insurance, then a few years after that another career move, and another , which pushes their salary to the point that no classroom teacher could ever emulate? These days if teachers move schools they have to negotiate hard to retain the salary increases they have earned through experience and further training, it isn’t automatic that they will transfer salary levels from one school to another.

Starting salaries for graduates can be very deceptive and don’t tell the full story.

There won't be any work set. Teachers will be withdrawing their labour to strike.

Patiently waiting for @Roseberry1‘s list of level 7 qualified professionals who earn less than teachers.

I'd chase the £42 billion in unpaid tax first.

Imagine how far that would go for health, social care, the NHS- we could even start funding things like libraries and leisure centres again.

Have you considered applying?

@Meredusoleil I think teachers can be asked to cover striking colleagues but cannot be forced to actually do it.

This is absolutely, bloody tragic. Why shouldn't we be demanding that a physics teacher has a degree in physics? We need the depth and breadth of knowledge a degree brings if we're to fully inspire young people.

I know conditions South of the border have been shit for years. It's coking to us too, but our unions are traditionally strong here and I hope that can stave off the dilution of skills you've seen.

For the people carrying on about the wonderful salary. I’ve been teaching for 15 years and am on £38k. Make of that what you will.

Think our kids have already suffered enough...

You have to survive the first few years though- £25k doesn't go very far in some parts of the country. A lot of ECTs these days opt out of pension contributions so they can pay their rent...