Teachers' Strike 26 March

[bonkersbassist]

Just wondering what everyone's opinion is on this.

I am a teacher but I feel (yet again) at this time that a strike isn't the right way to go. I don't think we have enough public support or understanding. Plus with Gove constantly harping on that we only work 9-3 with too much holiday we probably never will get that support. I also think the unions are not doing enough/the right thing to gain public support.

Any thoughts?

 

[Andy Monty]

Pah 6 weeks summer holidays, 2 weeks off at christmas, Half terms, teacher training days Finish at 3 then rush off home :devil:

Or alternatively

Stay till gone 5 collecting resources, Come home have tea then work marking / planning/ filing / Profiles / Simms/ Reports .. go to bed up get to work for 8 ish morning meetings, finish preps for lessons that day Kids drift in from half 8.......

Work several weeks in the summer preparing class room for next years intake

Then get the dreaded OFSTED call


The main reason people are against teachers striking is your used as a baby sitting / child minding service Yet they think its fine to go on holiday in term time..... Then its your fault they get fined by the council

(can you tell i have family members who teach )

 

[maggers]

Well, the kids will love you for it - another day off, just like a teacher training day. Why don't they train you in the 6 weeks rather than on the first day back? Speaking as a parent, do I give a toss? Frankly, no. You picked the job, live with it like the rest of us.

 

[Andy Monty]

Well, the kids will love you for it - another day off, just like a teacher training day. Why don't they train you in the 6 weeks rather than on the first day back? Speaking as a parent, do I give a toss? Frankly, no. You picked the job, live with it like the rest of us.

Because there arn't enough people who do the training and they cant fit it god knows how many schools / teachers in 6 weeks time window :idea:

That and im sure you want your children educated in a safe clean school Most renovation/ repair work also occurs in that 6 week window



What you see as a parent unless your a parent governer or know someone who teaches you have no idea of the amount of bureaucracy that now goes with teaching that never existed years ago......

I wouldn't want to work a 12 hour day ..

 

[homeward]

Have to agree with everything Andy Monty says. My dad was a headmaster of a secondary school for many years -- after being head of both maths and sports; and then deputy head. Mrs homeward works in early years education (which is paid extremely poorly: considering she has as many qualifications as most teachers; many years of experience; and is looking after children at their most vulnerable... -- I could go on...). :worship:

If folks had even the beginning of an idea as to how hard all those in education work (or most of them... -- there are occasional lazy buggas in all sectors...), they would be clamouring for better pay and conditions for them. The fact that Gove wants to tar them with the same brush as IDS has with benefits claimants just shows what a pile of twonks the current government are... -- and I would personally, therefore, take it as praise.

Everyone always said I would make a good teacher... -- but, knowing what I know, I went into IT marketing instead. I am neither that brave, thick-skinned, or talented....

 

[maggers]

No, I can imagine the red tape is immense. Oh, to go back to the old days before unrealistic targets to meet and being able to **** some oik round the back of the head with a blackboard rubber - sorry, interactive white board cleaner. It's all gone to pot where you have the deadbeats and loosers being rewarded for doing what they should and the ones who do a good, steady output getting no recognition.

 

[Paddynabs]

Difficult one this. My mum was a teacher for a few years and my aunt and uncle were teachers for their whole career so I have lot of sympathy. However I went to school in the 80's and lost a lot of education and opportunities thanks to the strikes in terms of no sports or after school clubs etc.
Unfortunately no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented most people see the holidays, the inset days, assistants teaching the kids because teachers are in meetings and think why cant all this be done in the holidays or after 3:30?
It's a good thing Gove is in charge because he's such an imbecile that I'll support the teachers all the way now!!! I still wont support striking though.

 

[Andy Monty]

Have to agree with everything Andy Monty says. My dad was a headmaster of a secondary school for many years -- after being head of both maths and sports; and then deputy head. Mrs homeward works in early years education (which is paid extremely poorly: considering she has as many qualifications as most teachers; many years of experience; and is looking after children at their most vulnerable... -- I could go on...). :worship:

If folks had even the beginning of an idea as to how hard all those in education work (or most of them... -- there are occasional lazy buggas in all sectors...), they would be clamouring for better pay and conditions for them. The fact that Gove wants to tar them with the same brush as IDS has with benefits claimants just shows what a pile of twonks the current government are... -- and I would personally, therefore, take it as praise.

Everyone always said I would make a good teacher... -- but, knowing what I know, I went into IT marketing instead. I am neither that brave, thick-skinned, or talented....

Me thinks the powers that be are playing divide and rule... There has been very little mention of the recent Fire service and ambulance service, council service workers strikes yet they are already banging on about the teachers going on strike...

and IIRC its only one union "going out"

 

[Gavv8]

It must be nice to have enough support from your union to instigate industrial action, in the haulage industry we are being squeezed between ruthless management and unending new legislation with little or no support from our very large and very wealthy union... but as a previous poster said.. if I don't like it....

I don't think its that the public is not behind you its just that action taken by teachers has such a heavy impact on parents who work irregular hours or who can't get time off at short notice, employers are calling the shots at the moment in the private sector and rightly or wrongly people do depend on teachers to be there during the normal school day, its just one less thing to think about, I do know a few teachers and some of them work very hard indeed and are very committed to providing not only an education for the children but also some measure of support for the parents and maybe they are just making a rod for their own back but one or two of the others I know cruise through their career providing the bare minimum and complaining bitterly about every little issue they have to deal with and given that they teach in a very small and well funded village primary school it can be difficult for those of us outside the teaching profession to have a lot of sympathy.

 

[Ziggy122]

My other half works as a tutor in a college

She spends all her time working, and i mean
marking, planning, worrying of ofsted visiting, Teacher meetings, parent meetings, parents evenings, training days, Health and safety days

You dont stop - unless your dead or fired

its not an easy job - people think its all these holidays and finish early, its not, Hardly from

Some people dont know the job till they do it and they quickly change there minds

Ziggy

 

[bonkersbassist]

I don't think its that the public is not behind you its just that action taken by teachers has such a heavy impact on parents who work irregular hours or who can't get time off at short notice.

In a way that is sort of the point of strike action because it needs to have impact (recent tube strike is a good example of this), however I don't think we then have the support for people to point the finger at the government rather than the teaching unions for the disruption.

I'm also some where in the middle now with regards to Gove's plans (as an individual I can't stand him). Performance related pay is a great idea and very fair on paper (I know of people who sit on 30k a year and do the bare minimum) however the way it would be achieved is open to easy abuse by schools as they have to observe and audit everybody (and this system is also open to interpretation.

As for the pension I'm too young for it to have an impact on me. By the time I come to claim it will all change again and again and again.

 

[bonkersbassist]

Well, the kids will love you for it - another day off, just like a teacher training day. Why don't they train you in the 6 weeks rather than on the first day back? Speaking as a parent, do I give a toss? Frankly, no. You picked the job, live with it like the rest of us.

If only teacher training days were like that, I personally hate training days they can be very boring and not applicable to all the staff. I'd much rather be teaching the kids.

As a parent I really would care given the proposed changes to the National Curriculum and other areas such as special needs (in September anyone who is on the lowest band of special needs will be considered no longer having a need...but they all still do), my objection to the changes isn't the money but more the idea that every can be a high class academic and only needs to learn facts without any skills to carry on learning or for meaningful employment (something which the private sector is always complaining about).

 

[Ulpian]

The whole of the public sector is harassed by compliance. Endless pointless supervisions, meetings, on-line 'training' sessions, constraints and harassment by managers who know lttle of the work the people they manage do, and who themselves are poorly educated, on every level. Not to mention that most of them are part time women who are always running after their children and so can never be relied upon to actually be at work.

Teachers have a difficult time, sometimes, but they are also relatively well rewarded, certainly better than in most countries. If the products of their classrooms were properly literate and had a decent attitude to work I might be a bit more sympathetic, but since so many young people, including graduates, have very poor basic skills and are often lazy and indifferent to the actual process of working, I'm afraid I have no sympathy. They are, essentially, poorly educated.

We have three Polish people working with us and in every case they are more diligent, more polite, and more literate than their English counterparts. It's terrible to have to say it but it's true. And they are all ordinary people, but literate in three languages, and utterly charming. Try finding an English kid who is properly literate in even his own language these days: it's shocking.

More pay for these children's teachers? No, sorry.

 

[bonkersbassist]

I agree that some young people are not getting the literacy and social skills they need to get as far as they should in life, however I think it's a little unfair to point the blame solely at teachers (although not all teachers are angels)

I think some (and I stress not all!) parents need to take a bigger part in their child's development. I work in the SEN department of my school and the amount of students who have a language delay purely due to a lack of interaction and experiences. However I stress that this is NOT all parents.

Another issue is we are told what to teach, we are very limited in how much flexibility we have and also there is a lot of box ticking (often to the students disadvantage) and as I stressed earlier this is about to get even worse with the new curriculum that is planned.

Overall I think EVERYONE has a responsibility in the raising of young people (teachers, parents, local authority and agencies) and when one side doesn't pull their weight its very easy to point the finger at everyone else.

 

[Ulpian]

I've met a fair few young state school teachers, and with a small number of exceptions I haven't been very impressed I'm afraid.

But I do agree that many parents are useless and expect schools to bring their children up for them. When I was young good manners were expected, and inculcated at home, and reinforced by school rules. These days it seems parents are often crude and lazy and expect schoolteachers to be surrogate parents. My parents, like all the others, always supported the teachers. Now it appears there is too often conflict between the schools and the families. But when I was at school there were only three boys, in a school of six hundred, with divorced parents, and I was one of them. Families were more stable, as was society. The general breakdown in relationships has had a disruptive affect on all institutions, since too many people believe they can do and say what they like and expect 'respect' (a ridiculous word) in return. But we live in a world where words are misused daily, and the price we pay is that too few people have any real respect, in the old sense, for anybody and are totally selfish.

I would add that it is not the job of social services to bring up children, that's for responsible parents, supported by responsible schools. That it can be assumed that social services should be a regular back-stop for child support is just an indicator of how far parents are failing in their primary role of bringing up their children. When I was young I never once heard of any family we knew having any contact with social services in any form. It would have been shameful.

 

[pooroldcodger]

No, I can imagine the red tape is immense. Oh, to go back to the old days before unrealistic targets to meet and being able to **** some oik round the back of the head with a blackboard rubber - sorry, interactive white board cleaner. It's all gone to pot where you have the deadbeats and loosers being rewarded for doing what they should and the ones who do a good, steady output getting no recognition.

A slight tangent, but nevertheless related to this thread:
Who remembers the days when if you got told off at school you kept quiet about it at home because you knew you would get it worse from your mum and dad?
That was because there was a respect for the school and the teachers and more importantly a realisation that to get on the world you need an education.
Since then standards have eroded to the point that all respect is lost and many children come from a background of thinking that going to school is just a lark until you can sign on the dole.
Take a look statistically at how well immigrant kids do, even when learning in a second language for them. For that to happen it must mean that the school is doing its best for them, and the parents are pushing them too.
Mrs POC is a teacher who loves the kids and the teaching, but hates the beaurocracy, but has never been on strike in her life.
I am no supporter of lazy or incompetent teachers, or rampant trade unionists holding parents to ransom, but shools need more support not less from Government and parents alike.

 

[varesecrazy]

can't argue with POC's comments,

I was "educated" under Thatcher.. our school could'nt get ANY supply teachers,
we had Months with crosswords at every lesson..from a disinterested "stand-in",
needeless to say I came out of school with little paper qualifications..,
went into engineering, and struggled with paperwork.. because I'd done so little before..,

YEARS later as a parent.. I worked as a support worker in the SAME local Secondary.. quite an eye opener..,

the NQT's work REALLY hard,

but you do get the teachers with 25/40 years in who've seen it all before and are just coasting..,

YES - they can deal VERY effectively with problem pupils..( a skill in itself) BUT are'nt really inspiring the rest of the class..,

I now work in Further education,
we are now striking.. all new to me..NEVER been in a Union before..,

appears to be a complete "Unilateral" waste of time..,
BUT as we've essentially taken a 13% pay cut..I suppose we have to make a stand..,

LACK of notice for parents....?? it's 6 WEEKS away..!!,

I often get told 3 days before we go out,


Charlie

 

[pooroldcodger]

I've met a fair few young state school teachers, and with a small number of exceptions I haven't been very impressed I'm afraid.

Unfortunately you have to take in to account the climate in which these NQT's were educated:
Left-wing PC claptrap spouted by trendies in safari jackets who will never admit that they were wrong. For example, a good few years ago there was a documnetary on TV on which they studied the two conflicting views about teaching at the time. On the left was our friend Mr Trendy who said that it didn't matter whether what you wrote was grammatically correct as long as you wrote something. And you would learn to read and understand numbers by some form of mystical osmosis rather than by rote and by hard work
On the other side was Mr traditional in a pin striped suit who was roundly ridiculed for staying with his beliefs that teaching reading by phonics and times tables by rote was a proven method. They even called him a "phonicator" (pronounced like fornicator to add to the joke).
Then we had decades of hyped-up GCSE results and Mr Blair's ridiculous 50% to university dictat.
If you continue to hide children from the reality that there is no substitute for real learning, and blind them with dazzling exam results on a very narrow curriculum then you will get unimpressive NQT's, and unimpressive young workers generally.

 

[Ulpian]

I can't disagree with that, but the result is that there is a large number of really rather inadequate teachers. Even here there are posters using words like 'amount', when what they mean is number. I hear this misuse of words everywhere and it is becoming a convention, which is a great shame, because it leads to a confusion of understanding. I find that foreigners with English as a second language don't make such howlers.

And I just read that they say they have had an effective pay cut of 13%, just like the rest of the public sector then. Am I supposed to be sympathetic?

A good friend of mine, who recently achieved a PhD in history, was told by her tutor that he is now ordered almost annually to increase the number of Firsts awarded to students, even though few deserve them, and such grade inflation is a reality throughout the education system. Given such a collapse in standards it is hard to believe in the educational structures here. Indeed, some of the best teachers go abroad; another friend, who teaches classics, is now teaching in Africa, since there the pupils are naturally obedient and eager to learn. When he taught, briefly, in a state school here he found he was having to spend most of his time working like a zoo keeper. He has two African ex-pupils studying classics at Cambridge, so he knows what he's doing. And he really is a dedicated teacher, but one who wants to teach, not operate as a warden.

But look, we have selfish, lazy, indifferent parents who appear in many cases to care more about their benefits or their holidays than their children - I remember those ghastly women who fed their children chips through the school fence when there was an attempt to improve the children's diets - so with that sort of home background is it any wonder that teaching is so difficult.

However, the failings of our society are universal, and anybody who has to deal with the public has the same miserable experiences. Teachers are no different and don't deserve special treatment.

 

[Andy Monty]

but shools need more support not less from Government and parents

Going back a few years when it snowed a local school was snow bound a appeal by the school was launched by letter (when they sent the kids home early) facebook and twitter. That for the school to be opened tomorrow they needed volunteers to come in for 30 mins to 1 hour before school started (with childcare provided) To shovel the school access road and clear areas of the play ground between mobile class rooms and the like so the school could function

Safely Ok people might laugh at the NEED to clear the access road / staff car park but should a child need an ambulance for example or disabled children to access school or a fire services need clear access .........

Only one person turned up from a whole school...... a childs 80 year old grandad who could hardly walk he had got up early to help who was promptly sat in the staff room with a warm cup of tea :bang: :bang:


Then queue the complaints that school didn't open