Militant teachers unions threaten to strike again

[longfingernails]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17644678

They can't stand the improvement in standards due to competition in provision, putting pupils rather than union teachers first, and the death of the bog-standard comprehensive.

More power to Michael Gove's elbow!

What improvement in standards?

They really are their own worst enemies

I feel that to strike about pay and pensions is wrong in this current climate but I would strike becuase of the extra workload, pressure from inspections, the feeling that you have to make silk purses from sows ears and it being my fault when kids WONT work. I am truly exhausted after this term and feel useless despite me working my butt off trying to get kids who wont work actually do work and the ineffectual SMT who are also brow beated from those above them in the LEA. So I probably will not strike for pay and pensions but for the above.

because!

T0lk I agree with you. Teachers are in a ridiculous situation. Expectations from them from the Central gov, media and society are at odds with expectations from their LAs.

I had a small bet with myself over who stated this thread! And I won! You might have noticed the so-called 'militant' unions havnte had a strike for years.
Maybe you should become a teacher LFN if you think you could do better in the same conditions for the same pay and wave goodbye to your pension.

I always have the same answer to anyone on this subject and frankly I'll give it bluntly as I won't bother to monitor this thread after replying:

If we have it so fucking great as teachers you have two choices:

Get off your fucking arse and insist on the same standards for yourself.

Or

Try it. See how long you last. Try it.

OP,
Your post doesn't really make sense. The article is about one union only and the NASUWT is hardly militant.

Why are you so anti-teacher? All of the teachers I know care deeply about their students and work extremely hard to help them to do as well as possible.

FullBeam I am not anti-teacher; I am rather against the institutional left-wingery that dominates the education profession, the worst aspects of which are exemplified by the beaviour of the far-left teaching unions.

One shocking statistic: only 17 teachers were sacked for incompetence in 10 years since 2001-2002:

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4028054/17-duff-teachers-axed-in-10-years.html

The fact is that unions and bad teachers have been prioritised for too long; what matters is the standard of education for our children and how it stacks up to our international competition. If that means sacking bad teachers after only 1 term, then good - bad teachers deserve to be sacked. If that means overriding the ridiculous LEA system and freeing schools to compete and raise standards, then good. If that means paying good teachers more than bad teachers, then good. If that means making exams significantly harder so our exams aren't an international laughing stock, then good. If that means tearing up the bog-standard comprehensive system which has failed so badly over the last few decades, then good. The unions HATE this movement towards quality and competition - they know full well that the Gove changes are effectively irreversible.

I think you just hate Unions LFN. Those pesky people who bought you decent working hours, the weekend, minimum wage, safety conditions at work, breaks, the right not to be sacked on a whim and loo breaks. You know, those things workers dont really need.

Fair enough to have a discussion about whether the changes to the education system and the teachers' T&C merit threatened strike action. But to call the NASUWT "militant"??? Ridiculous!

I feel for the teachers I really do, they are in an impossible position with lazy feckless parents being paid to breed lazy feckless children they do not stand a chance.
Equally since by their own admission many of these children will never work who exactly do they think will pay for their pensions ? The pyramid scheme no longer works does it ?

LFN and Mr Gove
Sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

I love LFN's use of 'wow' words when describing Michael Gove in every deliberately provocative teacher-bating educational thread s/he starts.

LFN,

I see you are making a distinction between being anti-teacher and being anti-teaching union. I also find some of the union rhetoric to be rather old fashioned however, I cannot agree that unions want to prevent students from making progress! That makes no sense to me nor does it reflect my experiences of teaching.

On the subject of incompetent teachers, I agree that it does seem that few have actually been sacked. I have worked in 5 comprehensive school in the last 20 years and I have come across a very few teachers who weren't up to the job. They were not sacked but they left the profession before they could be sacked! If you are not good at teaching it is very obvious and you would have to be extremely deluded not to realise that you couldn't cope. In those circumstances, the teachers who actually are incompetent would not fight the competency procedures and wait to be sacked. You would go and find something else to do whilst you could still get a decent reference, wouldn't you?

mnhubbie - if we ever complain about pay in our blue chip company the director says go and get a job elsewhere. if you aren;t happy with your lot (which seems a lot better than many people's) perhaps you should change jobs. yes, I'm sure we'd all love a job with your pension and job security (was it 17 teachers that have ever been sacked) but guess that in the real world (ie private sector) thats just not viable

fullbean - i guess all the incompetant teachers must go to my younger children's school.

So ok, the NUT are striking over pensions. Fair enough. I'd expect nothing less from a union than to strike over pay.

But what I am not 100% clear on though is the NASUWT are striking because of "ideologically driven attacks" on state education."

What does that mean? Now I know there's uproar over the idea of academies but personally I'm not seeing anything wrong with the theory. Putting heads in charge and freeing them up from local authority control. Letting the heads manage the school, the way they see fit.

So by striking are the unions therefore saying "We want things to stay as they are. We like being centrally managed, told what to do and we think standards are good enough?"

So you don't think it's bad headteachers who make bad schools, then, niceguy2? You think it's all down to the local authority???!!!

I'm sure I read somewhere that Gove plans to overhaul teacher training and that he would like teachers to have an MA. So now we expect teachers to be better qualified, pay them less according to where in the country they live, reduce their pensions and fine schools if children fail to learn. There are many barriers to learning for some children from disadvantaged backgrounds, making bogey men of teachers will not address this.

Many people revile social workers and it would seem many have little respect for teachers too. I have done both and teaching is by far the harder job.

In respect of the perceived threat of privatisation by stealth, I think the unions are bang on.

I know. We are always being told that private enterprise is so much more virtuous and efficient than anything provided by the State. Let's dispense with state provision of anything - including politicians. They are all so useless, inefficient and corrupt, we might as well be run by Google, if we aren't already. They could even do home schooling for us. I'm tired of stupid people pretending they have any understanding of what they are up to when their whole rationale for privatising everything is that they are indeed too stupid to organise any projects of their own and would rather someone else be blamed for their mistakes whilst they ponce around as window dressing, pretending that's democracy.

I am not unsympathetic to some of teachers concerns and certainly couldn't do their job and would not claim to be able to.I suspect they couldn't do mine either though

However I do think they need to be careful, because the general public is now starting to switch off when teachers complain .."it's just teachers moaning again" and consequently their message is getting lost and they are starting to be seen as a group of moaning minnies .

It was interesting that on the news today the newscaster said "they have added several grievances including academies "etc .It sort of implied that they already had a long list of moans and now they were adding some more.

A wind up merchant. Hasto be. Please God.

Rabbit, I'm sure there will be bad headteacher's, just like there'll be bad nurses, bad cops etc etc. But we can't base a whole education system around "what if we get a bad headteacher?"

I just personally believe that if you give someone the responsibility then they should also have the power. So, if we are to hold headteacher's accountable for everything which happens at the school then it's logical to me that they should get to power to decide where the money is spent.

I also believe that a headteacher who is in the trenches so to speak on a daily basis is in a better place to decide what to spend money on than some LEA in the local townhall, where everything is decided by committee.

And as for mini's point about raising the standards yet paying them less. Well we live in a free market economy. If these highly qualified MA employees can get a better offer in the private sector then the government will have to increase their offer to attract them. At this moment in time there's no shortage of teachers at all.

Longfingernails - There's so much that goes on behind the scenes - that if you believe the headlines and the media coverage then you only get a very corrupt / naive / blatantly wrong view.

WRT sacking of teachers. I have seen very few teachers sacked because of incompetency. However, I have seen several pushed out. There are more than one way to skin a cat you know, and it seems increasingly common to initially employ teachers on a one year contract, so if they're no good, you simply don't renew their contract - no need to drawn out sackings, and the teacher is gone. I've seen that and probation periods used a lot. If you believe the sun article, then you can only get a very naive view at best.

I work in FE and to be frank the govt hasn't got a clue when it comes to further education. When the Tories were in opposition they promised to end the funding disparity between FE and school sixth forms and all the problems this caused. This turned out to be a blatant lie, as all they have done since being in power is to cut FE funding (in some areas by up to 32%). I work in FE sector and next year we're looking at another cut in funding - which means as staff we're going to get another 8% pay cut (or have to work 8% more for the same money) this in itself wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that we had a similar pay / funding cut last year, this is on top of a 3 year+ pay freeze, having to pay more for pensions (increase of about 2%). So since Conservatives have come in power, By Sept, I'll have had a pay cut of about 15% (not including inflation considerations).

FE sector problems.

But where is this in the Sun? Somehow these stories never seem to make the news. There's always so much that goes on behind the headlines. I really wouldn't believe all that you read (or anything that Gove says for that matter).