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

[SpringPop]

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?

😂 yes dear

The government won't even sit down with the unions- it's not the unions fault.

The government are going ' la la la ' with fingers in their ears ignoring the unions and generally not giving a monkeys
That's how it looks to me anyway
I think they just want everything to fail tbh

This. When I was a teacher, I spent so much time chasing up poor behavior after school and spoke to many parents who either didn’t believe me, didn’t care much or insinuated that it was somehow my fault as my class wasnt engaging or important enough (Spanish). Some parents of pupils who had chosen it for GCSE admitted they had told their kids to disregard my subject for other more important ones. I was asked on a daily basis why they had to learn it and basic instructions such as take out your pen/open your book were a struggle for some pupils. It drained me to the point where my lesson planning deteriorated as I just completely lost the joy for my subject or teaching.

i now work as a care worker and spend all day cleaning up bodily fluids for little more than minimum wage and am generally happier but still get occasional pangs of sadness that I couldn’t ‘hack’ it. They are crying out for subject specialists like me but i can’t face the daily abuse and neverending workload. I don’t know what the answer is but I have so much respect for teachers battling the system everyday. Hopefully a new government will change things for the better.

LOL yeah, send your kids to schools where staff aren't allowed to strike. That sounds like a sign of morality in a parent.

And I am one of them in support of strike action.
I WILL be striking. I have a 1-1

There's no need for older teenagers to be in school, they can access all information online, sending a teenager into school is like sending a horse and cart down the motorway, times have changed, teachers want to stay in some sort of time warp, constantly complaining it's not a the job it used to be, that's because nobody else's job is like it used to be either, time has moved on, the schools are unfit for purpose, a lot of teachers aren't up to the job and most kids are bored stiff and hate it. School is not setting our young people up for the world we live in today. It worked in the Victorian era, but totally out of touch in today's world.

I support teachers and the strikes, they aren't just doing it for themselves they are doing it for our kids.

I also find it baffling that people don't teach their kids to respect teachers tbh but going on mn the kids are only mimicking the parents views on teachers. If mum doesn't give a shiny shit about the teacher, then little Jonny won't will he.

God knows what will happen when this next generation turns into adults...

Oh, did you come with your PHD in educational theory? There is a reason so many children disengaged from learning since online/Covid school.

There's no need for older teenagers to be in school, they can access all information online

Absolutely fucking insane that people are still trotting out this pile of shite after lockdown.

They will cobble together some sort of settlement that increases their pay enough to call off the strikes. Shame about the kids who were thrown under the bus in the process.

🤷 My profile is for outer London but am currently in a job. The past few weeks I've had an email or call daily.

Why would I lie about that?!

@Lateliein
Totally believable that you're offered a job every say. That's how dire the current situation is. Schools are desperate! (Although I'm sure you're a great teacher🤣).

I don't understand why people don't get it.

My forecast:

All the teaching unions will vote to take strike action (think it was only the postal strikes which meant the threshold wasn’t met in time). So in Autumn, with all unions striking, there will be mass closure of schools. If parents think it’s annoying now, with only partial closures, they’re going to be really put out in Autumn.

Hopefully the parents will put pressure on the government to negotiate with unions because they’re sick of strikes. And either the government will listen and begin to negotiate, or they won’t and they’ll be voted out at the next GE. And a Labour government will negotiate with teachers and invest more in schools, like they did in 97.

This is a good idea. I support the strikes. Money coming out of schools already crap budgets to pay teachers won't be good for our children either, just as missing school isn't.
So yours is a win win.
Even my DC are becoming annoyed with the strikes now. I'm not sure if it's only because these are the last few weeks and usually a lot of fun activities going on or if they genuinely are just tired of the strikes, but either way they aren't happy about not being able to go to school for the two days next week though they do understand why.

There are rules around striking. If they just refused to do their jobs (according to their job descriptions) instead of striking they’d be fired.

Quite a lot of the country is already halfway there.

Also is it just me but people seem to have forgotten what it was like when kids were doing remote learning during covid .

It was a complete and utter nightmare and that was with your own kids who you love dearly. Most parents I know were losing the will to live.

A teacher has 30 of those kids and actually has wants to teach them. We should be imo thanking the ground they walk on frankly.

The teacher bashing on mn is ridiculous, ironically the people bashing teachers on here probably were losing their minds teaching their own little darlings at home.

So shocking Sunak, who is a law unto himself, is planning on totally ignoring recommendations of independent review boards. He is an absolute disgrace and let's not forget nobody even voted for him. The sooner he goes the better.

Forgive me if I’m wrong but as far as I understand, hasn’t Starmer ruled out pay increases for all public sector workers as well? So even if we finally get rid of Rishi and his crowd, there still won’t be any resolution for teachers strikes.

Starmer isn't currently in power and if the election is Oct 2024 as predicted, there will have been two Tory teacher pay rises in the meantime.

Starmer may have to revise his position when he sees how few teachers there are left (so might Rishi, tbh).

I wonder if the same poster complains about the low level of contact hours in universities (four hours per week in some subjects).

And I'm a grown adult who finds that any training that work schedule us to do that is delivered online is a waste of time, you learn properly with an instructor.

Who knows?!

For schools to work efficiently, teachers to be happy, and every child to succeed it would need a LOT of investment I would imagine...

But health services need cash, care homes need cash, the armed forces need cash, you name it! I think we forget that our parents' / grandparents' generation had it easy to some extent, and perhaps we expect too much.

I home educate (electively yet reluctantly) as one of my children had problems with school, and was also an unsolvable problem to school.

Maybe a completely different set up would work - teach young kids to read / write / add up at school, but then provide older ones with a more bespoke education. Like a mini-apprenticeship. Teachers won't have to deal with wild teens, teens get an education dependant on their interests and abilities. Parents can work, and workplaces will just be a bit more diverse.

Hahahaha

Sorry, let me pick myself up from laughing. You've clearly no idea how much "work" these teens did (or didn't do) during Covid.

The vast majority did not engage with anything the school provided. Just did not do the work. Many not at all but there was no more than a token engagement from almost all. Parents either didn't or couldn't make them. The few that turned up to online lessons either wouldn't put cameras on ("it's broken" "my battery will cut out" "I don't have a camera" etc etc) or, if they did, were obviously playing with phones off screen. It's far easier for even the most dedicated pupil to switch off at home with all the distractions that brings than in a classroom where there's nothing else to do.

A lot of those teens are now at GCSE or A level or even uni level - and the impact of Covid and "learning" from home on their education is still marked. If the government goes this way - and it might with the teacher shortage crisis - a tiny minority may still be ok. Most teens won't be.

Same here. I'm a maths teacher and last time I showed even the tiniest bit of interest (one email to one agency) I had six full time job offers from them that day, all from my local area. It's that bad.
I trained a couple of decades ago and my pay as a starting teacher then was more in real terms than that I'd get now being at the top of the scale.

Schools can't get science or maths teachers for love nor money. Of course not. A science degree or a maths degree gives you huge earning potential elsewhere. And people will only do it for the love of it for so long, especially when the job is so stressful and schools so pitifully underfunded. You have to pay the bills and it's getting increasingly impossible to do that on a teaching wage.