My child's school is striking next Wednesday

[Cherryblossom200]

Hi all,

Just found out my daughters school is striking next week. The email from the head tried explaining its not just about pay, but about cuts to education as a whole. I understand there are a huge amount of problems, however striking is the wrong way to go about it especially when it concerns children. They have lost so much time in school over covid this seems ridiculous. I'm a working parent, we all have our issues right now but I can't walk out and strike. To say I'm angry is an understatement.

I'm sure this will be an contentious issue and some might disagree, which is fair enough. But I'm fuming at the moment and needed to vent!

Some of my friends schools are staying open, it looks so far like only two schools in the area are striking.

I've shared my view, I'm not changing my mind on it. I truly hope the strikes work. But I feel something much more radical needs to happen. Which would firstly begin with a new government.

I'm leaving the conversation now and believe we have to agree to disagree on this one!

@Return2thebasic a friend asked the headteacher today at drop off so hopefully we will hear soon! Seems a bit odd. Anyone else not heard a peep? I am planning for youngest to be off school and will aim to work from home then at least I know I have it covered. I don’t understand why they would say nothing at all! Maybe that is the guidance.

mine are in secondary now. I cannot tell you how bad it is.
PE teachers covering tech & English
subs covering maths and everything else.
one music lesson this entire year
substandard teaching in a lot of lessons as it’s a way to keep A teacher.
As far as I can work out there’s two experienced teachers in the entire school. I’m not being ageist but schools need a mixture of new and old to function well.

honestly, this is a minor inconvenience in the scheme of your children’s education

@Mythicalmol I’m a Chair of Governors. We aren’t allowed to ask if teachers are going on strike, legally they don’t have to tell us until the actual day.

Some of our teachers have given us the heads up, but they are under no obligation to do so. Your HT may not know. I’d assume it’s closed unless you hear otherwise.

We got an email last week that they plan to strike on 4 days: 1st Feb, end of Feb and 2 days in March if I'm not mistaken.

I’m glad they are striking and I’m a single working parent so yea Iv has to figure out extra childcare

wish the whole of those who are low paid in the country would bloody strike sometimes ( not practical I know ) maybe then the higher ups might actually take some notice

Am I the only one who's glad that the kids are having a bit of time off for some unplanned downtime?

Time off? My DC are all in school as usual. My nieces and nephews are going to be set work online. No days off for any of them.

I understand that you are fuming, you should be fuming! But not at the teachers, educators and school staff who are working tirelessly around the clock to try and provide a scrap of adequate education and provision without anywhere near the right amount of resources…mostly staff! The schools in my area were already at critical/crisis point at the start of the academic year 2019/2020 and then we all know what happened and now so many schools are beyond crisis point!

Ask yourself this; what is one day compared to terms or even years of being taught by none subject specialist teacher? I’m a MFL teacher and for the past couple of year we’ve had a whole term of some classes being taught by someone with absolutely no knowledge of any modern foreign languages because they were the only “body” that we could find to “teach/mind/babysit/crowd control” the classes. This is not just in my subject but in key subjects like maths and science. Indeed I have taught maths and science (which I have a GCSE in) over the past couple of years because there is no one else. I haven’t studied these for 19 years.

Ask yourself this: what is one day when compared to years of being in classes of 36 or sometimes more with no teaching assistant and perhaps 1/3 of those children with significant SEN, all being managed by one person. If a lesson is 1 hour, that’s less that two mins per pupil but the 12 or so with SEN will likely need much more time, leaving some pupils with zero interaction with a teacher or adult in that lesson. Appealing expectations.

My school, a good school, simply cannot recruit qualified staff for many teaching positions and I know of many who are making plans to leave, leaving further vacancies! What’s one day compared to the importance of making the government realise that the storm that the teachers and headteachers have been warning about for years is here and quickly turning into a tsunami? Please be fuming, and please advocate for our children but please aim it in the right direction! We are already at the point where the damage done to the education system for the past 12 years is going to take years and years to fix! We cannot allow it to get any worse.

I'm sorry but this reeks of nothing other than entitled bullshit from you and these other parents. Teachers owe you and these other parents fuck all, we are well within our rights to withdraw our labour at any time if we see fit - and as previously stated, withdrawal of labour will soon become permanent in many cases.

FYI, you say 'it'll cause nothing but disruption', that's exactly what it is designed for. To make people realise how vital these services are and without them how inconvenient life will be.

You keep paying some insincere lip service to hoping the strikes work, however, in reality you don't give a damn about teachers pay and conditions. You are annoyed at having to rearrange childcare for the day. Well redirect your anger because I am finished using up my own time at the evenings and weekends to plan/mark for other people's children while my own children miss out on time with me.

@Cherryblossom200 So, "something" needs to be done as long as it doesn't inconvenience you in the short term.
Well, have a little think about how much you will would be inconvenienced when your child has a succession of TAs supervising them whilst not covering the curriculum they're meant to. Or when classes are sent home on rotation over the course of weeks as there are not enough teachers in school. When, at secondary, they might have to teach themselves core content at A' Level or be "taught" maths in the school hall with a hundred other kids by video.

I support you striking but I don’t understand the last part of your post. The strikes / payrise won’t mean you don’t have to mark anymore. So won’t affect time with your children? If you didn’t want to mark others Childrens work, teaching wasn’t the right job for you.

Why should teachers be marking children's work in the evenings?

With better working conditions there would be time in the day or smaller classes to enable live marking or more staff to support.

One stroke probably won't make a difference, no.
A series may have more impact but who knows. Will they listen? Will the government care? Maybe it might make some more people start to realise how bad state education is getting and has been for a long time. It doesn't matter how much teachers care if there is no money, no budgets and little to no government support.

What we do know though is - Doing nothing and just letting things continue to get worse and worse definitely isn't going to help!

You know what they say, those that can, do. Those that can’t teach.

Did anyone even ask the question how to show that you are ignorant without saying that you are ignorant

@4thonthe4th

I didn't say I didn't want to mark work. I said I want to stop doing it for free. Teacher's contracted hours are nowhere near long enough to do everything that is expected of them. We are contracted to and paid for 32.5 hours per week. 5 hours per day (taking out lunch/break which is another story) is spent in contact with the pupils. That leave approx 7.5 hours per week to plan, prepare, mark, have meetings, write IEPs, contact parents etc.

I have 30 children in my class, I have 3 sets of books to mark each day, take an average of 2 mins per book - 3 hours marking time. So, after a Monday that just leaves me with 4.5 of paid time to complete the rest of the duties.

Teacher often work upwards of 15+ hours a week just to meet our current workload. Terms and conditions need to change marking policies need to change.

Today in my secondary school, we had groups of GCSE students who had NO LESSONS with a specialist qualified teacher.
This is the reality of education that people should be angry about, not a few days of strikes.

Right, sorry for misunderstanding.
Do you think it would also be better to increase the contracted hours as well as the pay?

@4thonthe4th

I'd rather the silly marking policies be done away with to be honest to lighten the unnecessary work that is to be done.

I wouldn't mind more contracted hours which would have to be properly remunerated.

All our silly marking policies have gone. All marking is done live. All that is required is a tick to show you’ve seen it. If you aren’t talking to the child about it as they are doing it then what is the point? Our head is an ofsted inspector.

@PriamFarrl

Amen to this. Quality feedback for the child rather than writing nonsense feedback so it looks good for parents/OFSTED/SLT.

I recall being told to given written feedback on every piece of work.
For reception children.

Who couldn’t read.

Their parents can read it for them.

I can see why teachers in the U.K. have the reputation that they do.

Parents don't see a child's work every day! What's the point in reading a years worth of comments at the end of the year! Verbal feedback while working is far better for everyone.

What? How are their parents reading something on a book which remains in school for the entire year?