Striking Teachers

[joeluke]

Parents are fined if they take their kids out of school for holidays in term-time, yet teachers can strike when they feel like it without fear of repercussions.

Parents are inconvenienced enough times having to arrange extra childcare for the countless 'teacher training/inset' days during the school year

Parents get fined for taking kids out of school, yet no penalties for teachers when they strike and don't turn up at school at the first sign of snow

[THECORBYLOON]

You are correct about the time in which the action has to begin but ballots are usually for action short of striking or action including striking. A union may call for an immediate ban on overtime but a strike may follow several months down the line as long as the original ballot included that option.

[Ellipsis]

For a friend who's a teacher, this is not about the pay so much as EVERYTHING.

For example, pensions. My friend started teaching in 1989, aged 22. She is now 47. From the age of 22 a sizeable chunk of her salary has been taken ("superannuation") to fund her pension.

During her career so far, she has been informed she will not be retiring at 60 as she thought in 1989, but at 68, i.e. 8 years longer paying in to her pension, 8 years less taking her pension out. Despite this, she has been told that the sizeable chunk of her salary that has been taken for the last 25 years has not been enough to fund the pension that she thought she'd be getting in 13 years' time, and that she will need to increase payments for the next 20 years in order to get what was originally promised.

All this while on a pay freeze which has no end in sight, at a time when pressure is being increased on teachers from all sides, not least the witless Gove. [Have you seen the pensions that MPs get, by the way?]

So my friend did strike yesterday. She wasn't paid, but she went in to school anyway to help put final details in place for a trip that she's taking the kids on today and over this weekend, which she's giving up also unpaid. This included, for example, collecting epi-pens for students who may suffer from anaphylactic shock while in her care.

My friend, who is a very good, caring and effective teacher, is looking at leaving education. Here's another reason why. She teaches at the top end of a secondary school, ages 15-18. She is being asked to "add value" to students who come into the school on inflated grades that they have been given by primary schools years before, primary schools that themselves were manipulating the system to achieve their own targets. You can't "add value" to a student that has been wrongly measured - you especially cannot "add value" to an A* student. There is only one way to go once such a student is properly measured by external examination. The whole system is cracked and the teachers that care most suffer most.

Some teachers are really crap, but good teachers deserve a lot better than they're getting at present. Many of the bad teachers are staying in education, and many of the good teachers are leaving. Those that care about giving good education should be taking a stand to stop some of the appalling steps that are causing this.

[pixie373]

Very good post, ellipsis. Moving the goalposts constantly.

[andres]

When children are taken out of school for a holiday ,it will probably be for a week or possibly two. I should think it must be very disruptive for the whole class if children are taken out at different times. The only time I was away from school was if I was ill. I can remember what a nightmare it was trying to catch up with the various lessons, borrowing my friend's exercise books or trying to get to grips with new topics that had been taught whilst I was away. Not easy when you were also trying to follow the ongoing lessons as well. When the teachers hold a strike day , most of the kids look on it as an extra day's holiday. Also if all your class is away at the same time then they just pick up from where they left off when they go back to school

[237SJ]

Ellipis - the pensions situation is no difference to what is happening in the private sector. I joined the company at just 23 with a view to retiring at 55. To get the pension that I would have got at 55, I will have to go to 60 and pay more money for the same amount of pension. If I retired at 55, I would receive a lot less pension. I am throwing large amounts of money into AVCs to try to redress the balance but as the annuity market is rubbish at the moment, I will probably take it as a lump sum. That`s not what I really want though - I would rather have a decent monthly income. I can`t understand why people in the public sector think they are 'special' when it comes to the pensions issue. We are all in the same boat.

[Ellipsis]

237SJ - I am in the private sector so am well aware of the pension situation for people like us. I'm also aware that the way pensions were sold to me was completely different to how they were sold to teachers, certainly in the late 80s.

Every point I made re teachers is still valid though, and the big picture is that when you take it all in its entirety - i.e. EVERYTHING, as I said - then good teachers have had enough and are leaving. They don't need the aggro. How is ridding the education system of good teachers supposed to make things better? A good teacher striking is a pre-cursor to a good teacher leaving, and many aren't even bothering to strike - they're just leaving.