Teachers strike

[PaTCh64355]

I appreciate this has probably been covered a lot in here but I can’t find a good summary. please could some teachers explain why they are striking.

my natural instinct is not to support the strikes. Children have been put through so much over the last few years, not to mention the impact on working parents. I’ve never worked in the public sector so have no understanding of unions.

this is honestly not meant as a goady post - I really want to understand the teachers position so I can be informed.

For context: I work in a large comprehensive-I am in my 20th year of teaching-7 different schools and this head is the best I have worked for.when the school found out they had to fund the pay rise out of the already agreed budget the head said-we will have to make cuts somewhere but it will not be to staff. So she kept us all on-teachers, support staff, everyone.many schools in the area did the opposite and either made staff redundant or didn’t replace people leaving. The downside is we have very little heating-most days, most children sit in their coats most of the day.and no money for maintenance. The two classrooms across from mine cannot be used when it rains heavily as water comes through roof and there is no money in budget to fix it. And parents don’t realise this. No one would work in an office that was unheated in winter and with water pouring through the roof. And yet we expect our children to.For me, as for so many others, this is not just about pay. And it’s not just about conditions. It’s also about the crap deal that this generation of children are getting.

Because they can get away with it.
Academies are all about directing funds to 'leadership.'

Did you know that Ofsted and the DfE will also be on strike?

on a personal note i have zero interest either way as i chose to opt my kids out of the schooling system as we home educate so it don't effect us either way(not did online learning through lockdown we carried on as normal)

but the system has been failing for years,
this is why millions have turned to(ie taken kids out)or chose from day 1 to home educate.the system is no longer equipt and traditional schooling no longer works

its even worse for SEN kids,there are millions in between, with no where to go

take my son hes 12 should be y7 but because of numerous disabilities on the 7-8 mark.
if he was in school mainstream wouldn't be suitable and hes not "disabled enough" for special schools.(i had a friend told exactly this from her la)
but where im from(rural south wales, im 40 minutes from cardiff)they dont exist anyway,the nearest is Bristol which in a car would take 50-60 mins and technically thats england so wouldnt be accepted anyway.

Just stopping by the thread, OP, to say that I'll be supporting the teachers (for reasons given by others already). In fact, I'll be out demonstrating with them on Wednesday when the university staff will be on strike too. We all worked through covid etc, only to get lower pay, pensions destroyed and an increased workload. On the whole, we like our jobs and don't want to disrupt anyone's education, but management and the government have stopped listening to us. Striking is the only way.

This! ⬆️ With bells on!!

I'm a long serving TA & I'm finally broken & reluctantly looking for other jobs. Our pay is an utter joke & is so far out of line for what's expected of us these days. Restraining violent children, getting abuse from parents & being regularly sworn at is, sadly, a pretty 'normal' occurrence.

@BusyMum47 I've just left my TA role. Behaviour is appalling in primary and secondary schools. Primary is actually worse in my recent experience as there are no consequences for bad behaviour. Children who have no idea how to behave but do know the full lexicon of swear words and know how to make racist comments under their breath. No support for staff / consequences for poor behaviour (I know it's all natural consequences these days, but even those don't happen consistently or at all).

Pay is low, low, low. I took home £1000 per month and I'm a graduate who speaks two additional languages (languages taught in schools).

I'm off to find something else. Even working in a supermarket or cafe. I've done high end hospitality and yes, it's hard, but it's nothing compared to having to somehow prevent aggressive big lads from beating the crap out of each other without any training. Oh, for fun, in my last school the first aid was all done by the TA in the class whether they had training or not. On the face of it that's all fine, but if you do the wrong thing or don't record everything meticulously you can lose your job or worse if parents complain. TAs and 1:1s live in constant fear of an "allegation".

I don't think teaching is the hardest job in the world either though. There are clearly harder jobs out there. But I personally find classrooms more depressing and emotionally draining than every other type of work I've personally done, including high stress office jobs and high end hospitality with long hours and extremely high standards and arsey customers. If people think otherwise, you only need to look at stressed parents who are only responsible for a few children. If it's that easy looking after 30 kids, then parenting must be so easy (it isn't though. Kids are lovely, but being responsible for them is hard work).

Anyway, good luck to us both in our job hunts!

@ClassroomRunaway

It's sad, isn't it? I used to love my job... still do at times, to be honest. I went into it fully aware that the pay wasn't great but the hours suited my family & I genuinely felt like I was making a difference on a daily basis.

Over the years, however, it's just become soul destroying. Trying to do too much with too little, failing kids left & right, through no fault of our own, working way too many extra, unpaid hours, stressing out about the workload, acting as a social worker, mental health support, untrained 1st aider, covering the teachers for ALL absence & PPA because there's no money for supply teachers...all whilst regularly facing off the scale disrespect, rudeness & dodging flying furniture! It's fucking exhausting.

It is sad. I really wasn't enjoying my job at all by the end, which is how I knew it was time to move on asap.

I truly loved teaching, but I'm pregnant with my second and I'm done. It's exhausting, behaviour is shocking, the amount of work I need to do and think about isn't manageable and last week a parent had a go at me for removing their child who shoved another student over in lesson..

School conditions are dreadful. Energy bills have gone up. Teacher salaries have gone up. Prices have gone up. But schools haven’t received any extra money to cover it. So the money has had to come from sacking support staff, not buying resources, sharing teachers between classes and putting TAs at the front of the class, and cutting everything to the bone.

But the only thing teachers can legally strike about is pay. Your kids are having an absolutely shit time at school, I don’t know why parents aren’t up in arms?

I'm a former primary teacher and am furious about what is happening to my profession and to schools to in general. If it was possible to do the job in a normal working week, ie say 40 hours rather than 70 or more, I would be back like a shot.

I also really struggle with the terrible attitudes people in the media, government and even some parents have about teachers. It massively affected my mental health. That combined with the work load pushed me out.

I support their right to strike.

However, I have to say the last couple of years have made me feel a lot more relaxed about the kids missing school. They have missed so much for, in hindsight, not always very compelling reasons, and we are told it's all fine and they are resilient etc etc etc. So if I want to take them out for a week to see their grandparents abroad, or a holiday, or a day off to do something we want to do that's difficult to do in school holidays then I will certainly not fall for the old "missing even one day can be critical to their learning" line that we would hear pre covid.

If it was possible to do the job in a normal working week, ie say 40 hours rather than 70 or more, I would be back like a shot.
Me too. I need a normal 40 hours a week job so I have time to look after my family and my health. I can’t do 70 hours like I did when I was young and single. For one thing I’m not physically capable of that amount of work any more.

I support the strikes because I appreciate its not really about pay.

The whole system, including teachers workload /holidays and expectations around behaviour of pupils needs an overhaul

Public perception of teachers followkng covid probably isn't the best but I hope they achieve their aims

I will certainly not fall for the old "missing even one day can be critical to their learning" line that we would hear pre covid.

It's not "the old line".

The issue, of course, with taking your child out for a holiday is that they will be a week behind all the other children's learning and will not be able to catch this up.

Your kids are having an absolutely shit time at school, I don’t know why parents aren’t up in arms?

Many are, but their anger and frustration is mis-directed at school staff, who are also having a shit time, and this is perpetuating the retention crisis in education.

So often I get into school at 7am, open my emails and the first thing I see is a long, 'shouty caps' ridden rant from an angry parent. These are usually fired off in the middle of the night, attacking me personally for things which are completely outside of my or the schools control and blaming me for all their non-school related problems. Often this will be a child I have spent years trying to save from permanent exclusion or becoming disengaged from school altogether, with no support from the services who are actually commissioned and funded to help them. 9 times out of 10 when I call the parent about this they're sweetness and light "oh, I wasn't angry with you, not really, you've been great, I'm just frustrated with XXX (insert general life stuff that is nothing to do with education)". In other words, I needed someone to be angry with and when I typed "if my child kills themselves it'll be your fault!!!!!" at 11pm after a few glasses of Pinot I forgot there would be an actual human being with feelings waking up to recieve it.

Parents will email my Teacher colleagues late on a Sunday night and then complain if they haven't had a response by Monday lunchtime. One of our HOY came back to their office from teaching to find they had over 20 missed calls from a parent, in the space of a few hours. Parents have also posted offensive and factually incorrect things about individual Teachers on social media, including local groups so these posts are then seen by that Teachers own family, friends and neighbours.

Behavior is getting worse as staff are too scared to challenge blatant disregard for the rules, and even behaviour that is unsafe, because they know that this will result in a huge back-lash from the parents so low level disruption is becoming normalised in many schools.

Speaking to colleagues in other schools, there is a general feeling that staff are sick of taking the hit from parent's for the government's failings. I know several Teachers who have cited this as a major factor in their decision to leave the profession over the last few years.

My child is off school tomorrow due to the strike. I made a point today of walking up to the teacher striking (she looked worried like oh no not another complaint type look) and told her that I support what she's doing. She took my hand and said it meant a lot. I see how hard they work, I have nothing but respect.

This from the Times is a good visual.

Schools run on the goodwill of teachers. If they're not paid properly, that goodwill will dry up.

Strike aside, what irritates me is the double standards.
They prevent kids from going to school for a day here and there without the kids being given work, but, if a parent does that, they are damaging their child's education.

Why not take some of the term holiday days and say to parents that they can use those days as and when required rather than being set days. The same idea as workplace holiday. I'm not say all of it, maybe just 5 days of it.
They could always say the chosen holiday days can't fall on a particular week here or there if something major is happening but it would save so much aggravation.
It allows flexibility and to cover things such as the odd childcare problem, illness, bereavement of extended family or friends.

Rant over

>misses the point of the post<

@Mrsmarula

How the hell would that work with 30 kids all taking different days?
Not practical at all.

@Mrsmarula and if you chose to take your child out on the day they covered X concept, when are you expecting the teacher to catch the child up on that? Times 30 obviously, times, say 5 days each. That's 150 lesso a you want set separately as catch-up work. Ok.

I'm striking as the state of education is currently dire and looking increasingly bleak due to being starved of necessary funds. It goes beyond offering fair and reasonable salary to make the workload bearable. We are literally begging education be prioritised the way it should be before it reaches crisis point.

The right wing media is quick to dismiss teachers as money hungry for rejecting a 5% pay increase but repeatedly fail to mention this 5% increase is not actually being funded. Schools are being asked to "find" the money in their existing budgets. Where is that coming from? The kids. It is taking away support staff and resources from pupils.

I have been teaching for over a decade and never voted in a strike action ballot. I did vote this time as I am extremely concerned about what I am seeing in schools. I am concerned that our pupils are not getting enough and that we as a society are failing them. I am very worried about the education my child will receive and unless you can afford private education, you should be very worried as well.

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