Teachers to strike - 30 June

[meditrina]

breaking now on SKY

Overwhelming vote by 2 teachers' unions (92%)

i'm married to a teacher, i get 6 weeks annual leave, 5 days shut down and 8 bank holidays - i know in our household who actually gets the most time off and it isn't the person working 6 months a year for £30K

Dh is on nowhere near 30K in FE.

But we are free childcare, that's why people get upset.

I had a parent who was outraged when my school closed so that staff could attend the funeral of our colleague who had been murdered. She wrote a 2 page letter about how inconvenient it was

This is more than just about teachers though. The public sector pensions situation has to be resolved, the country simply cannot afford it. It always amazes me that every single time the government proposes changes to contracts of public sector workers they threaten, and frequently do, go on strike. In the private sector this happens all time, in fact often the employees will agree to take a 10% pay cut because they want to work together to keep their company afloat and therefore their jobs. Another problem here is that all we seem to hear is teachers moaning, about pay, about pensions, about the amount of prep time they get. What I don't hear is how concerned they are about the standard of the education our children are getting which has, as many parents will agree, gone way south over the past 20 years.

The public sector will always squeal because it can abuse its monopoly position make others suffer.

The pension has been rising every year as life expectancy goes up, there need to be cuts.

Many people have lost jobs gone on short time working and take the pain constantly, this is a small readjustment.

What salary is a main scale teacher on after 7 years?

PPA, teaching assistants, winding down scheme

If teachers are so amazing why are education standards so poor and getting worse?

I think you'll find that government 'initiatives', major changes to the curriculum, to expectations, OFSTED and making teachers jump through a million pointless hoops doesn't help with that, rainbows. Teachers, generally, want their students to make progress, to do well and to enjoy learning.

'If teachers are so amazing why are education standards so poor and getting worse?'

I blame the government, the parents and the media, plus crap celebrities.

PPA is less than half a day a week. Do you think this is sufficient to do all the extras needed for a good teacher? Or even for a ot so good teacher?

Teaching Assistants - they do an entirely different job to the teacher. They don't do the teacher's job, they asisst withchildren's needs in the classroom. Not all schools and all classes have TAs. Different TAs have different roles.

Winding Down Scheme??? What is this?

I thought the standard FTE working year was 225 days, so teachers aren't that far adrift in the first place. But teachers are of course not the only profession which works more than their basic number. I had thought however that teachers pay was annualised based on their basic number of days, so the longer holidays were allowed for in pay anyhow IYSWIM.

From my experience there are now far more good teachers around than there was int he past. Just other things int he system holding standards back. Also, there was no inspections way back when so no way of judging schools, so comparisons are difficult to say. Exam results havn't gone down after all, which is the only real way to judge with schools fromt he past/

'What I don't hear is how concerned they are about the standard of the education our children are getting which has, as many parents will agree, gone way south over the past 20 years.'

Despite all the improvements put in by all the governments?
Beats me, I've been teaching since the Golden Age and I'm the same person. So it can't be my fault.

You are correct meditrina

Well I completely support the strike action. Not a teacher, but my mother was one, as was my grandfather.

My mother is 68 now. She has been retired for 5 years or so. The idea of her still teaching now is ridiculous. Yes some 68 year olds are spry and healthy. My DM is pretty well, but has very bad arthritis in one hand, and also her knees. She couldn't stand and take 7 lessons in a day. She isn't decrepit in any way. But she's a normal 68 year old with normal aches and pains.

Teaching isn't an especially well paid profession. I was earning about 28K several years ago as a town planner (also a 'profession') and I'd say I didn't work anywhere near as hard as my dc's teachers do - in terms of evenings and weekends at least.

Physically the job is more tiring than my more desk-bound work. I was also able to have a level of flexibility around my working day- starting early if I needed to leave early. Working through my lunch break if I was in late and so on. If I needed to see children's plays or if dd was ill I was able to work around it. And I worked from home for part of the week. This flexibility does not exist in teaching to the same degree. My mother would struggle into work even if feeling rotten, only to then get ill at the start of every holiday.

In order to attract the bright and motivated, who are basically the people we all want to be teaching our children, there have to be some perks. The salary is not exceptional. The pension scheme is one way of attracting men and women who could earn more in other employments, to become teachers.

meditrina - you are right, they are not. I think teachers are only getting up in arms on here now as they feel they need to justify themselves in response to criticism. It was others who brought up these things first, teachers nd supporters have merely reacted.

"I think you'll find that government 'initiatives', major changes to the curriculum, to expectations, OFSTED and making teachers jump through a million pointless hoops doesn't help with that, rainbows. Teachers, generally, want their students to make progress, to do well and to enjoy learning."

Why don't teachers strike re: this crap, this i support also the school that went on strike due to lack of support SMT in tackling behaviour

But there were metrics in 2006

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/07/uk-schools-slip-world-rankings?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Witty
As I explained earlier - you are only allowed to strike about T&C of employment. Not government initiatives.

I love teaching, it is all that I have ever wanted to do. I changed my union membership because I did not want to strike and wanted more time to think.

I will not be teaching at 68, I work on average 15 hours a day and put in more hours over the weekend. It is not just the hours you work but the nature of the work, particularly if you have a role like a head of year. I can deal with some , quite frankly, traumatic stuff. I then have to go straight into teaching a GCSE or a Level class as if nothing happened. I guess that I have another 10 years in me, I will not be one of those tired bitter teachers who has given her best years to this career and then starts to hate it and gradually becomes a little more shit every year.

I simply cannot afford to pay any more pension contributions. In order to facilitiate the number of hours I work my partner has to reduce his hours. I am, therefore, the major breadwinner. If these pension changes happen I may have to consider leaving teaching - and that breaks my heart as I love my job and I am bloody good at it.

The cost to the taxpayer for teachers' pensions is forecast to rise from £5bn in 2005 to almost £10bn by 2015 as more staff retire and life expectancy increases.

The pension deficit is clearly the biggest financial problem facing the UK. The total UK pension deficit is £4 trillion, four times the national debt. Increased lifespans are just making both the state pension and public sector pensions totally unaffordable to the taxpayer.

The pensionable age is too low. Having 65 as the pensionable age might be sustainable when average lifespan is 65-70, but when expected lifespan is 80+, then the pensionable age probably needs to be 75. Also all forms of defined benefit pensions (final or average salary) need to be replaced by defined contribution pensions. This places investment risk on the worker and not the taxpayer leading to no more pension blackholes.

Not very nice for any of us since we end up all contributing more to get out far less. But I don't want to leave my DC's paying for my debt, like the baby boomers have left me paying for theirs.

i can't believe the attitude of some mumsnetters towards teachers. These people are responsible for educating your children, they are the ones who will be primarily aiding them to become knowledgeable in many subjects, help them to get into higher education and eventually the jobs they will then do until they retire and you begrudge them a fair wage and pension because you perceive their jobs as a cushy number. It is attitudes like this and a total disrespect for teachers that makes teaching so hard. Children pick up on parental apathy and behave accordingly.

Why weren't parents up in arms yelling 'Stop messing our children around, with continuous changes in style and method and content of curriculum, and making teachers and staff waste huge amounts of time on initiatives that were barely embedded before being scrapped.
Education has been treated as one gigantic, continuously changing experiment for years and no one not at the chalkface seemed to care.
How many parents are still asking ' My Y2 got a level 5b in maths, is this good?' Confusion and chaos and confuddlement everywhere.

goblinchild - as has repeatedly been said here teachers can only strike over their pay and work conditions not over curriculum.

Er, Katz, Goblin wasn't having a go, she was replying to witty

I know that.

sorry - misread your post.

I don't agree that the salary isn't exceptional, the salary is good. I read something recently about how many teachers had lost their jobs through incompetence over the past 10 years and it is very very low. Poor teachers do not loose their jobs, they continue in teaching and then collect their fat pension at the end. One of the problems I think teachers face these days is that many many middle class parents grew up when qualifications were hard fought for and they can see standards slipping. As professionals themselves they won't be fobbed off with excuses and expect teachers to also be professional, I am sorry to say this but many or whom are not.

As regards a 68 year old teaching my children, I accept that this is probably a bit old for the physical requirement of the job but for the knowledge, experience and fact that I know that they would have had to work very hard for their qualification I would prefer it to a GCSE educated NVQ 23 year old.