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.

As an ex social worker teachers have my full support.

Been there with the crap pay offers, the profession is dangerously hemorrhaging staff, pushing those there to burn out and failing to attract people to the profession.

Long term funding is needed, recruitment is needed and investment in teaching but shorter term teachers and school staff deserve financial remuneration.

If anyone would like to educate themselves on the issues around pay, please look here ifs.org.uk/articles/long-long-squeeze-teacher-pay

To address a few points:

1. Security. I have been made redundant before. It of course happens. My last school made one member of staff per department redundant just after I left (and wasn't replaced).
2. Pay progression is not automatic. I am (not to be arrogant) a highly experienced and competent teacher. If you are in a good school, even if you do not get your targets of 100% students in your set 8 class getting a grade 44 in Science, you will progress if you show evidence of your interventions, extra revision and holiday school attendance (that you are not paid for). If you are in a poor school you will not get your pay progression unless little Tommy, who has been suspended 6 times for fighting and assault and only speaks to you in grunts, a grade 7 in Chemistry. True story. It also takes a minimum of 2 years to progress each level in the UPS.
3. Yearly pay rises. A PP mentioned that they only got 3.5% this year. For many years we saw 1% or less. As inflation rises this is a pay cut. Now we do have starting salaries on £28k, which is fantastic, but those who have been teaching longer have had nothing like that, which is having an impact on retention. I am now SLT, I have a good wage, but I am planning an exit route now that will mean a pay drop for 3 years, then I can be back up towards £45k, which when being paid for 37 hours a week compared to the 60 plus now; not even a question.
4. If we don't strike to improve pay and conditions your children will not have the good teachers. We are leaving. My department (not the HoD but overseeing it as Head of science has just had surgery) has 3 vacancies. Don't; even think about specialisms, we can't get science teachers. Our timetable has changed so that we at least have science teachers on year 11 and A Level. The 3 missing teachers (2 physics and a chemist) are actually 1 languages, 1 PE and 1 Geography this week, because we can't even keep the same ones for more than a few days.

We need to do something to attract teachers or we will not have any.

Don’t post if you don’t want a response

Haha starting salary of £40k!

When I started teaching my starting salary was £22k and that was in London.

I don't 100% support it as there are jobs with far lower salaries. And the extra work, people know they're getting intto before they work as a teacher.

I feel the same about the nurses (who have an average salary of 34K.)

But you did.

When I started in 1999, I was on £16.5 and I felt rich!

You are right to be angry about the strikes but your anger needs to be directed not at teaches but at the government who are chronically underfunding schools and have for years.

The main issue is that the payrise was not funded. Not all teachers received it but those that did their schools have had to find it out it school budgets.

90% or so of heads say their schools will be broke in a few years time. Schools are haemorrhaging teachers.

No teacher wants to strike but we feel that we have no choice. We are sick of there being less and less money to support the kids we teach. Less and less money going to services to support families, young people and children that now we are trying to pick up the pieces for.

How dare the government try to weaponise our most vulnerable students against us when they are ones voting against free school meals in holidays and for those that don’t quite meet the threshold. How dare they throw lack of education due to covid at us when they did fuck all to support schools in opening safely and then fucked up any kind of catch up support.

Those higher earner tax cuts they proposed would have funded this but instead they chose to save a few Bob from those that least need financial support.

Be angry on behalf of you and your children but stand with teachers in fighting for our schools and our children and proper funding.

How can you honestly think this? Because people have it worse no one should ever try and make their own situation better? It’s insane.

Get a job as a teacher then. Any idiot can do it with a weekend’s prep per term.

The government bailed out the despicable banking industry with our cash yet refuse to pay workers in line with inflation. Inflation that government & central banks created with the constant printing of fiat & devaluing our currency. Get behind those that fight for what they deserve I say. I'm in the private industry & salute the public and those key workers that stepped up during Covid.

How dare the people who educate our children and save our lives want to earn more than a checkout worker or dog walker.

@WindscreenWipe would have no impact on my life if none of you went back to work.
My sympathy is with the parents who will loose income for strike days.
Like I said you chose a career with shit pay, shit conditions and dwindling respect.
Suck up your choice or ship out

I left teaching and realised that my “vocation” was actually earning six figures, never being screamed at, never being told to fuck off, getting champagne and canapés, getting a Christmas bonus, having a holiday on my holiday, having a weekend at the weekend… it also turns out my “vocation” is working in a place that has internet access and pens, where I don’t worry that the people I work with will be beaten to death or malnourished, where I don’t have to think about Jess self-harming and Frankie’s toothache that his mum doesn’t think is worth a dentist visit. I don’t worry about Ofsted’s inane and redundant metric for assessing me or being held to ransom by parents who know everything better than I do.

I obviously support the strike and, frankly, anyone who isn’t is ignorant of any reality.

They have to ask for 12% to get 6 or 7%, but 12% sounds too much. I get what you mean about costs at the bottom, a few places I know of said the same amount for everyone, say £2k that's 10% for someone on 20k but only 5% for someone on 40k.

Generally, I support them, and really hope that whatever the award is it is fully funded. Most schools, maybe all of them, will lack the resources to pay an increase without reducing the number of TA's etc unless they are given extra cash.

I feel most sorry for the army, the squaddies (admittedly it's not a graduate profession) but they risk their lives and then step in for strikers but can't strike.

I did 😂

Yet another one spectacularly missing the point

That's what many are doing.

Well, aren't you a charmer?!

Public sector workers should never strike. (And I have worked in the public sector). They took on the job to provide a service to the public. We'd all love a 12% payrise, but many people will get zero - that's just reality. And taxpayers would be paying for any rise, which seems to get forgotten.

And public sector workers pay tax too

I'm a public servant. Not an indentured one.

Teachers are striking for more reasons than just pay.
In my school there are 4 maths and 3 physics teacher vacancies- nobody has applied, so PE teachers are "covering" those lessons, not their choice but deployed to another area of the school by the head who is doing their best to plug the gaps.

33% of new teachers leave within the first 5 years of qualifying so the retention of staff is terrible in this country. The budget for my department will not last the year but yet I'm still expected to teach the NC.
In lots of countries around the world teachers with degrees who have studied hard are respected by society and interestingly they have less workload and bureaucratic pressures than teachers in the UK. Let's be honest 4 days is not going to impact hugely on students long term educational attainment, lots of schools recently closed for a similar length of time due to the snow.
If we want the best for our children and the next generation we need to provide them with the best teachers and learning environment, not an education system held together on a show string.
In terms of pay, I started as an NQT in London on 26k. You don't necessarily go up the pay scale every year.

I feel similar as other posters about teaching pay. 40k after 6 years is a good wage. But working conditions sound awful. I do think I hear from teachers more than other professions about how hard their jobs are. On the one hand I think it’s great they have a collective voice and can use it but on the flip side part of me does wonder how the stress compares to other well paid jobs. Maybe it is one of the worst jobs you can do for that salary?

Nobody has forgotten anything.

You say you used to work in the public sector. SFW.