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.

Can you not see the link between crap pay and a poor education for students? With students suffering? When teachers cannot be recruited because the pay is crap, when TAs cannot be recruited because their pay crap, who suffers? The ex-teachers, or graduates who could be teachers but choose not to because the pay is crap, aren't suffering. They're perfectly happy in their alternative jobs, whatever they may be. It's the student who are suffering, because they don't have teachers, don't have TAs. I completely agree with you that they've suffered enough, and I think all students have the right to go to school and get a decent education, with the necessary support when needed. But that's not what is happening in state schools atm. The only thing teachers are allowed to strike about it pay, so that's what they're striking about. If you don't agree with the strikes, is it your opinion that the current situation in schools is OK? What about in September, when things will be worse, when there'll be even fewer teacher and TAs? We know that's going to be the case because nationally we have a record number of vacancies still left unfilled. The recruitment window has ended, those vacancies are not going to be filled now, at least not with teachers. You may think it's fine and there's no problems, although I would disagree, I don't think it's fine. But, if it's not fine for classes to not have a teacher, or SEN students with an EHCP to not have a TA when they're supposed to have 1-to-1 support, what's to be done about it? How are we going to persuade teachers not to quit, and persuade graduates to become teachers?

Ultimately, if we're not going to pay teachers And support staff more, we're going to need to quite radically change out expected of what school is, at least for state schools students. It's happening anyway, but it's only right that there's recognition and acceptance that how schools function has to change, due to lack of funding. You can't have a champagne service in lemonade funding, so it's not right to expect it. I would like to holiday in a 5 hotel resort abroad, but I can only afford to camp, so I need to accept that. It would be unfair of me to complain to the campsite that they're not a 5 hotel resort, when I'm only paying for a camping pitch. It's the same for schools. If schools don't pay a competitive salary so they can recruit staff, they won't have staff. So we'll have online learning in school. Classes of 60. If we can't recruit TAs, the legal obligation to support students with EHCPs will need to be removed. I guess some very motivated students will be OK, those who can learn largely independently, but we know from the lockdowns that some students are really not going to be OK. Inequalities will widen, those who can go private, will do so. We have a choice, we can fund schools properly, or we can lower our expectations of our state education system.

Maybe this is where it's heading. Much like the health service. Run it into the ground and privatise it.

Except, like any privatised industry where there is only a human product, this would be a disaster.

And what I fail to understand in both the case of the NHS and state education is the willingness of some people to throw it all away and let it all burn to the ground because rather that than professionals be paid more than them, or more than many, or more than they think they deserve.

Everyone suffers as a result.

No of course I don't think it's fine. Has it ever been?

Yes there should be more money and better conditions but this applies to all jobs in this day and age. I'm sick of the masquerade. It's about the pay and at the end of the day and combined with the perks it's not that bad, certainly comparable to other public sector. The kids are ones losing out and its not fair.

They have suffered real term pay cuts for many years.

The conditions of employment are such that there is a serious recruitment crisis in the compulsory education sector, which now doesn't have enough teachers. TAs are doing the jobs of properly qualified teachers when they shouldn't be, Many teachers are in employment are on long-term sick leave for stress.

And now that successive governments have royally screwed up pre-16 education - if there'd been a concerted campaign to dumb it down they could hardly have done a better job - they've started on our once world-enviable HE system.

£40K is not a huge salary for a professional, graduate occupation.

The striking teachers have my wholehearted support.

No of course I don't think it's fine. Has it ever been?

Yes there should be more money and better conditions but this applies to all jobs in this day and age. I'm sick of the masquerade. It's about the pay and at the end of the day and combined with the perks it's not that bad, certainly comparable to other public sector. The kids are ones losing out and its not fair.

Yes! It is about the pay! Because the pay is what is putting people off starting in teaching and continuing in teaching and because ANY pay increase comes directly from the money for the CHILDREN.

Do you have a solution to this which doesn't involve paying teachers more? Let's hear it.

This is genuinely annoying me now.

I'm a bit confused now @Willyoujustbequiet, I'm not sure if you think teachers should be paid more, or not? So you don't think our state education system is all fine, on that we agree. But you want it to be better, without paying teachers and other staff more? Or do you support paying school staff more, but you just don't think teachers should strike? Or you think schools staff should be paid more, but so should everyone else? How's that going to happen? If teacher's don't strike, how are they going to secure pay increases for the profession? And if you don't think teachers should be paid more, how is the state education system going to improve without any teachers? If teachers should only be better paid when everyone else is better paid, what happens to the students in schools in the meanwhile? Do we really need to wait for, I don't know, a magic increase in productivity, which is something that has eluded governments for decades, or a clampdown on profiteering so workers get their fair share? You might as well wait around for flying pigs. But even if everyone did get paid more, isn't that just going to result in teachers leaving for better paid jobs, like now? As long as there's better paying jobs for teachers and potential teachers to do, they won't choose teaching, it's how teaching compares to other jobs that's the problem. Or have I completely missed your point?

DH is a head of department and it’s almost destroyed our marriage at times. He said it’s the same for his colleagues many of who live alone because no partner will put up with it.

He almost never gets home before 7pm. Weekends are spent working. He leaves at 6am. He gets no breaks because there’s not enough staff so eats with the children to supervise them. It’s constant meetings, parents evenings, ‘intervention’ for struggling kids. His school has a huge staff problem so are running on supply, this means double the work for the senior teachers who have to cover and be responsible for those classes without a teacher as well as their own classes. He has not got the recommended ‘free’ lessons to do paperwork because there’s no staff and he’s covering so he does it at home once our kids are asleep.

All household everything falls to me. He’s never been able to attend anything for our own kids because of work. Yes he gets holidays but he works through lots of them and we can’t afford to go away during those times as prices are astronomical. There’s no days off allowed either for weddings, funerals, sports days…nothing at all.

The pay isn’t the issue for me, despite it being shite. It’s more it requires your soul and then some and it’s never enough for senior management or parents. Days are spent with the threat of being managed out for not meeting targets, abuse from children, abuse from parents. I’ve seen teachers plastered by kids over social media for trying to control classes…its a job barely anyone wants to do any more and for good reason. Just read the threads on here about teachers and the way children can never possibly do anything wrong anymore. If they want to retain staff they need to make it worth the sacrifice of having pretty much no life at all during term time and the pay now isn’t anywhere near that!

In the private sector, market forces determine how much an employee is 'worth'. It depends on how much you need to pay to get the particular expertise you are looking for.

This is no different. They are paying too little to get the professionals they need. In any business, the owners would have to offer more.

How much do you think teachers are worth? Why? What's your evidence?

Other countries think their teachers are worth more. Even Scotland thinks their teachers are worth more. And Wales.

Irish schools have 13 weeks off in the summer and their teachers are held in high regard, respected and paid well.

Why are we worth less? Or do you think teachers elsewhere are paid too much?

In an ideal world yes they should be paid more but no I don't think its the priority at the moment as I think salary isn't that bad. Children are the priority and as the strikes are unfairly impacting them then no I don't support them.

So how do we prioritise the children then?

One of the problems with Govt interference in the education industry is lack of market testing to establish the price of labour.

Children are the priority and as the strikes are unfairly impacting them then no I don't support them.

So you support the government?

The government who have neglected schools for the last 13 years to the point where your kid will likely not have a teacher at some vital point in their education? Or possibly even right now, as is the case for many children?

Or the government who have neglected the buildings to the point where 700,000 children are now attending schools in buildings with major structural defects and are unsafe?

Or the government who told teachers that they would have to wait for the independent pay review to see what pay rise they'd be getting next year and now that the pay review body says that 6.5% is needed to bring some stability to a profession in crisis, are backtracking?

Or the government who are refusing to tell heads what their budgets will be for September even though term ends in 4 weeks so they are preparing for redundancies and cuts to education provision?

The government who have run children's mental health services into the ground so children who are actively suicidal cannot access support? Who have removed SEN provision for children who desperately need it?

You support that government?

Because if you don't support the strikes, you're saying that what the government are doing to education isn't as bad as a few days of missed school.

But how do you make children a priority, without teachers in schools to teach them? I'm not speaking figuratively, as in a "education only happens with teachers, they deserve a pay rise etc". I mean literally, teachers are leaving, and they're not being replaced. There will literally be many children in schools without a teachers. They'll have teachers for some of their time in school, but not all of it, probably. Or maybe not. There'll be a bunch of students, probably the lowest priority groups, like Year 7, who won't have many actual teachers teaching them at all. There'll be just being baby-sat really. How is that making children the priority?

In did but they are starting to lose my support.

Do you want schools to have qualified staff?

Then they need to be paid in line with other sectors. Otherwise how are we supposed to attract graduates?

The strike is about the fact the there is a severe and worsening teacher shortage because teaching salaries are have been suppressed for so long.

Don’t come crying to us when your kid doesn’t have a permanent teacher for science, IT, English or Maths and they can’t take any GCSE language because there is no teacher for that subject.

Either the government makes the profession more attractive or the whole system collapses in the next few years. We can’t recruit cleaners, site staff, cooks, teaching assistants or admin staff either. Because we just cannot pay them enough compared to private sector jobs.

But yes, it is the teachers who are the issue and not the government who have be deliberately underfunding schools for the last 13 years.

We have trainees who are taking second jobs because the starting salary for teachers isn’t enough for them to live on in our area, especially if they have kids.

‘In an ideal world yes they should be paid more but no I don't think its the priority at the moment as I think salary isn't that bad. Children are the priority and as the strikes are unfairly impacting them then no I don't support them.’

Every one of the striking teachers I know thinks children are the priority. I work in
primary and am a mum of primary aged children, I will be striking again because I care about my children’s future (my schools and my own). A few days off school now is a drop in the ocean against the storm that is coming for children in secondary schools. Thousands of children will go through an education system without qualified teachers, who can be paid more in other areas, without workload issues and the constant barrage of poor behaviour.

I truly think your argument misses the long term implications of a retention and recruitment crisis for children in this country.

Isn't there a conflict of interest between thinking of the children, and parents yet the logistical implications placed on the parents because of these strikes will be quantifiable and costly? We've had to rearrange work and business to manage these strikes in our household. It's all becoming rather tiresome.
I'm not sure whether striking is the correct way to address the grievances.

@Philomenafoggy Then what do you suggest we do? Striking comes at the end of protracted discussions with the government in which the unions have outlined all the issues discussed above.

What other routes are open to us? Parents could support us and the government might actually listen to that. At the end of the day it is your child’s education on the line. Would you be happy for your kids to have a never ending Rita of temporary teachers for core GCSE subjects? If not then write to your MP and demand that the government do something effective about the recruitment crisis.

This is not about teachers ‘deserving’ a pay rise. It is about the impossibility of attracting staff to schools without improving the pay offer.

People with similar levels of qualification, in graduate/post-grad level roles, who remain working within that profession actually get both.

They progress to higher wages and then, in part due to that, also secure higher net pensions.

For some reason, the government and some members of the public seem happy to devalue the importance and impact of education. They underfund the sector, allow schools to crumble and refuse to pay those working within it what they are worth. Yet they demand ever more from schools and their staff. They even have the audacity to fake surprise when someone confronts them with the reality of teacher recruitment and retention.

It is wild to me that some parents are seemingly happy for their children to have a cut price education in which staff are under valued and unhappy. It is a very weird response that government has trained into parts of the population.

Those suggesting that there should be no strikes and saying "think of the children" are really missing the point. That's short-termist thinking: it's what the government are doing and what they want you to do too.

These strikes are the only way to improve the education sector for the children in it now and those who will be in the future. Without them, you will see:

• a decline in the number of qualified teachers in schools and more classes being 'covered' long-term,
• the removal of almost all support staff from the sector, resulting in many children not having their needs met and...
• a greater level of disrupted learning across almost all classrooms in the country,

-a continued decline in the quality of those entering the profession and, ultimately, more issues with their capability to do the job,

• a fall in educational standards and, through that, in outcomes for children.

You can't even say that it's a budget thing. Investing in education is one of the most effective ways to improve economic outcomes in the future and, through that, the tax intake. I'm left wondering: what possible reason could anyone have for not wanting the very best education system possible?

How can parents support you?
Define support. Next week we've had to move to heaven and earth to accommodate these strikes.
It's quite obvious the union representatives are not fit for purpose as the strikes have been completely ineffective.
Ex-Dp and I share two children, both are doing great at each school. However, I feel there always seems to be a level of micromanagement and overreaching between the schools, children and parents. It's all a tad irritable.

These strikes are exacerbating this relationship somewhat.

I mention the ex because we have to manage the children between us. Days off cause quite acute childcare issues and do have financial penalties for his business.