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?

You are so right. Really teachers should volunteer and refuse to be paid at all. They would if they cared at all about the children.

We got a higher pay offer of 4.5% that we rejected. We then were told to wait for the outcome of the independent pay review body who recommended 6.5%

The government are now not only fighting unions, but independent pay review bodies that they previously said that they respected.

Fuck off with telling us to give up.

Yeah, fair enough - thinking more bored 12 year old with zingers like that.

🤣🤣🤣

Genuinely, you’ve been striking for ages, and have not achieved higher pay. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking creatively, there’s one pot of money, change how you spend it

in what way do you perceive that approach will put teachers back in classroom instead of running out the door without so much as a glance over the shoulder?,

The problem is that all of the public sector wants big rises, in any particular case rightly or wrongly. Teachers aren’t really fighting the government, they’re fighting doctors and nurses.

Good luck with that.

Bullshit. The government is fighting reality and they are going to have to face it sooner or later.

You think? You suppose that any government is going to prioritise geography teachers over renal nurses or orthopaedic surgeons? Pffft.

Stop trying to pit workers against each other.

Nothing to do with this post, but I just want to say THANK YOU to the teachers that care.
There are plenty of good'uns, and a few that really go above and beyond just teaching, though sadly their work alone is not enough to help every child succeed.

I’m not. As you well know.

Any gov has a budget. All ministers compete for Treasury attention on pay and conditions. Whoever has the NHS brief wins.

The rest come after in order of what the political climate of the day dictates. I don’t like this - I’d slash all sorts of funding in favour of teachers - but the fact is that education cannot win against, now, the military, border control or the police. And the soft, social power of teaching has been destroyed by strikes and activism.

I’m not. As you well know

Yes you are. You've attempted to pit teachers against parents and now you're trying to make out we're fighting nurses.

The reality is education is in crisis and the government are increasingly finding out that it is, indeed, their problem.

Not that it is any of your business but one works part time so has plenty of free time to post whatever one wishes. And there's plenty of people on here that have posted more than me, have you asked them why they care? 🙄

But teachers are not badly paid now, that is rather the point. Pop along to the thread about quitting teaching and see the comments about anything else without line management responsibility not matching top end of the pay scale for teaching. I was on 45k when I left and was nowhere near the top of the tree!

I’ve done neither thing. I’ve pointed out that reactions to strikes by teachers demean the profession (rather like the criminal barristers’ strike); and that the teaching unions have, metaphorically, pea shooters to bring to a battle over pay with the Treasury.

I honestly don’t think there’s any better time to get a pay rise than now. The next gov won’t give teachers a look-in. They’ll be shovelling money into the NHS. Take what you can now, or leave if possible.

Where did you teach, @TheSnootiestFox?

You must either have been on the top of the upper pay scale with a hefty TLR, taught in Scotland, or been on the leadership scale, in which case it's entirely appropriate to move to a job outside teaching with line management to have the same pay.

Or you're talking out of your hole.

Because it will put more money in teachers pay now. Less in their pension but let’s be honest, that gold plated pension isn’t working anyway as teachers are still striking.
As other posters have pointed out, there’s only so much money to go round, I fully agree we need to invest more in education but not only in teachers.
we need better buildings, more IT investment to aid and reduce workload, more sports facilities, more support workers for students that are struggling or need specialist provision, the list goes on.

And the NHS is broken, we know this. It doesn’t matter who’s in power, there simply isn’t the cash to pay for everything. As a nation we already owe billions in loans, we have to start looking creatively at how the money in each pot is being spent. And where it can be redistributed.

So you haven’t actually written to your MP as you assume they don’t care?

I have, twice. Got a reply and one that was escalated to Minster for Education.

It’s basically saying why do any of us bother voting anyway as they don’t listen. At some point you have to get past your own inertia too.

The North, and I was top of the Upper Scale with a TLR. I left in 2014 and was on 45k then. No talking out of hole (and what a revolting phrase btw) required.

If you left in 2014 on £45k, it's no wonder you think teacher pay is just fine.

I don't know any teachers not on a leadership spine who earn that much. You have to sell your soul for a TLR these days. I know SENCOs in large primaries who barely scrape one. Most decide it's not worth it. You basically have to do the work for a TLR to get UPS now. I was teaching in 2014, I know how much things have changed.

And it's nearly 10 years after you left.

No wonder we're losing teachers. It's stagnated and gone backwards. As we have already said 100 times. You may think that is acceptable. I really don't.

Schools are in crisis. The reason I don’t think parents realise is that lots are good at hiding it and it is affecting some schools in areas more than others.

So
CAMHS has simply collapsed certainly in our area. It is impossible to get help. Schools are taking the brunt of that and are paying for mental health support out of budgets.
Social services are on their knees. Schools are funding family support workers for Early Help intervention.
Constant changes in curriculum means new resources and they are expensive. Let’s take reading schemes. The government published its own reading scheme - Letters and Sounds. Now that’s not good enough so rather than amend it, schools have to buy their own and they’re very expensive.
Ofsted, the constant shifting of goalposts, the high stakes inspections. Takes up time, headspace which should be focussed else where.
Lack of money for building projects and even big repairs.
Budgets, as a governing body, we set our budget as required, we don’t know what the pay increase will be or if it will be funded. We’ve put in an amount, but we’re still waiting on government and have had to commit to spending for next year.
SEND there are increasing amounts of SEND, initial support comes from school budgets. See issues with CAMHS above for diagnosis. There’s a lack of suitable places in SEND schools, no proper funding to support in mainstream. More pressure on the budget.
Same with alternative provision, the government want schools to crack down on behaviour and then judge because there are too many suspensions or permanent exclusions. Schools are reluctant to permanently exclude because lack of appropriate provision. They then have to spend money doing something with these students e.g. placements, separate units within their school.
Lack of teachers. The government has missed targets for training teachers multiple years in a row. Teacher trainer providers are taking people that they would have rejected. Schools are taking on people who they wouldn’t have done 20 years ago and that’s in some areas where they can recruit. Those teachers need more support, supply costs are high (not that goes to the teachers, but to the agencies themselves.) You then get people being promoted into leadership positions that simply aren’t ready and things are spiral.

I’m not sure what else teachers can do to highlight what is actually going on and how it affects your children. People need to leave aside the moaning and look at the facts. Look at the budgets of your children’s schools, ask your secondary aged child how many cover teachers they had or how many lessons were disrupted because someone kicked off. The 4.5% pay rise would have been accepted if it had been funded, instead heads said there is no room for that and it was rejected. That is the crux of the issue, it isn’t teachers being greedy, it’s that school budgets can not take any unfunded pay rises because they are in crisis due to years of underfunding and other children’s services collapsing.

Renal nurses and orthopaedic surgeons who don’t have a decent educational background (I’m not sure how geography specifically links, here) won’t be of much use.

Well I'm not saying "everyone should be happy to have an extra day off with their kids" - it just happens to fall on my day off this time around and I'm speaking from my own viewpoint only.

Other strike days yes, I've had to work from home while juggling the kids who were pretty much on screens all day, or take annual leave, and fortunately I have been able to do that even though it's been a pain and raised eyebrows at work as I've been the only person affected. Our school has also given us quite a bit of notice. It must of course be harder for those who have jobs they need to be in physically and don't have egv friends or family members to help.

Regardless, I still support the teachers

Great post but bloody hell what depressing reading.

CAMHS is fucked
Social services is fucked
School budgets are fucked
SEND provision is fucked
Teacher recruitment and retention are fucked
Classroom behaviour is fucked
Schools generally are fucked

What hope is there for our children?!

But, you seem to forget that I see what's going on now as a parent. And, what I see is a bunch of power hungry SLT either regularly figuratively beating kids with big sticks when a little compassion would go a long way, or allowing very serious behaviour (I'm talking kids filming other kids in their underwear in PE changing rooms and distributing it) to go virtually unchallenged and very little in the middle.

If most of them forgot their egos and career trajectory for a minute they may find they have more respect from kids and parents alike and the behaviour improves due to better relationships all round. I agree things are dire now. It wasn't like this 20 years ago. More money may help, I'm sure most public services would say the same, but the nature of the type of teacher that heads for leadership now has changed certainly since I started teaching, and it's not for the better. No amount of money can fix that and as a taxpayer I would resent them being rewarded further financially when they're not doing a great job now!

Therefore, as a profession, you reap what you sow, which is in my personal daily experience is perfectly nice middle class kids hating every minute of their outstanding state single sex grammar because of the attitude of 80% of the teachers, and perfectly nice middle class well educated parents refusing to support those teachers because they can see that, using a personal example from my own children, while the school rules might say that a Year 8 with ADHD needs to be detained after school for losing a piece of card 2ins square, the rules of a civilised society are actually quite different and the negative impact of that detention on that kid's self worth and mental health is a far more important consideration. If things are like that in leafy market towns like mine, I can only imagine what it's like in less affluent areas where parents had a grim experience of education themselves and need nurturing and support to break that cycle of hating schools rather than being told they're crap parents and their kids are feral. That's how you'll sort behaviour in schools. Now, off you pop back to your placards and brazier 🙄 and I hope you achieve whatever it is you feel is worth walking out on your pupils for.