to think Gavin Williamsons views on teachers have been found out and he is trying to back pedal

[cakeorwine]

Leaked WhatsApp messages about schools during Covid and re-opening.

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/01/leaked-messages-boris-johnson-bemoaning-face-masks-u-turn

In October 2020, Williamson said publicly the following year’s exams would be postponed for a few weeks to make up teaching time. According to the leaked messages, Hancock then got in touch with his cabinet colleague to say “what a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are”.

Williamson replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.” Hancock then responded with a laughing emoji and a bullseye.

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said in response to the leak: “Why am I utterly unsurprised to now have it absolutely confirmed that Gavin Williamson was unfit to be secretary of state for education?”

According to Williamson, these comments were about "some unions" and he has the utmost respect for teachers who went above and beyond during the pandemic.

Yet it's the teachers who would be doing the work, not the Unions. So who was he saying who "really really just hate work"

bloodyplanes

Maybe if you stopped making things up about teachers and looked through an unbiased lens then you would see that teachers have a point.

No it isn't 'OK', but if the options are 'continue to do nothing and try and work in a failing system while more patients die/children underachieve' or 'take some action which, while drastic, stands some chance of actually turning things around', compassion sort of isn't the point. It's like choosing to amputate the foot now or lose the whole leg later (or expect the septicaemia to magically get better on its own). Neither are good choices, one is better than the other, and compassion (or rather sentimentality) for the toes that will be lost at the expense of the whole body, whilst understandable, is not in any way appropriate or productive.

You still haven't said what YOU think teachers should do instead of strike to improve their pay, improve recruitment and retention, improve class sizes and conditions. Obviously you think striking is heinous (because it inconveniences you, right now) but do you have any thoughts whatsoever on how else the slow-moving catastrophe in education should be addressed? Or do you think class sizes of 35 is fine, teachers buying uniforms and pencils and craft supplies out of their own salaries is fine, children's attainment levels constantly falling and growing numbers of children leaving school functionally illiterate is fine?

I agree with everything you've said, but I fear you're pissing into a sieve with this one. Some people just cannot and will not grasp anything beyond their own immediate convenience.

I am a teacher and I wrote to my conservative MP to ask why they opened pubs before schools. I got no response, not even a standard acknowledgment. It shows how much the Tory party value education.

And yes, it is reasonable for people providing an essential public service to expect a decent standard of living. Just because it's a vocation doesn't mean they should expect to live in penury to perform it.

I work in the public sector, providing an essential public service - I agree any worker should have a decent standard of living, and teachers here do earn a strong salary. Levels of sympathy will be different across the UK because conditions are different across the U.K.

In Scotland there isn’t the recruitment or retention issues, class sizes are generally smaller and we don’t have OFSTED queering the pitch. The strike is purely about pay, and parents generally aren’t going to be thrilled losing money taking time out of their own work so teachers, who are already well paid, can argue for higher salaries with pay rises of the level that won’t be met either in the private sector or the rest of the public sector.

I recognise the situation is different in England, I have much more sympathy for teachers there where strikes are clearly a reflection of near impossible working conditions. If teachers here were seeking to improve things in school, I’d go along with that, but that’s not what’s happening.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush

If this was about conditions ie funding etc I could get behind that but it's not it's about pay. As for whateachers can do I ask you this where was the campaigns for more staff funding or supplies? tThe petitions or marches? Did I miss all of this or did they not bother?

It would be interesting to know what percentage of teachers are actually on strike?

Does anyone know if there's a petition floating around social media to scrap Ofsted in England?

I'd sign it if I saw it. Would be an interesting debate in parliament too!

This. Expressing frustration to colleagues in what was meant to be a private conversation I can’t get excited about. On ranked reasons to dislike the Tory government this comes in at about 36525 for me.

Your language is appalling, please do not go near children.

This. Unions and teachers are not the same.

I imagine the teaching unions think the same thing about him. It has always been the case between politicians and unions. Even Labour politicians, when in power, get frustrated with the unions and vice versa. You seem surprised!

I think he is right about the unions. They were utterly obstructive cheered on by Labour politicians. I listened to many radio 4 today show interviews in 2020/ 2021 with various union representatives ( one woman in particular) and was disgusted with their attitude. I remember discussing it on here at the time.

Well with the caveat that I'm not in Scotland...

Pay will improve conditions because better pay = better recruitment and retention rates = higher levels of staffing = smaller class sizes. And while the govt would actually need to invest more in schools across the board (and other public services like SS, SEN support, CAMHS) to improve the crazy workload of 'extras' teachers are doing beyond just lesson planning and teaching in their classrooms, more staff and staff who are motivated to stay in the profession, develop expertise, take on voluntary additional pastoral roles, run school schemes for deprived families like breakfast clubs etc) would improve both educational and other outcomes for children.

That schools should also have adequate resources budgets that teachers don't have to dip into their own pockets to top them up is something WE, as parents, should be advocating for and protesting about. It's OUR children who are going without what they need at school (unless the teachers fill in the gaps, as they so often do, at their own expense).

As I understand it there are things teachers CAN strike over and things they can't based on union rules/legislation. Pay and conditions for the teachers themselves is one of the most straightforward routes to a strike. How does one parse a strike for increased funding and resources from the DoE? Negotiations on this are made by educational stakeholders and the govt all the time. The govt are ignoring them. But pay and consequently staffing levels feed in to everything else; it is impossible to create a positive learning environment with underpaid, overworked, frazzled staff. Corners will be cut, mistakes will be made, balls will be dropped. The teachers need to be valued, because they are valuable.

Petitions and marches make absolutely fuck all difference to government policy. Never have and never will. The watershed for this approach was the Stop The War march before the Iraq war. You are honestly living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that would achieve anything. Give me one example where govt have changed their policy because of a bloody march in the last 20 years. You mean you wanted them to waste their time doing things that would have no impact on their situation, rather than doing something that might briefly inconvenience YOU.

The union is made up of its members, who are teachers.

How the hell was Gavin Williamson ever given a knighthood? Was it for being shit at everything?

@helpyhelperton

No. Its not even an option.

Nor is it the point. My kids school is fine, now.

@FrippEnos

Nah. You can't always blame the ee unions govt for everything

The unions behaved awfully during the pandemic. They have to take responsibility for that.

Teaching unions and some teachers vastly over exaggerated the risk of covid for no identifiable reason.

They want to avoid work seems as reasonable a guess as any

He knows things. He has a whip in his desk and he knows things…

I haven’t read the whole thread but I think people who say ‘school isn’t childcare it’s education’ are making a distinction that most parents don’t make.

So many parents rely on school in order to be able to work to be able feed, clothe and house their children. It is essential childcare as well as education.

And in addition to this, there are quite a lot of children whose situation at home is very unsatisfactory and school provides safety and structure. For parents also who struggle to cope, it is critical. It’s really not just education.

Exactly. And I daresay the head of the unions have complained about government ministers in their WhatsApps as well. To say the least.

Well quite. We're expecting so much of teachers, of schools. We're expecting them to look after our children. Keep them safe. Keep them stimulated. Educate them. But we're also expecting them to to plug all the gaps in the failing social contract, failing social service, failing families, failing economic conditions.

And then when they say "this is too much, we need help" we al stamp our feet and scream and resent them? Seriously??

@Slowsteps

Of course school is childcare.

The main purpose is obviously education but a huge bonus/by product of that is that its also childcare

@herewegoroundthebastardbush

'we al stamp our feet and scream and resent them?'

No one is stamping feet or screaming.

Some might resent teachers for a variety of reasons

Lots don't

And perhaps if they didn't come under so much attack they would feel more supported. It cuts both ways.

Every time I read posts like this I am more and more inclined not to:

• give up holiday time unpaid to go in to support kids with work
• give extra one to one lessons to kids who have fallen behind
• provide emotional support to students who have fallen through the cracks in the system
• give up my evenings, weekends and holidays to run trips
• chase up behaviour issues, call parents (often every week)
• spend my weekends and holidays writing and creating more and more resources to support my classes

I've had covid 3 times. Every time (though I can't prove it), suspect it was caught at school. First time by a y11 who coughed repeatedly in my face because it was funny.

March 2020 I set and marked work online. Every day. I called every member of my form every week and ensure I spoke to them. I came into school to print work packs and send then out. I then became part of the team which dismantled all our IT rooms and delivered machines to every child who did not have a computer. Jan 2021 every single lesson was taught live, online. Individual intervention still happened over teams in the evenings and, in some cases, at the weekend.

Massive state secondary in a deprived part of England. We are shut entirely today for strike action.

We spend more time with many of your children than you do. If you have such contempt for us, then please keep them at home.