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.

Clearly you think in black and white as that’s obviously not what that means

I asked if anyone would become a teacher not every single person.
There are plenty of more black and white posts on this thread, I am surprised you picked on my post.

'Most Conservative MPs? And Most Labour MPs? Only asking because Diane Abbot sent her son to a private school....

'Most Conservative MPs? And Most Labour MPs? Only asking because Diane Abbot sent her son to a private school....

The data I can find (dates from December '22) sggests 17% of Labour MPs send their DC to private school. Want to tell me that % will be lower for Conservative MPs?

I can't find data for this. Please can you post it? I have relatives on both sides of the fence, so I'm really interested...

@Snippysocks I've tried following it up and it's not great quality data - there's a lot more on MPs themselves (as understandably their DC have a right to privacy). There's more data on MPs themselves, but it's predictable stuff.

I'm striking so we're heard. So we don't look like we're so happy with conditions that we don't have to strike. Pay is part of it. You can earn similar pay, with shift pay, in factories local to me: no stress; paid overtime; few qualifications.

Changing physical abuse in schools.
Too many reasons, but more support to families when kids are young. A better, fairer society. More alternative provision. Parents who know how to fucking parent.

Not working until midnight or whatever.
Fewer classes. 9 or 10 free periods across a fortnight has been reduced to 5. Pp have already detailed what has to happen in those 5hours. 1 of them is usually used for cover too.
Get rid of mindless admin. But that was meant to have happened years ago. Give us a year or 2 where we don't do the bollocks stuff and see if it actually makes a difference. Most of it is window dressing for ofsted or parents anyway.

Thank you for being so honest. I always assumed that Conservative MPs would be more likely to send their children to private schools, but believe that most people with sufficient finance would do so. And that includes MPs of every persuasion......Labour included!

Exactly this. I am striking in part because despite being one of the most essential sectors, our pay has been frozen and we've lost tens of thousands of pounds in income since the Tory govt came into power. But even more than this, I see every day how horribly badly under-resourced our schools are and it makes me absolutely livid. Our buildings are falling to bits, there are not enough staff because budgets are squeezed; we lack so many resources and all the while increasing pressure is being forced onto school staff and therefore onto our children. Meanwhile, the government lavishes hundreds of billions on its contacts and then claims there is no money to run our country effectively. I am striking because I have a fantastic class of awesome human beings with brilliant personalities and unlimited potential; and our children deserve better than this crooked, destructive government that wants them to fail.

@Snippysocks the data on MPs is interesting though: the 2019 intake had the lowest ever percentage of MPs who had attended private school at 29%. However, when you look at the cabinet and the Shadow cabinet the contrast is stark: 39% of the cabinet were privately educated, while only 9% of the Shadow cabinet were (general population is 7% so Labour is not very out of step here, while the Tories absolutely are).

I am not so sure about your contention that everyone who could afford private education would take it up. More than 7% of the UK children attend private school, and that does not match wealth distribution in the UK. Part of this I suspect can be explained by the fact that there are an awful lot of very good state schools around, despite what people like to think.

I meant to quote reply to an earlier post about the quality of our children's education - whoops, technical error! 😁

🙄Absolute rubbish. Effective teaching in itself is a highly complex, deeply challenging, multidisciplinary skill.

Well why don't you train as a teacher then?!

If you would love it, then go for it!

There's not many professional jobs that require you to train for 4-6 years that have a max payment of £42k (Scotland).

I'm hoping Labour win the next election, purely to see if they really do improve education in years to come and ensure the economy and public services are also top notch...

I suppose, if they think at all about it, they assume that private school kids will be out innovating and running businesses, and it won't matter if the state school kids are cleaning their houses, looking after their kids and driving the trains taking more important people to important places.

Surely the only possible way is up.

But I thought that when Boris resigned and then the Tories served up Liz Truss.

It's a long way to the next election too.

whatthefunkisgoingon
Why haven't you trained to be a teacher? What job do you currently have?

@whatthefunkisgoingon
You say you'd love to spend more time with your children.... at this rate you will be.
As other pp have stated, teacher retention and recruitment is at a critical tipping point. If no one enters or remains in the profession, you'll have to start homeschooling them yourself. Just what you wanted.

Supply and demand. Teachers salaries currently are not high enough to attract enough graduates to the profession, let alone to attract the best graduates which is what we should want for our children.

As an experienced teacher my salary is ok, but nowhere near what my graduate friends earn, they are easily on double my wage or more. This does make me regret my choice. I love my job, but wouldn't recommend it to my children for this reason. Truthfully, I'd have a much better standard of living if I had chosen a different career.

There is about to be a huge crisis in the sector. If recruitment is not sorted out it will result in much bigger class sizes (I already struggle to teach practical lessons effectively to ks3 classes as our numbers have booked) and many more children being taught by people without relevant qualifications. This is already happening. Your children may well be being taught maths by a geography teacher, or art by an English teacher for example. This will happen more and more and education will suffer. This also increases workload for teachers as non specialists have to be supported by specialists and you end up planning not only your own lessons but someone elses.

At the end of the day, supply and demand is given for justification of huge salaries and bonuses for bankers. If the government want people to do a job they need to pay enough to convince them to do it. It doesn't matter how fair you might think it is, teacher training numbers currently tell us it's not working.

I don’t believe teachers are using food banks.

If that was the case most working people would be using them, the average wage is around £29 per year in the UK.

Im sorry I don’t believe teachers are using food banks or would qualify to use them as their pay would be over the threshold.

You're responding to a post that says nothing about food banks. Who are you arguing with?

Someone on this thread said earlier, the government can find many when it wants to. For example to pay the energy companies, to subsidise the massive price hikes.

That poster is wrong. The government doesn’t find money when it wants to, it borrows it. Which we all pay back.

The government has to step in for energy costs , otherwise people would have genuinely froze in their homes. This would have caused more older people to end in hospital or die. And business go bust meaning millions of people could be out of work. That’s millions of people losing their homes and going onto benefits.
Therefore the government finally stepped in in the final hours.

The only way to give the public sector a pay rise is to borrow more. I’m it saying I think the strikes are wrong, it just the government doesn’t have the money. It has to borrow it. That’s the question for government- borrow more to give pay rises or allow the strikes to happen.

I don’t think anyone has the answers.

My apologies I meant UC. I don’t believe that teachers would qualify for UC would they?
Im not arguing, I just don’t think they would. Otherwise surely half the working population would qualify?
Not food banks

That poster is wrong. The government doesn’t find money when it wants to, it borrows it. Which we all pay back.

That poster (me) is correct. The government found the money. As in it was able to source the money to fund the thing that it wanted to do, despite all the handwringing about how they couldn't possibly source the money to do the things that other people want them to do.

You've also inexplicably missed out raising taxes as well as borrowing the money as a possibility. Again, it's a possibility, even if you disagree with it politically.