Guest post: "We have no choice but to strike"

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I don't like striking - I would much rather spend the day with my year six class. Unfortunately, like so many other teachers I know, I feel I have been left with no choice but to use strike action in an attempt to make the government understand the damage it is doing to our schools.

With this strike, the NUT is calling on Nicky Morgan to increase funding to schools and education, guarantee terms and conditions in all types of schools and resume negotiations on teacher contracts to allow workload to be addressed.

Funding cuts have already had, and will continue to have, a hugely negative impact on the quality of education our schools can provide. As a result of these cuts, many of my local secondary schools have had no choice but to restructure, losing support staff and teachers. The cuts have resulted in increased class sizes, certain subjects no longer being taught, and staff are completely overstretched. Sadly, huge numbers of the remaining teachers have decided to leave these schools – in some cases the profession.

Three of our local secondary schools each had 25 teachers resign at the end of May. The school I teach at would not be able to operate in the way it does without the invaluable contributions of every member of our team. The quality of what we provide is the result of years of hard work and investment. Our pupils need schools run by teams of committed, qualified and experienced teachers who can give them the start in life they deserve.

On top of this, although it was reported that the government made a U-turn on the forced academisation of schools, the reality is that plans to turn schools into academies are continuing, at an estimated cost of £1.3 billion - mainly spent on lawyers' fees and all from public money. At a time when our schools are already seeing huge funding cuts, it is completely irresponsible for money to be spent in this way. If this kind of money is available, why are we losing committed and experienced professionals from our schools? These plans illustrate just how wrong the government's priorities are.

For the first time in seven years as a teacher, decisions made by the Department for Education have made it impossible for me to meet the needs of my pupils. Changes to testing and assessment have been chaotic. What the government has expected me to teach has been too hard for many of my pupils and not useful for any of them. That isn't right and it isn't fair. No child should be made to feel they are failing. I have done my absolute best to ensure this isn't how any of my pupils feel, but the obsession with testing in our primary schools means many children end up stressed, believing they are not good enough, or put off learning completely.

And what is so frustrating about this situation is that there is a better way. This does not have to be how our schools operate. Schools need the space and time to properly prepare young people for the complicated world they are living in. Our schools should and can be places where every child can have their individual strengths recognised, can have their unique needs met, can feel excited about learning and can feel positive about themselves.

I hope that Nicky Morgan starts to take our concerns seriously. I hope she will start to properly engage with the reality of what is happening in our schools and how this is affecting our young people. By striking, I want to send a message to the government that my duty as a teacher is to the children I teach and that its role as a government is to work with teachers to make our schools the best they can be for children we serve.

I support the strike.

There is too much performance related pay pressure on teachers.

Back in 1987 teachers had a "Ir makes no difference to me if you fail your exams" attitude.

This year at DSs Y8 patents evening he was being discouraged by teachers to take their subject at GCSE because they didn't think he would do particularly well Obviously it wasn't presented like that.

We need a happy middle ground as neither attitude is healthy.

I'm sorry but I can't support the teachers on their strikes. The old 'pay and conditions' constantly thrown up as if they are paid minimum wage and over worked in some squalid conditions I would liken to a sweat shop.

With this in mind salaries are above average for other professionals with extra pay for extra responsibilities like SEN and heads of dept / year. If you don't want the extra responsibility don't do it, but from my personal experience most teachers are driven by money and not improving their capabilities(listening first hand to teachers telling each other their extra points but actually hating the extra work they have to do, seems to be a common theme!).

Pay SHOULD be performance based as it is in almost every other industry. We are all judged on our performance and it sends the wrong message if guaranteed pay rises are given without incentive to improve or at least maintain a good performance. Those teachers who need improvement need to be told and again it seems teachers are incentivied by money so could be the best incentive! KPI's are a normal standard of monitoring performance and used in many industries...I appreciate these are children and dont agree with the constant formal assessments however we need to see how are teachers are supporting and developing our children to make sure this is in the correct manner.

Academies will essentially privatise schools and where their funding is allocated. From a private perspective they will be using similar techniques to other private industries. Maybe they will want to focus on resources for the children rather than negotiating with trade unions guarenteed pay rises with teachers. Maybe they'll look at changing the school calendar, maybe less holidays so that work is spread out over the year providing less pressure on teachers to get the work done over condensed time frames. Maybe they will wean out the poor performing teachers and reward those excelling in their role. Maybe, just maybe, they will improve our schools and the opportunities for our children?

In regard to conditions, I appreciate teachers do work long hours during term time but please let's not forget the 13 weeks holiday. If I or anyone else was required to condense my normal working hours into 7 / 8 weeks less per year I too would be feeling the pressure! I am fortunate to be in a job where I can near enough switch off at the end of the day. My husband on the other hand starts work often before 6am and is home after 5pm, he is then on call. Most evenings he is on his laptop and responding to emails as he works for a 24 hour business. He has 6 weeks holiday a year and is on a similar salary to teachers. He has the unfortunate task of dealing with teams of adults often acting like children and is constantly monitored by both internal and external KPIs and is on performance related pay. It frustrates me seeing friends posting on the likes of Facebook how tired they are, how hard they work as teachers and that these strikes are justified when at the same time my husband is in the kitchen on his laptop working away. We then get to see how they go travelling for 6 weeks in the summer to far remote places, something we couldn't do on 2 weeks holiday! Why does my husband do it, he enjoys his work and feels satisfied with the pay he receives. He appreciates this is the business he works in, if he wanted a 9-5 job he'd be in a desk job somewhere, but that's not for him. If it ever got so bad though he would and has considered leaving for an alternative career. He knew what he was getting into when he went into this line of work, as do teachers. This is your job description, tick, these are the hours you will be expected to work, tick, these will be the pay and benefits you will receive incl holidays, tick, this is how you will be assessed / appraised, tick....all pretty standard stuff.

Again from my experience the teachers I know and who moan A LOT are those who have NEVER been out of the education system, school, university, teaching....never known anything outside of this profession and therefore have no reasonable comparison with. I sometimes feel the teachers are deserving of some 'work experience' before they go into teaching as they have no clue about the real world and how to prepare students for the reality of the outside world. They all seem to jump on the bandwagon of the trade unions objectives as soon as they start their PgCE and the mentality that all teachers are hard done by.

I can only put my personal opinion forward given my own experiences in the way others will be supporting the strikes.

Pay and conditions are the only thing we are allowed to give as a reason for striking, ladybird. If we could strike over 'the government are a bunch of shitheads who are destroying education with their stupid, poorly thought out and rushed through policies' then we would be striking way more often.

And only someone with no appreciation of the job would support performance-related pay for teachers. How do you measure teacher performance?

.

How do you measure teacher performance....in a similar way to how do you measure a managers performance in any other role! How do you think we do it in the private sector...

Maybe the restriction on what you are allowed to strike about is what should only ever be considered a fair reasoning...if pay and conditions were ever so poor that strike action was needed...think junior doctors with people's lives in their hands but being forced to work excessive hours at the cost of people dying unnecessarily.

Just my opinion on the situation...

ladybird I've been in the private sector. Teachers are not managers. The suggestion that they might be comparable jobs just shows how little you understand.

Teachers pay is performance related and has been for a number of years

Indeed mrz. I can kiss a payrise goodbye this year, because my Y12s are a bunch of lazy arses who, despite my best efforts, refused to do any work. I also wasn't allowed to kick them off the course, therefore I haven't met my target.

Managers, staff, teachers...we can all be assessed one way or another. Why should teachers be excluded from this?

Because, ladybird of things like this:

I teach a setted subject. Kids move up and down sets according to their results. It is to their benefit to be in the correct set for their ability. If I am paid by their results, there is no benefit to me to promote the good kids who are exceeding their targets, and every benefit to me to demote the ones who are missing their target even if they're not at the bottom of the group.
Bottom set always miss their targets, no matter who teaches them. Top set will usually meet or exceed their targets.
If you were the timetabler, which classes would you give yourself? Would you promote the good kids out of your set?

And there lies the problem.You can't judge teachers on the performance of their classes, but their classes are their job.

Teachers aren't saying they shouldn't be performance managed. But it is the same as working in sales. We are dealing with humans. Tint, hormonal, frustrating humans a lot of the time :)

I had a year 11 boy who refused to write anything. We went through all the behaviour procedures. Head of year involved, SLT. Nada. He sat in that GCSE and wrote nothing. Failed by pm because of it. You can take a horse to water and all that.

Look up the Global Education Reform Movement. More performance related teaching leads to more testing for children.

ladybird,
The long summer holiday doesn't mean you can just make teachers work in any old conditions and they'll have to put up with it because hey, they're getting a long holiday after all.
Many teachers are leaving their profession and that is despite the long holidays, doesn't that tell you something?
They're not afraid of hard work and they're not afraid of stress. This goes beyond that.
I support the strike 100%, for a better education and a better environment at school for our kids.

Just to be clear, teachers are only paid for 195 days of the year, plus statutory holiday.

I left teaching last year (part time) and now work full time all year. I see my kids more and spend more time with them now than I ever did in teaching.

littleladybird14

Salaries

Could you provide information that proves that teachers are above average? the rest of your paragraph is anecdotal.

PRP

How would you make a KPI that is fair to all teachers taking in to account the differing abilities of the children and that the targets set were set 5 years previously before the child went through puberty?

Academies

Please provide proof of your claims that they do this, they have been running for 8 years (or more) there should be data to support your supposition.

Conditions

Teachers want the conditions to stay the same. Not more, not less.

Holidays

Been through this a million times NOT PAID, yes a perk but this could again change depending on the whim of an academy chain.

Your husband

What is it that teachers are told over and over again? If he doesn't like the job he can get a different one.

Teachers that you know

again anecdotal, the majority of teachers that I know worked in industry before they became a teacher. Whose anecdote proves anything.

But this is all academic as if this continues you will get even fewer people wanting to become teachers.

Why?

Bad pay
Bad conditions
Poor facilities
stupid KPI/PRP targets.

I think again with any form of assessment there has to be a human element involved in terms of not always statistical based. I work in the finance industry where employees have targets to meet, if the external markets are such that these cannot be met then these are out of the control of the employee and this is taken into consideration. In the same way if your Y12 class are lazy and are not responding to your teaching your manager would / should be aware of this and the difficulties you are facing and if reasonable make adjustments to your targets? Again if this was done at a local level (academies) this would be far more practical to do so.

It's a shame you mention the setting concerns, surely the targets would be at a level that are achievable for each set and again taking into consideration any exceptions / referrals for further support for the students? I'd hate to think my child was just assumed to 'always miss the target' and left to own devices. I'd hope the teacher in that set would be doing everything they could to help and support them rather than a giving up mentality.

targets would be at a level that are achievable for each set
Targets are set by a computer algorithm run by an external company who have never met the student, based on a few days work in a narrow range of subjects in Y6. Interestingly, these targets also change at least yearly, based on how the most recent cohort of Y11s have done. One year my Y11 targets changed a few days after they sat their GCSEs.

if reasonable make adjustments to your targets
Schools are undergoing massive budget cuts, it's not in their interests for teachers to get pay rises. Indeed some schools deliberately force out expensive teachers through capability procedures in order that they can hire cheap NQTs in their place.

BoneyBackJefferson

A typical response from a typical teacher....I'll await my grade F shall I because someone doesn't agree with your opinion!! I'll take my earings out and roll my skirt down and wait outside teachers office shall I

ladybird

You can't provide information to back up your claims and resort to passive aggressive attacks.

I'm not surprised.

I can see a post that is fairly typical, when faced with solid facts rather than conjecture and ' But surely's

I totally support the strike. i hope it has some effect.

I could support if I wanted to with a bloody PowerPoint presentation, will that get me an A*

Look seriously you refer to my anecdotal references and I have been open about these! These are MY opinions, they may be wrong...so may be yours. We are all entitled to them, I just felt like airing them to allow for some healthy debate.

Except that BoneyBackJefferson's opinions are backed up with facts and she isn't being passive aggressive about gold stars.

But is instead being patronising and demanding statistical information to support comments on a mumsnet forum! Honestly!

Are you avoiding replying to my comment, lady?

Been a little side tracked with Boneys telling off...

And now going to bed sorry!