Managing school strikes

[mamnotmum]

Just had an email from school to say they are shut next Thursday for strikes and will update us soon about a strike on 2 May.

It's not that I don't support the teachers but there is no way my employer is going to give me a day off with less than a weeks notice (paid or unpaid) and I can not work from home/bring my child to work.

I realise some people have grandparents / friends but is anyone else finding it increasingly difficult to manage?

Absolutely this

The ONLY impact these strikes will have is on children's education. Not the government, not senior management, not local government, not anyone who has any decisions to make about pay or even conditions/state of education funding

ONLY children

Support staff Unions are also possibly balloting for strike action apparently as well in relation to their own pay increase (or lack of it)

I didn't realise it would be classed as covering to take a different class instead, as the school is still down the same number of teachers and is sending the same number of children home. It just doesn't seem right that one group of children are sent home over and over again while another doesn't miss a day.

We have several maths classes who don't have a maths teacher. That's also not right, and it's happened for a lot more than 6 days.

*Absolutely this

The ONLY impact these strikes will have is on children's education. Not the government, not senior management, not local government, not anyone who has any decisions to make about pay or even conditions/state of education funding

ONLY children*

You have to balance this against the ‘do nothing’ option.

If teachers do nothing - except continue to leave, and continue to fail to be recruited at the current rate - then we are sleepwalking to catastrophe.

That will have a worse impact on children - no qualified teachers in multiple subjects per year in KS3, say, or primary classes with no qualified teacher for several days of every week as well as no support staff at all - than a few days that the Government could resolve relatively straightforwardly if they genuinely engaged.

It will be evened out very soon when the whole workforce is out.

All of the workplace benefits we have right now (maternity, paid leave, pensions, working time directive etc) are as a direct consequence of people speaking up and demanding better.

Whilst I get that it's a pain in the arse to manage strike days, it's hypocritical to complain, given the benefits we have in the UK as employed workers. Strikes matter long term. Standing up and saying "we can't take this shit anymore" matters.

I am not minimising the impact of children missing days of school. I genuinely do think, however, that parents would be shocked if they visited schools and really saw the lack of staff in key subjects, the unsupported SEN, the lack of key equipment as budgets run out, the number of staff nominally teaching classes but actually ill with stress or constantly pulled to manage cruses elsewhere etc etc.

However, schools have such a fear of the impact of making these things visible to the parents on reputation, that it is professional instinct to put on our ‘all is fine here, nothing to see’ faces

If the pay and conditions are good, why can't we recruit enough teachers? 🤔 Or nurses? Or doctors? Hmmm.

Yes, it's difficult. Lone parent and the strikes are hurting. The first time in a long time I'm struggling with thoughts of self harm. Teachers aren't the only ones working long hours in stressful jobs and I've got two big job commitments I'm going to struggle with because of next week. I'm going to be humiliated to my director and colleagues. I'm the only lone parent at work and already struggling with taking time off to cover sickness, inset days, holidays etc.

It's not teachers fault, but I'm barely coping already and this is pushing me over.

Teachers are striking for the pay rise to be funded, rather than tens of thousands (over 125k in our primary school) coming out of the school budget so it seems you do support the cause after all.

Ohhhh dear I didn't mean to start a debate about the strikes. Was looking at it from the prospective of parents who have to manage additional childcare.

I completely agree teachers are overworked. Underpaid I'm not sure (they know the salary before training/starting the job and still choose to do it)

BUT I do this they should be contracted to hours and stick to them. So if you say 8-5 term time + 3 weeks and they should stick to those hours. Feedback to management what they can't do based on their hours but do not work free overtime which is happening at the moment.

What a load of rubbish. I'm a primary school teacher. My pay is £42,000. Not that bad, but I have been working for 20 years and my pay is incomparably lower to contemporaries that I graduated with because I chose to go into teaching to do a "worthwhile" job. There have always been plenty of applicants for primary jobs but we have started to see fewer and fewer trainees coming through. This year the government has failed to meet the target for primary trainees this year.

My eldest DC is t secondary school and it is a complete nightmare for staff. She frequently has cover lessons where three or four classes sit silently in the hall doing worksheets. They recruited some new overseas teachers in January and most of them have already left because the salary isn't enough to afford housing in the area (South East outside London). I am striking for the needs of my own kids education more than my pay. 6 strike days is a drop in the ocean compared to the inadequacies my DC faces every day in her education.

The 'offer' requires all payrises to be funded from existing school budgets, which means LESS resources and MORE REDUNDANCIES for support staff ... which is detrimental for the children in the school.

Our primary school is on its knees and we desperately need more TAs, but we can't afford them now. Insisting any and all payrises come from existing budgets means more TAs will be let go.

How do you propose they facilitate parents evenings, putting on school performances, school trips etc all by working 8-5?

Given the amount of planning and preparation required for lessons, what needs cutting from between 8-5 to facilitate this? Shorter actual teaching time? Cant inagine many parents would accept that. Fewer meetings? Even when those meetings are in regards to things like safeguarding or attainment?

It's all well and good throwing out what you would deem acceptable working hours but have you actually considered the practicality?

Oh, and since many schools can't afford supply teachers anymore when they're dwindling teaching staff needs to be covered for illness or job interview elsewhere, some of those remaining TAs are being forced to cover them. Many aren't up to the task, and why should they be as that's not what they're trained to do! Children are getting screwed there educational-wise, too.

@Blahdeblahaha you do realise none of the pay rises are fully funded included the one rejected prior to any strikes so money is coming out of school funds. Also legally we can only strike for certain reasons . Pay is one of them.

BUT I do this they should be contracted to hours and stick to them. So if you say 8-5 term time + 3 weeks and they should stick to those hours. Feedback to management what they can't do based on their hours but do not work free overtime which is happening at the moment.
Whilst this looks like a solution, it simply wouldn't work.
I'm in school from 7.45 - 5 every day. Directed time - the bit I have to be there for - is 8.30-3.40. On Wednesday, we had a meeting after school until 5.30. So one of those days is already well over the 8-5. The same happens every week, bar about 4. Parents' evenings go on until 7. Prize giving goes on til 9.
If you make it 8-5 on term time plus 3, you're now doing 210 days instead of 195, thus increasing directed time. But the work I needed to do on Wednesday still needed to be done - you can't just walk away at "the end of the day" if you've got to mark today's books for tomorrow.

100%

Our primary school can't get 1:1 TAs because the pay is shite. Even though we have children with EHCPs waiting for them. Almost zero applicants. And those that do apply, don't show up for the interviews, aren't qualified, or turn down the job after meeting the children.

Our primary school can't afford to hire much needed general TAs because there is no money for them, and the few remaining will have to be let go if any payrises are funded from existing budgets. And that will devastate the education of the numerous children they work with, as they're already behind and struggling academically and socially for a variety of reasons (including covid absences, learning difficulties, immaturity, family issues, etc)

Our classes are too big. The classes that are mixed year groups have been a disaster for so many of our children, but we can't afford the extra teachers we need to go to single year groups, even though we are a growing school. Because the trust won't fund them either.

Meanwhile, the trust 'leadership' roles are raking it in and patting themselves on the back for running schools into the ground financially.

I completely agree teachers are overworked. Underpaid I'm not sure (they know the salary before training/starting the job and still choose to do it)

Both the pay and the pension are substantially worse than when I chose to start teaching.

You do realise that 13 years of Tory government has significantly eroded teacher pay? The doctors are striking for pay restoration. Teachers aren't, but they could be.

I'm a primary school teacher. This year we've had a reduction in TA hours. Basically the TA hours we had for interventions for SEN pupils have disappeared. So now no support for them.
I have a class of 30 with around 9 children with some kind of SEN. Being honest on top of teaching, I can't meet all their needs all the time. I'm trying my best and I wouldn't say they're being 'failed', but they certainly could be getting more support. I'm only one person unfortunately and I also have to juggle a handful of children who are exceptional and need extending way beyond their year group level. Did I also mention I have two year groups in my class?

We are striking because we're unhappy. Pay isn't great in real-terms. But it's much, much more than pay.
The government don't seem to want to listen either. Our Ed Sec has said the pay rise would be funded. For some reason she doesn't seem to know the difference between fully funded or funded from school budgets, and the problem with the latter.
Not to mention the fact the government have been very ignorant to the wider issues in education. They know it's not just about pay, yet their recent proposals alongside the 5% offer (not funded) was to set up some kind of 'trust' to help deal with workload. Right.

What we need is bigger school budgets, much bigger which will cover the TA hours schools desperately need.
We need wider services to be better funded.
I have a child who self-harms who has an 8 week wait to see CAHMs, which is a complete disgrace of a service. In the meantime, we are expected to 'support' her. I can maybe do this for 5 minutes during Monday assembly, because I have no TA to help and neither of us are trained in dealing with serious mental health issues.
In fact, my own mental health is pretty poor and I don't know how to help myself sometimes.

My colleague recently was crying in the toilet because she spent hours reading over dyslexia paperwork from a private assessment a child's parent had paid alot of money for (because we don't have the money or resources to do it now), given all this stuff to use in class, but because she didn't implement it straight away (because she was trying to get her head round it), the parent complained very nastily.

Sorry long post, but this is the reality of the job at the moment.
We are juggling too many plates. We need more TAs, more support from wider services, and yes, more money for what we kill ourselves doing every day would be nice too, especially since we get paid far less for the MORE work we're doing now, compared to 10 years ago. It's a kick in the teeth.

Thanks for reading.

When I see threads on MN now saying 'I can afford private school, should I send my kid there or stick with state' and see posters piling in to tell parents that a good state school is just as good as private, I think "bloody hell, you have got to be kidding". Private school funding now vastly outstrips state school funding in a way it didn't previously.

When I've talked to the kids in school about the strikes, they'll go on about 'greedy teachers' or whatever and I'll ask them if they're happy with the state of the school and their education and they'll look round at the broken blinds, desks held together with chewing gum and start talking about how many cover lessons they have and that their teachers keep leaving.

I don't think parents quite get it.

I also think the job many of us chose, studied and qualified in ( 15+ years ago) is no longer the job we do today. The social worker, medical expert, clinician, administrator, accountant, detective and scapegoat that I (and many others) am expected to be without; supervision, appropriate support, training are why the teaching strikes are necessary.

Working conditions have changed, the world has changed, expectations and demands have changed. Working conditions and pay need to be improved for all.

27 primary-aged children on the carpet ready for learning. Child 28 is screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs. Child 29 is unable to remain still and is climbing on furniture in a corner of the classroom. Child 30 emerges half naked from the toilet covered in excrement. How much teaching is going to get done during that allocated lesson time?

This sounds remarkably like DSs class. Scarily so (you aren't my son's teacher are you?!) They have had an actual dirty protest. Worst still the school hasn't been able to hire cleaners so the rest of the staff are having to chip in with that.

It's not an example which is extreme or out there to me. I bet it's pretty typical.

They are year 3.

The class also has other kids with additional needs and a sizeable number of the class are behind where they should be due to COVID.

It's desperate. I feel for their teacher and she's definitely going above and beyond.

It's so bad, it scares me to think of how it could get worse if there's a teacher shortage or more cuts to SEN.

I don't blame the teacher for this reason. I wouldnt say I support strikes generally precisely because they end up working against the people who need the services most.

BUT I don't know where else there is left to go. So it isn't about how much the teachers are paid at this point to me.

It's just more crap that as unavoidable as COVID.

The fact that I saw that example and thought ‘oh yes, I’ve seen that scenario’ (plus a runner) means that it is so common as to be not at all identifiable, or even remarkable, in today’s schools.