Does anyone NOT support teachers’ strikes?

[Notbeinggoadybut]

I’ve got mixed views. Support that they, as all public sector workers, need a pay rise. And schools need more funding (but the NEU hasn’t badged this as a public reason which is a mistake IMP).

But 12% is a lot when you’re on a £40k salary. The TA’s deserve 12%, the nurses and ambulance drivers with dire conditions and worse salaries deserve 12%. But not from a starting salary of £40k.

Also public services can be dire. I work in one, it can be bordering on a joke and in so many ways such a waste of money. I will be striking on the 1st of February. But I don’t think it’s right - I voted against the strike. I want a pay rise, but don’t feel like it’s right to ask for 10% and strike if I don’t get it.

Has Ofsted really improved the quality of education in schools over the years?

No

Nobody at my school took a payrise this year through moving up the scale other that those starting their second year. We were told about redundancies and as a staff we met and agreed to do it to save someone’s job, in addition the class sizes would have increased further as a result of redundancies.

So what happens when nobody wants to train to be teachers? It's all very well to say don't be a teacher if you want decent pay, but somebody need to teach in schools, and the calibre of graduates choosing teaching will decline unless it's made more desirable.

@donttellmehesalive she’s not overly happy, but her teacher mainly thinks she’s naughty. My DB is trying to sort out an EHCP but they are claiming she doesn’t need one. Anyway that’s another thread and not one for me to set up on behalf of my DB and DN nor to do with the strikes! I was just particularly impressed with the description the PP laid out of the adjustments made in her class. Hopefully those students she teaches with ALN are reaching their potential.

The holidays that people bang on about are not flexible

Most people with dc have to take holiday outside of term time.

Holidays cost twice as much and you can't get a day off to watch your own child at sports day, nativity etc. I'm not paid if I go to a hospital appointment as have to take time off unpaid. So yes I get a lot of annual leave but it's not all it's cracked up to be!

This is very dependent on the school, ime days off for sports day are normal & medical appointments are paid. It's not a blanket rule.

No, Ofsted are not fit for purpose

Well more fool you for answering "stupid" questions.

Explaining is what I do :)

"No I don't imagine your job has changed but I can imagine you have more paperwork and stress is all."

Twenty years ago we had better discipline, supportive parents and no Ofsted. I'd swap a pay rise to have those three things again.

No, more fool you for asking them

Workload, stresses, and expectations have changed enormously when I qualified over 25 years ago. Whatever you thought of Blair, he did prioritise funding of education, and his government rectified some of the damage wrought by successive Tory governments.

We've now had over a decade of increasingly stringent real-terms budget cuts. Teachers have been buying classroom supplies and books for many years, and we just can't afford to keep doing this. Pay settlements promised by governments haven't been funded, so essential provision for children has been cut . It's never been this bad. We're striking for funded pay settlements.

OFSTED inspections were new when I started teaching. They have become increasingly draconian, and are now the tail that wags the dog.

I have taken a step back from management and am on the lowest rung of the Upper Pay Scale (finished my PGCE in 1987). This month for teaching 4 days a week (I work bloody hard and am good at my job) my pay slip says 1500 take home. If this is the case and my payslip/tax isn't wrong, I'm walking. Love teaching the children. I am currently (10pm) taking a mini break from ordering stationery for my class for the next term. All of my children earn much more than me and don't work so hard.

These strike could cost workers 100s of pounds in loss earnings in a month, money they most likely can't afford to lose.

In the end, teacher recruitment and retention is a huge problem - particularly in maths and science. The government has to make the profession attractive or schools will keep haemorrhaging teachers, and our children will have a terrible education. That means, in the long run, we'll have badly educated adults.

They start on £28K. Where have you pulled this number from?

She said that they are on 40k and that is the starting salary for the application of the 12% Payrise not that it was a teacher starting salary. I don’t know whether 40k is realistic or not but I think lots of people misinterpreted what she was saying.

I think I should have explained my comment better as it has annoyed a lot of people.

There should be nothing difficult about teaching at secondary-school level the syllabus content of a subject you love and that you’ve got a degree in, and have been trained to teach. Planning lessons, teaching, setting and marking homework/assessments should be enjoyable. And it shouldn’t be that hard, should it? Pretty much everything my daughter is learning at school is mapped out in a textbook or replicated in a lesson online. Since Covid lockdown started, I’ve been able to follow the national curriculum and teach the bits that were not fully covered in school.

So it must be the “rest of the stuff” that teachers are dealing with that’s causing them all the grief. Which I think other posters have mentioned - the requirement to divert et from core teaching to do admin, handle welfare issues amongst pupils, deal with unaddressed SEN and MH issues, make up for lack of funds being made available for essential supplies. And so on.

I fail to see how the strikes will address those problems as the government seems unlikely to find a big pot of money to address them. And if a better pay deal for teachers is struck, will the strikes be cancelled?

Because of it is “really all about conditions not pay” then the strikes should have started ages ago, and will go on for absolutely flipping ages. As this government isn’t going to find the cash to deal with the CAMHS backlog, 1:1 support for SEN, or a beefed-up pastoral support team in every school. Nor is it going to cut away the swathes of bureaucracy that weigh down the educational system. And so on.

Isn’t that what teachers do all day every day? I was once asked “miss, what do you do for a living?” by a 16 year old (who went on to be shocked and complain that I got paid to be there and he didn’t)

No, Ofsted are not fit for purpose

I agree

why don’t we let the people actually AT THE BOTTOM climb get their desserts first? The measly paid TAs, nurses, ambulance workers. I think that every Tom, Dick and Harry striking undermines theirs. Especially when some of those are on salaries of £40k

nurse starting salaries are c. £27k. Teacher starting salaries are c.£28k.
paramedic starting salaries seem to start at £33k (Google not particularly helpful with that one but I think that’s correct).

Teachers minimally have a degree, many start with a degree and post grad qualification. Many take Masters and even do PhDs bit this has no impact on the starting salary. TA’s need no qualifications whatsoever - whether their wage is a fair one, I don’t really know, but it does reflect the qualification level required (and yes, I k ow many TAs have degrees and more).

average teacher salaries in the UK, according to Google are c. £31k, paramedics £37k and nurses £33k.

Not much in it, as far as I can see. Why are people supporting nurses but not teachers?

I think what you need on here are the people who actually have to live with teachers. Especially the essay heavy ones.
Maybe we should get our kids (our real ones; the ones we talk to less than our school ones) to have their say. I barely see mine in term time and by weekends, I'm fucked.

The holidays are always one people like to jump on and ok, we have a lot. But plenty of other people in other jobs will admit to having a surprising amount of holidays AND higher pay. And some other public sector jobs get overtime and shift allowance. Wonder how many weekends I'm owed now?

My dh works for a private sector business, we work similarly hard although I do get more holiday that him. He earns 2.5 x what my full time salary would be after 22 years teaching. On top of that he gets a very generous car allowance and bonus payments. I'm obviously sorry for all the people who haven't been given pay rises and don't earn much but much but the reality is that my time and expertise (and that of many other hardworking people) should be worth a pay rise which is in line with inflation. I saw some comments the other day telling teachers not to complain because they earn more than people in Asda...ffs, it is not the same job. And op, why don't you try doing 5 hrs of presentations back to back, to room full of heckling teenagers and then sit down at the end of the day to complete all the work you usually do for your day job. Then you will have an idea of how demanding teaching is and why we do deserve a decent payrise.

I didn’t imagine it would be. I thought it would be like my job where you have to demonstrate you’ve met the threshold to go through to the next pay scale.

I'm literally asking you for an answer.

You spout "rumours and half truths", I'm interested in what exactly you're referring to.

I've worked at a number of schools, all use the m-grade payscale and all pay into TP - currently 27%.
I agree the m-grade progression stagnates after 6 years experience, however all grades receive inflationary increases - from memory 5% ish last year.

Lots of us are teaching non specialist subjects due to lack of staff. Who do you think makes the online lessons - we do