Why we are striking Feature

AHEAD of the national strike by educators in England and Wales on 1 February, NEU members who were among the 121,000 who voted for the action shared their reasons for taking a stand.

Rebecca Cann

a teacher for 18 years, based at a high school in Staffordshire

“I VOTED to strike for a number of reasons.

“One of them is that we need a fully funded pay rise. In the last 12 years, education has become a more and more toxic place to work. The Government’s approach to education has been to strip back everything for financial reasons, to try to make education appear profitable and attractive to investors. The experience of everyone who works in education is one of things just getting worse. That’s in the classroom, as well as in our own ability to pay the bills. It is hard to see the job as financially sustainable, never mind sustainable from a mental health point of view.

“My big concern is that the offer the Government has put in place is going to do nothing to stop people leaving education, making it harder for those of us still here, and making the education we can offer of a lower quality. We can’t recruit teachers. It is one of the least wellpaid graduate professions.

“I have looked at how much real-terms money I have lost over the last 12 years and it is more than £70,000. That’s how much worse off I am under this Government than I would have been if we had had pay rises that matched inflation. I know of people who have been on the same pay point for five years because the school doesn’t have the budget for rises.

“My partner and I are both teachers. We are professionals, but every few months our home just feels more and more unaffordable. We are left with a series of terrible choices about what we can do to manage the bills. Our gas and electric bill has gone from £100 to £370 a month. Our food a year ago was around £60 a week – for a family of four – and now it’s about £100.

“We are finding it really hard, and everything we do seems to make it worse and create more debt. We need to strike. We need to push back.” continued from page 21

John Connolly a teacher for 23 years, is a deputy head at a school for 11- to 18-yearolds in Shropshire

“MY main reason for striking is that we are heading towards a teacher recruitment crisis.

“If we don’t create a profession that is well respected and well paid, we won’t have enough teachers in our schools. We had a high staff turnover in the summer, and we had more staff leave at Christmas than ever before. There is a pattern of staff leaving before their time because they have had enough. Some are joining other schools, but quite a few of them are leaving teaching altogether and we had one member of staff who just quit with no job to go to.

“Often, we will have just one applicant for a job. Sometimes we don’t get any. We have several posts that are filled by supply staff, which increases workload for existing teachers who need to prepare lessons and resources for them. More experienced staff have to spend more time supporting those who are less experienced, such as those who are newly qualified. It puts pressure on them.

“My fear is that within 18 months we may be looking at not having enough teaching staff for schools to run, so there could be shortened weeks. At my school we are not far off not being able to staff the curriculum. There are areas where we don’t have specialist teachers.

“I have never seen morale so low and I’ve never had as many teachers talk to me about early retirement and leaving the profession. It’s a constant topic of conversation among teachers, who are at breaking point because of the recruitment issues and all of the other things. There is this sense that we worked so hard during Covid, but none of that matters. It’s like it didn’t happen.”

Shaun Smith is a science teacher and has taught for 25 years

“WE are just not attracting people into teaching. It’s been a great profession for me and I strongly believe in it, but we’re just not getting people in because they are seeing it as a low-paid job.

“The expectations on teachers are enormous. What we are expected to do, on a daily basis, is enormous. As is the expectation that we are continually improving. We are professionals, and I agree with all that, but we want to be paid in accordance.

“What’s being asked of us is much more than working from 9am to 3.30pm and having long holidays. There is loads more to it. It is such a big job that we deserve better pay and we’re not getting the quality of people into teaching now. I do worry about that.

“My wife works in initial teacher training and I know that many people give up after three years. They go off to work abroad because they know they can earn lots more money. It’s just shocking.”

“TEACHERS and educators in general deserve a pay rise that matches inflation. In recent years, workload has just gone up and up, and recruiting and retaining staff is quite difficult. In maths it’s particularly difficult.

“In my last school we had a couple of teachers leave at Christmas and at Easter and we just couldn’t replace them. We had some classes on longterm supply cover. Sometimes it would be a maths teacher we would get for a few months from an agency, but they would change so the kids didn’t get to know them. Sometimes they weren’t even a maths teacher and the quality of education those pupils received definitely suffered.

“Sometimes a parent would

Andrea Jackson

“I DO three jobs to cope. When I finish work, I then tutor until 7pm every weekday night and weekends and then I have to mark exams as well just to keep my head above water. I shouldn’t have to do that. I am furious. I shouldn’t be in this position at nearly 50.

“Because I live in the south east, the cost of living is very high. The last holiday I went on with my children was in 2007. Over the last ten years the crunch has affected everyone.

“Some of my colleagues, who are in their 40s and single, have had to go back to live with their parents. They can’t afford to have their own home. Also, if you have children and you are single that makes life really difficult.

“One of the reasons I’m going on strike is because new staff come in, we train them, and they are gone within five years. One of the issues for them is the workload and also that they can’t afford to be self- sufficient. This is a profession and they have earned their degrees, but their peers, after four or five years, start to overtake them financially, so they don’t stick at teaching.

“At one time, a teaching post would attract five or six applicants. Now you can’t get anyone to interview. On paper, mine is the best school in Milton Keynes and we are struggling to recruit, particularly science teachers.

“I’ve been teaching a long time. I love children and I enjoy my job, otherwise I wouldn’t have coped and I’d have left. But I work on average 55 to 60 hours a week – what we are paid just does not equate with that.

“I don’t know how young staff cope. Morale is low. Staff are so tired. I don’t have a work-life balance. It is important that we strike, in terms of recruitment and retention. The older staff are going, so who’s going to be left?” mention it, but actually I was surprised at how infrequently parents did mention it. I like to think that if this had happened to me when I was at school that my mum would have complained. But even if there is a complaint there is not much that can be done.

“At my last school, we would put out adverts and no one would apply. It impacted me because I was co-ordinating the year 7 scheme of work so I would prepare resources for the cover teacher and every couple of weeks we would have a new teacher in and would have to show them where all the resources were. So it definitely increased my workload.

“I think it’s really important that whatever the pay offer is, it’s fully funded. If not, it’s just a cut to education funding overall. Striking is really not something we are doing selfishly. We are doing it for the future of education.”