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.

Loads of fucked up psychology around teachers and schools in general!

A fair number of people seem to really want teachers to simultaneously fuck off and also to stay and teach their kids

Except my pay has fallen 13% in real terms since I joined the profession. Plus school budgets are yet to return to 2010 levels either -less money in school makes every part of my job more difficult. It’s no longer the job I signed up for.

I read "starting from 40K" to be the salary before the 12% increase, not a new graduate salary.

@Motherofacertainage I believe people should stop moaning about how shit it is.
Most of everything is shit!
But constant disruption to pupils who also had the shit of the pandemic is not helping with people's sympathy towards teachers

Education is education, not childcare. I don't think that parents have the right to feel aggrieved due to a missing day. We are not babysitters. Up the workers!

@noblegiraffe why do you think the increased taxes are only paying for one thing?

Pyewhacket
You really have no idea of the financial position this country is in, do you.

I do know the financial position schools and teachers are in. I teach in London primary and we are losing teachers because they cannot afford to live beyond a student lifestyle in London. It's fine for a few years when you're happy living in a shared house, but pay progression soon slows down and you realise you can never afford your own place. We lost a teacher (and another school lost her teacher partner) last year when they realised they could just afford a studio flat in London, or could return to their midlands hometown and buy a new build 4 bed.
I've been teaching in London for 25 years and young teachers have always moved out. Every two to three years we would lose someone who left London to get more house for their money. Now we're losing two or three a year.
That is before we even talk about those who are struggling with the increasing demands of the job due to lack of funds, increased high needs SEND in mainstream (often with little support) and a reduction in support staff.

Amazes me how quickly everyone has forgotten how much they whinged and moaned about having to part-teach their own 2-4 children during Covid, yet a teacher is somehow expected to accept a real-terms decreasing salary.

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.

@Changechangechanging Is that how you'd want to spend your evenings? Each to their own I guess, I'd rather be doing stuff that isn't work at all. It does take work to make an engaging class, too. I can love all sorts of subjects it doesn't mean I want to work doing them in what should be my free time.

I had a Y7 tutee and he didn’t get food outside of school. His family got universal credit, they were entitled to use the food bank, there were six children and he was eleven and he was the fourth child and he didn’t get fed at home. He was short and very thin and he had huge dark circles under his eyes and was literally grey. Social services don’t have capacity to take those cases on. He slept at lunchtime because he said he never got to sleep at home because it was too loud. He had a toothache for months that no one would do anything about.

@Chickenly SS do need to get involved with them if they're not feeding their kid. They probably will get involved sooner or later. By feeding him you're actually slowing it being adressed in a more long term rather than sticking plaster way.

am on a 0.8 contract because I need one day off to plan, prep, mark, write up SEN admin etc, unpaid, on that 5th day, as a lot of other teaching colleagues do.

yes, this is me too. I need a day over for marking and prep and I still work at the weekend too. It’s a strange job. I know other professions put hours in over their normal hour but honestly nothing like teachers (from my experience of parents/ friends/partners).

Well said

So have a lot of jobs to be fair. Wages have failed to keep up with inflation across the board for years, minimum wage in particular was stagnant for a long long time. It's not a unique situation for just teachers.

This thread has demonstrated very clearly to me how many people are genuinely thick as mince.

The OP asked whether the teachers strike was justified so some people who have relevant experience have explained why they think it is. If you didn't want to see moaning you have picked the wrong thread! (BTW Is it people moaning about the strikes or teachers moaning about the deterioration in conditions that most offends you?)

Straight from the land of the bleeding obvious. No teacher has said this. This happens to be thread about teachers. The strike is about teachers' T&C.

@MrWhippersnapper yes, I’m
aware that problem has been around for decades. Remember helping a flatmate work out how to cover Y7 maths (she was in her probation period and an English teacher, already roped in to cover RE and history and maths made her giggle hysterically as it really wasn’t her forte).

But surely the online lessons, lesson plans, curriculum maps … it’s pretty much all there now, isn’t it? How much novel material can there really be… I guess I’ve never understood why there is no real
economy of scale with a national curriculum. Why, during lockdown, each teacher separately planned each lesson, delivered separately. Absolutely exhausting to do it that way. Especially when Twinkl and CBBC seemed to be giving a vast amount of material away for free. There was even some good stuff on Oak National, although I know copyright issues have meant some content has now had to be removed there’s still loads of stuff there.

Nowhere did I say STARTING salary of £40k.

What about this, @Notbeinggoadybut

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.

No one said it was unique to teachers. Same issue for nurses, firefighters, ambulance staff etc. etc.

The question is: is it right? No it is not.

What a load of bollocks. I was in looking after vulnerable children full time while preparing and filming lessons, and responding to online work and parental requests for the rest of the children after my kids had gone to bed in the evening. I have never worked so many hours as I did during the pandemic!

This trick is so common on threads like these.

OP posts goading teachers into explaining why they are striking. Teachers explain. Posters then attack them for apparently thinking this is unique to teachers, on a thread that is specifically asking why teachers are striking.

Nobody is bloody saying it’s unique to teachers, they’re answering why they, as teachers, are striking.

Yet the irony is most were probably taught in UK schools by teachers during the alleged glory days of teaching 😄

I’ve just put the 1997 starting salary into an inflationary calculator. £16k starting salary in 1997 has the same purchasing power as £38k now.

Somebody asked what teachers expected because they knew their pay and conditions when they started. I’m guessing not having worse conditions and still being on the same money 25years later probably wasn’t what they expected.

You can lead a horse to water…

Only in your opinion.
Their terms and conditions are also under threat. They have a lot of responsibility and rail companies can afford to pay them more. It shouldn't be a race to the bottom and it's not just about salary.

I'm late 40s and don't think I've known a decade when teachers haven't moaned (maybe rightly so.) My dad left in the 80s/90s because he found it too stressful and was pensioned off in his 40s.