Teachers strike... what will actually happen in end?!

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My school is striking again next week with others that have teachers from the particular union.

All that is happening is parents are getting massively angry. Kids are missing out. I've used so much holiday on strike days as I have multiple children. I know my anger should not be directed to school but exactly where can I direct it to? I'm pretty sure my MP wouldn't care. He's completely useless.

The government don't seem to care.

I personally think something needs to change in that profession and funding in my area is shocking! It's probably not attracting the best people to the profession and certainly is driving people away.

However, am I right in thinking rishi and co don't care?! Teachers could do 5, 10, 100 days and it seems they won't budge right?

Parents don't seem to care or get angry enough, short of tweeting about it or writing to MP. It isn't really enough to get this resolved.

How do you think this situation will end?

Bear in mind that's for the coming school year – teachers didn't receive anything last year because the Govt won't agree a figure

It was 5% on average last September, which was what the independent pay review body recommended. However the government didn't fund it and it had to come out of school budgets. This was a disaster.

There are four weeks until the end of term and at this rate the strikes will be carrying on come Sept.

The mandate for strike action ends soon. However all 4 teaching and headteaching unions are currently balloting for strike action from September. If those ballots pass threshold, then there will be strikes in the Autumn.

The teachers we know had left but found themselves struggling to find work. They ended up going back to teaching. I know 3 secondary teachers and 2 primary teachers who left and returned

I don’t know a single teacher who has left and reformed-everyone I know who’s left is much happier in their new roles and has no plans to ever go back.

Gillian Keegan has done absolutely nothing to resolve the strikes. All she does is visit colleges and write tweets about apprenticeships. She is refusing to even meet with the unions-all of whom are balloting for industrial actions in an unprecedented act of unity. She had a strop when the teachers refused the 4.5% unfunded (barring the 5%) pay rise and told teachers the offer was off the table and the decision was all in the hands of the independent pay review body. When the review body said it should be a 6.5% rise, the conservatives have tried to bury the news and are now saying they won’t give it anyway.

She is utterly incompetent.

I don’t know a single teacher who has left and reformed-everyone I know who’s left is much happier in their new roles and has no plans to ever go back.

This has been my experience as well. Even with fewer holiday those who have left find they actually get to switch off and relax. None of them would go back to the classroom, and several have said they wished they had left years ago.

nothing will happen

the government don’t care about our children’s education so the strikes won’t bother them

Rishi and co might send their children to private schools but they need the state schools and teachers so joe bloggs can go to work. Not everyone can work from home and those that can often struggle to be effective if they are supervising children at home

Send them to a school that doesn’t strike. My youngest daughters school doesn’t strike, but then they’re very strict on attendance and fined me for taking my disabled daughter on holiday during lockdown when she wasn’t even supposed to be attending school anyway.
Personally I couldn’t care less, schools are becoming increasingly unsafe for children anyway and in my opinion we need to go back to an era where mothers didn’t have to work and could be there for their kids not stuck in some office when she should be home nurturing her family and taking care of herself.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy just to "send them to a school that's doesn't strike". My
Dc are settled so there is no way I would change school.

I agree patience is waring out now. I supported them at first but not any more the amount of disrupted this has caused for myself - I am a nurse and the amount of clinics I have had to cancel at short notice. They don't care about the children if they just strike this much at so short notice so shouldn't be teachers in the first place

I think if the strikes carry on then teachers will lose the support of parents. I know why they're striking and I absolutely support fair pay and funding for teachers and schools but at the same time it is not fair for children to miss out on school, particularly on the back of Covid, or for parents to have to sort out emergency childcare. I was so pleased that my kids' secondary school only shut for the first two days of strike action and has been open since. Consequently my kids have only missed 2 days of school this academic year whereas kids at the other local school will have missed about 8 after the strikes next week. This also undermines all the messages parents and kids constantly get given that school is vital and they can't miss a day.

I don't understand why teachers don't do more 'strike' action within schools. Refuse to do SATs, refuse to do the phonics screening or the Year 4 times tables screening. Refuse to spend hours upon hours writing end of term reports. Refuse to mark books. Things that really won't make much difference to the lives of the children, but will save the teachers so much time and effort and let them just get on with actually teaching.

They don't care about the children if they just strike this much at so short notice so shouldn't be teachers in the first place

So you'd rather they quit instead and we had an even bigger shortage of teachers? That your kid had no teacher rather than a teacher taking the odd strike day?

I don't understand why teachers don't do more 'strike' action within schools. Refuse to do SATs, refuse to do the phonics screening or the Year 4 times tables screening.

And secondary schools refuse to run GCSEs?

Well no, GCSEs affect the children. The 'exams' in primary don't.

I think you are mistaken if you believe they care.

Government schools will go part time and eventually move to online learners and some children will go to actual schools which they pay for.

Like dentists. You use to be able to go and see a dentist once every six months on the NHS and have your teeth cleaned while you were there. Then it was once a year and no hygiene cleans. Now there are hardly any NHS dentists at all.

So what's your suggestion for teachers in secondary, given that 'not marking books' will have fuck-all effect, and my school doesn't do written reports anyway.

I am wondering when most parents are going to clock that many teachers couldn’t give a shit if they lose parental support or not. It’s past that. Many parents are making the job impossible anyway. Last academic year nearly 40,000 teachers left. That’s about 9%. That was for other reasons apart from retirement. They year before? 8,000.

I don’t think teachers give a shit if they lose parental support, they don’t have it anyway. They are outta there.

If you think mothers shouldn't work, are you looking for a situation with only male or childfree teachers?
If you really think mothers should be at home, then isn't it a bit of a waste educating them at all, they could leave school at primary age and leave education to the men.

I'm a teacher. Have been for 24 years. My job has changed beyond recognition since I qualified. I would not recommend anyone trains as a teacher right now.

I don't feel we've really had parental support for a very long time. A significant number of parents seem determined to make my job as difficult as possible in various ways.

Behaviour is massively going downhill due to lack of parenting and proper consequences. I've been bullied by parents, screamed at in the playground and physically pushed about in the playground by parents who are furious that I'm not allowing their kids to stop everyone else in the class learning. SLT do nothing to support us when these things happen.

I've had my pay frozen and had real terns pay cuts for years upon years now. Pay progressionhas been dismantled by the government. I cannot afford to pay my bills on my wages.

Working to rule is not possible. As a teacher, I can't just decode to stop marking books or writing reports.

I'm in the NEU and I will go on strike because it's the right thing to do for my profession and to attempt to force the government to fund schools fairly. I'm past worrying what parents think since many of them already treat me and my colleagues in such a nasty way.

You may notice that most teachers are female. I wonder what will happen to schools when you get your wish and all the mothers leave their jobs?

What the fuck have I just read?! Have we time travelled to the days when women were taught sewing and secretarial skills?

And you have three girls?! God help them.

Support staff will be striking next. Votes are going through until the deadline on July 19th.

if successful. More strikes will happen.

Honestly, if AI can get some of the kids I ‘taught’ online over lockdown to get up on time, engage with the material, remember what they’ve been taught, do the work as per instructions, and upload it correctly to the right online platform on time, then mark it accurately with clear individual feedback, make sure that feedback is acted on by every student, tailor interventions and make sure students turn up to them in their spare time, and then deal with the absence, mental health, motivation and behaviour issues that crop up every 10 minutes in the average class of 30, all while answering loads of parental queries and filling in the relevant paperwork, then fuck me - it can have my job! It can take my soul if it wants. Bonus points if it can do all this in a practical subject.

Come on AI, I’m waiting…

Honestly, unless the government gets round the table and FAST - there will be more widespread strikes in the autumn.

Morale is low right now in schools. There is no money for anything other than necessities, unless you have a PTA topping up the coffers. We are losing staff who can’t be replaced because either they can’t recruit or they can’t afford to recruit. We’ve had redundancies this year. The only people successfully recruited have been to better paid leadership posts, because everything else gets no applicants or sidelined for budgetary reasons. Teams of really vital support workers for the most vulnerable pupils have been decimated to one or two people, who are now continuously stressed as they manage an increasingly complex workload.

I understand why people are leaving the profession. I’m considering it myself.

I'm an English teacher and get offered a job every day via linked in

Nothing. It depends on helping parents to diagnose kids but there’s no help. And when you do, school doesn’t help. One size fits all. So teachers struggle. Parents intervene. Teachers get annoyed. The cycle goes on. Striking isn’t going to change any of it. The kids just get more depressed / go off rails more / get ignored again by working parents / lockdown style all over again. Repeat.

I do primary supply teaching and can pick and choose which schools I go to. And I regularly get offered jobs.

Today, after lunch the TA I was with cried as she had to write accident report and she said that whatever you write the parent will have a go at you.
Why did it happen?
Why didn't you call me? Or why did you bother me if they do call!
Why weren't you watching him?
How is the other child involved being punished, hopefully by firing squad?
What did you do to his bump?
Didn't you know he is allergic to (something that wasn't used)?
Who was there when you looked at his leg?

Stuff like this is just the norm now. Everyone is just desperate to have a go at old and critique whatever they have done.