To ask why the NEU aren’t sitting down and talking about pay?

[Isntthatapippette]

Genuine not goady.

Dear parents and carers,

I’m writing to update you ahead of the strike action planned by the National Education Union on Wednesday and Thursday this week.

This industrial action will mean more disruption to children’s education and to your lives too – whether that’s work, arranging childcare, or changing other plans.

I am extremely disappointed that many young people will once again miss invaluable time learning with their teachers and friends, particularly after their education was significantly disrupted during the pandemic.

It is made worse by the fact that this strike action is completely unnecessary. As I said to the NEU three weeks ago, I want to get around the table and engage in serious talks on teachers’ pay and other issues to resolve disputes.

My only condition was that strike action is paused so those discussions can take place in good faith and without disruption.

This was the same offer, and the same condition, made to unions representing nurses, ambulance workers and physiotherapists. Those unions accepted that offer, paused their strikes and are now negotiating on behalf of their members in private.

The NEU instead seems focused on strikes and all the needless disruption that brings.

This morning I have written to the unions again to invite them to have those talks on Wednesday and Thursday this week – all they need to do is call off strikes which are unnecessary and benefit no one.

The single best thing the NEU could do for both its members and for children and young people would be to sit down and talk about pay.

I will continue doing everything I can to end the disruption your family is facing as quickly as possible, particularly because I know exams for older pupils are coming up fast.

I hope any arrangements you make this week mean that pupils’ education can continue – even if not in the classroom – and that the next time I write it will be with news that this disruption has been brought to an end.

Yours sincerely,

The Rt Hon Gillian Keegan MP
Secretary of State for Education

Oh! Those minimum wage care home jobs where you work every evening every weekend and every day? So 7 days a week 16 hour days?
Which ones are they?

Or are they shift work with a certain amount of hours per week where you are paid for overtime and given your other days off?

See, as a teacher I spend 12 hours out of the house a day. I regularly kiss my kids good morning and goodnight and spend my whole day with yours. And other people’s. I teach them and care for them; comfort them and amuse them. I then wave them goodbye, attend a plethora of meetings and regularly mark upwards of 100 books per day. Every day. Once home, after I’ve said goodnight to my own primary age children, I eat (sometimes not until 9pm or afterwards) and regularly work on the next day / week’s lessons based on how the children I’ve taught that day have done.
At weekends I mark anything I have missed (30 kids, 5 lessons a day at least. Sometimes I can’t keep up!) and catch up with whatever else I need to do. There’s always something. Holidays the same - except the long summer one where in fairness I do get a break but also spend a week in school putting up displays, sometimes painting the classroom.

In my 20 year career I have held children as they sobbed after being moved into foster care. I have de-nitted hair because a parent had severe chronic pain and couldn’t do it for their child. I have accompanied children on overnight trips spending time away from my own children so that yours could have something to enrich their lives.

I do not get paid for strike days. My daily wage is taken - how much is that you ask? For me? £120. 1/365th of my salary.

Wages aren’t the only reason we are striking. The education system is broken. We are crying out for support. Children are in crisis and the government has underfunded schools to the point of actual ruin.

If you trust us to teach your children - the most precious things you have - and care for them for the majority of their day, why don’t you trust what we are saying to you?

Thanks so much for the warm words and advice.

Well it sounds like you are a secondary school…. Get a grip you knew what you were getting into when you became a teacher! After a few years you can be on 40 k plus a great pension and lots of holidays off per year!

Stop lying.

Oh come on, I'm sure you understood the point. You don't have a class of 200 kids!

The whole situation has opened up a considerable gap between Scottish, Welsh and English teachers . Be interesting to see how that plays out for recruitment near the borders...

Are you stupid?

Oh, hang on.......

Teacher pensions are still very generous. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous.

This should be posted on every thread proclaiming how easy teachers have it.

When I was a HOY, I was in charge of the welfare of 450 students. Regularly held assemblies. We don't just seal ourselves away in our classrooms.

I understood entirely the point. It was to minimise the work of teachers and suggest all we do is glorified childcare . And that we should not expect our pay to have gone up in real terms, silly us.

I support the teachers in their dispute. There is a terrible recruitment and retention crisis in the secondary schools near me, which can only worsen unless there is action on pay and conditions. Yes two days off are disruptive but people are forgetting the chronic disruption caused by not having enough teaching staff and the erosion of quality education because teachers are having to spend a lot more time teaching subjects that they aren’t specialists in.

@Yoyo2021 "i hope they are happy today are kids have had to face enough time off. Shame that for two days some kids are not getting a hot dinner at all!"

Odd that you should put the blame/responsibility for that onto teachers, as opposed to the government who have presided over this shite state of affairs since 2010 and allowed it to deteriorate yet further. It was the Government who closed schools (to most) during the Pandemic and the Government who are eroding living standards to the extent that children are hungry. And now, it is the Government who are responsible for these strikes by refusing to discuss solutions.

People bleating about how there’s no money need to explain how the government found some to give all these new free childcare hours. And the extension to the energy subsidies.

Not investing in education is a political choice, and it has been the political choice of the last 13 years. Education is now in crisis and they still choose to continue not to invest.

Fuckwits.

Schools local to me advertise open positions for months. It's an expensive part of the country and teaching just doesn't pay enough. DS's reception class teacher used to drive 90 minutes each way to and from school. In fact many teachers locally do, until they have children of their own and can't manage the job AND the commute.

Classes locally are often delivered by TAs because there are no supply staff. The strike should give us all a wake up call - with insufficient teachers schools simply won't be able to offer full time education.

I would rather funding go to childcare than teacher salaries. I think their package and salaries are very good. It's a different opinion to yours admittedly and to resort to calling people fuckwits makes me hope you're not teaching my kids.

I think their package and salaries are very good.

Why can we not recruit then?

Talks without conditions. The adult way to go about things.

It’s not an either or situation @Callmenat

Underfund either and the provision will be inadequate. The tories are obsessed with the free market until inadequate investment in labour bites them on the arse.

Margaritawithlime
At weekends I mark anything I have missed...
There’s always something. Holidays the same - except the long summer one where in fairness I do get a break but also spend a week in school putting up displays, sometimes painting the classroom

I do not get paid for strike days. My daily wage is taken - how much is that you ask? For me? £120. 1/365th of my salary.

To be fair - if you are only deducted 1/365th of your salary for a strike day - that would indicate you are paid £120 per day for every day of the year - including weekends and school holidays.

Resorting to insults. I hope you're not another one teaching my kids if that's your cognitive ability when having a discussion.

@Yoyo2021 Yes teachers thought they knew what they were getting into when they started training, but a quarter of teachers currently leave the job within 3 years of qualifying, and a third within 5 years. Recruitment is abysmal. The teaching workforce is voting with their feet, because they thought they knew what they were getting into but the reality of 60+ hour working weeks, evenings and weekends, chronic underfunding of services and support, huge daily pressures and deteriorating behaviour mean that they don't want to do the job, regardless of pay, pensions and holiday entitlements. Staffing is a huge problem in many schools. Increasing pay, and giving schools additional funding to cover the increase so that support isn't cut even more could keep people in the job and maybe attract more. Otherwise who will be teaching your children? Are you going to train?

I really hope some resolution is achieved as I don't know of many (if any) teachers who want to be missing this chunk of time in class. Until the issues around recruitment and retention are resolved then the actual working environment won't improve, however it's clear improving pay conditions would help retain staff currently in post and may entice others to join the profession. This greedy, lazy teacher narrative that many yank out is rubbish.

And I am not a teacher.

To be fair - if you are only deducted 1/365th of your salary for a strike day - that would indicate you are paid £120 per day for every day of the year

If she were Gillian Keegan, she'd be getting about £320 per day.

So what is Gillian doing to earn her £320 per day given that she's refusing to negotiate a massive pay dispute in her department?

Laughing @Callmenat for hoping that a scarce secondary maths teacher isn't teaching their child.

Copy and paste right back at you Clav. Thought you might know the legal precedent.

flintbishop.co.uk/insights/calculating-strike-pay/#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20considered%20the,a%20deduction%20of%201%2F365.

No one ever answers the main question on threads like these:

If teaching's so great, why aren't those posters getting themselves in to train? Most of my graduate friends earn more than me and have, they admit, pretty decent holidays themselves. For some reason, none of them want to leave their jobs and retrain.