Teachers in England move a step closer to striking
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1drx2ng6qro
Posted by No_Plate_3164
Teachers in England move a step closer to striking
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1drx2ng6qro
Posted by No_Plate_3164
26 Comments
– 2023 – 6.5% pay rise
– 2024 – 5.5% pay rise
– 2025 – 2.8% pay rise (Rejected)
The article didn’t detail what would be enough to avoid a strike this year. I suspect the unions are pushing for another rise over 5%.
Government: ‘why can’t we find more teachers?’
Also government: ‘we are cutting funding, expect bigger classrooms with more challenging pupils.’
>The government has recommended a 2.8% pay rise for teachers and expects most schools will need to make “efficiencies” to fund it.
This is ridiculous. Our school system is already on its knees after 14 years of austerity. It cannot accept anymore cuts, and we know these cuts will ultimately fall on the teachers who have to pay out of pocket for stationaries and stuff. The government needs to pay them and fund the schools properly. Cutting education is the worst of all options.
Good. Teachers are still woefully underpaid for the ever increasing amount of responsibility they have. >5% should be the minimum.
I was younger I used to remember the unions and the strikes sitting at the table in the classroom and the teacher would come around and put a piece of paper on the table. It was a letter for my parents usually and it would give the strike dates the best part is we would go in on a Monday morning being told that Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday there was no school. These were the best days.!
I’ve been support staff (IT) for the past 6 years in a joint primary & secondary school.
In the first couple of years, things seemed pretty chill and staff didn’t seem too stressed. We had the odd behavioral issue but nothing crazy.
Fast forward to now, we’ve had teachers break down before difficult classes and quit, attacked, racially abused, harassed online.
Absolutely vile behavior from the children is shrugged off by the parents and more and more pressure is put on teachers to continue to teach and in a lot of cases, basically parent these children.
They cannot expel them as they are fined by the government, so what options do you have left?
We have had the police on site more times in this year, than I have seen in the entire time i have worked there.
The SEND situation is crazy also. The school has made redundancies of Teaching Assistants, but some children cannot be without 1 to 1 teaching support.
Something HAS to change.
Why does this government feel like a self sabotage at times?
They spent the last few years campaigning alongside the striking workers and unions and now they are going to have to tell them to fuck off.
It’s like the perfect storm of every different group of people feeling like they have been let down or failed, farmers, disabled, Unions, waspis, nimbys etc.
Unfortunately I can see them getting hammered at the local elections in may which will only add to the level of disenfranchised sentiment.
If they have to make more cuts and raise taxes as is expected that’s not going to help.
If the bin strikes spread and we get some hot weather the country is going to be a complete tinder box.
The schools are going through massive budget cuts, reeling from the last pay rise and the NI increase that was supposed to be covered by the government.
Whilst it would be nice to pay teachers more, schools will simply off set it by cutting services and redundancies.
This is not the time for teacher strikes and they will struggle for support, they are not as poorly paid as they make out when you look at the complete package of leave and pensions included.
I know this from experience, sitting here having just been made redundant from the school I was IT manager in along with a number of Teaching Assistants, 2 teachers and 2 safeguarding staff.
I don’t blame the school at all and they fully expect to make more redundant in the coming year. This would only be made more likely by unrealistic pay rise expectations.
Labour are finished.
If they can’t even support their core voters they have no hope in 29.
I’m sadly resigned to a Tory/Reform coalition.
Teachers are becoming more irrelevant anyway, I’ve self taught most of my GCSEs with ai and yt vids.
As a teacher for me it was the fact that it was unfunded. Expecting schools to make ‘efficiencies’ yet again is just code for larger classes, less support staff to take the edge off unruly students who frankly shouldn’t be in mainstream and cause an enormous amount of disruption for staff and — most importantly — the well behaved students.
It’s going to get worse when this children’s wellbeing bill passes. Many disabled kids are home educated because the SEN (Special Educational Needs) provision is also on its knees, and there is simply nowhere for our disabled children to get an education. If this bill passes in its current form, many disabled kids will be forced back into mainstream schools, which they cannot cope with because mainstream schools lack the training and funding to educate them properly.
We are also waiting on the government’s plan for SEN reform, which, let’s face it, will likely result in more cuts and a greater push for disabled children back into mainstream schools. These kids, who are already in specialist provision, can be very temperamental and often violent. My sister works in a special school and was knocked out the other week by a student. How on earth will teachers cope with such complex disabled children, especially with the added numbers of home-educated kids being forced back to school?
If the whole situation is not sorted out, it is going to ruin future generations, and the general public seems utterly clueless about the matter.
I have no idea how teachers do it. The very fact that I could at any given moment be subject to a teenagers opinion should be a breach of the human rights act in itself, I can’t imagine having to do it with minimal training, no benefits, no resources and constantly pleading with parents to do their job.
I love how we trust teachers with our children but don’t believe them when they say they are underpaid and overworked. Good luck to the.
Ah, good old Labour governments being held to ransom by the unions. Who’d have thunk it, eh?
Will make no difference. They won’t put experienced teachers on a salary that reflects their know how. They employ NQTs and leave them to it and work load is unmanageable
This dance again. The only ones that suffer are the kids and the parents who need to take time off work and don’t get paid for it. Government will end up giving in but not after an unnecessary amount of pain.
The real terms paycut is less of an issue than the further cuts to real terms funding for me. I’ll be voting to strike unless there’s a plan which at least doesn’t make the already bad situation worse.
Can we fine the local authority for unauthorised absence of teachers?
I’ve done more than 30 years, we can’t get teachers, the abuse from parents would be laughable if it were not so destructive and unrelenting but it’s the horrific behaviour that is breaking me. A boy made a sexual threat to me recently, it was graphic and violent. A group of boys threatened rape. There is no way to endure this. I love teaching, I have worked my whole career in deprived areas but it’s breaking me. It’s breaking almost all the teachers I know. I don’t know what to do. This is what I love, it’s what I’m good at. But I don’t deserve to endure this- no one does. For the first time in my life I would recommend people not to choose this career.
>Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said “any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible”.
As a teacher, go eff yourself Phillipson. Labour spent their time in opposition attacking the Tories for their shit pay offers, and now they’ve got in they’re doing the exact same as the Tories and attacking the unions for saying no. Just like the Tories.
You cannot have teacher pay offers be unfunded. That’s just simply not viable anymore after a decade of Tory cuts, and any offer which is unfunded will lead to strikes because you’re basically guaranteeing layoffs. It’s that simple.
My head has deliberately gone over budget to provide support staff for our rising numbers of SEND. He said, “What are they going to do – fine us?” Good for him – that’s having the balls to stand up for your staff and pupils. He’ll do the same next year if the LEA don’t fund support staff. Can’t make even 1 teacher redundant as punishment, as that would mean 40 in a class. He has my utmost respect.
> “Following a 5.5% pay award in hugely challenging fiscal context, I would urge NEU to put children first.”
>
> NEU members went on strike over pay in the first half of 2023, forcing many schools to close on eight days of action.
Only 8 days of strike? Can it get somewhere? The Birmingham Strike is almost one to two months long and yet rubbish are everywhere from what I read. Can schools strike for months? Who can teach those children? What do they learn? Will schools be opened?
Devils advocate (as a teacher). Maybe stop giving grants to the young uns who are completely and utterly unsuited to the job. If you’ve got a first in physics you should be working at CERN and are probably so socially inept that you would not hack a comp in Teesside.
I can already hear idiots moaning “Teachers have it easy! Short days, long holidays and nothing to do all day. They’re punishing us (parents) by striking and making me hate them even more. They should just get on with it!”
Nah mate. Strike, fight for what you deserve!