I’m on strike – for my pupils’ sake

During the pandemic, two MPs, from the two main parties, said to me they believed that teachers were the unsung heroes of the lockdown.

I’m not comparing what we did to what the nurses did, but our job did go some way towards holding together the fabric of society in those weird times.

The teaching was substandard in the first lockdown, and miserable and depressing in the second. But the pastoral side of our work became front and centre of what we were doing.

Both parents and pupils often felt we were a lifeline of normality that kept them sane. And, for those who did not manage to stay sane (some horrible family stories came out of that time), we were at least part of a reliable world they felt they could trust.

No one, least of all the MPs, is saying that now – after we joined nurses, rail workers, the Post Office, border control, ambulance drivers, barristers, and driving testers on strike.

Society is broken, and we are part of society. But no – now we are ‘betraying’ the children who have already missed so much school.

They are missing the point. What is happening in schools is just not good enough. When austerity began, it seemed fair enough. We were ‘all in it together’, after all. Or were we? Of course not.

Within a minute and a half, the MPs were voting themselves pay rises, while keeping the public sector frozen for two years and then capped at one per cent for another eight years.

Is it any wonder that so many people are leaving teaching, while so few are joining? It is not a profession, in this country, with much kudos and that is mostly because it is so underpaid.

No one suggests to graduates leaving the finest universities that they should become teachers. My ex-husband was very unwilling for me to train for this job. My friends say things like it is ‘brave’ or ‘good’ to be a teacher. They ‘admire’ it but would not want it for their children.

And how does this play out in the classroom? Classes are growing larger again. Fewer languages are being taught because we can’t get the teachers. No one is applying for the head-of-department jobs (especially in a core subject such as

English) because it is just not paid well enough for the amount of work and pressure involved.

So many young teachers come into the job as an afterthought – because other careers didn’t quite work out, or because they have a young family, and it fits with their lives. Many don’t even train to teach the subject in which they have a degree – they look for a shortage subject and apply to teach that. If they didn’t like the subject enough to study it at university, how can they hope to inspire the young?

Meanwhile, the MPs’ pay rises have gone up – right from the beginning of austerity: 28 per cent to them; three per cent to us. We are not colder or hungrier than anyone else, but we have worked as hard or harder than others.

Yes, I struck in February, and I will strike again in March. Of course, I hope to increase my own pay. But I also hope to improve the quality and quantity of teachers. I am an oldie, after all, and on my way out. But I want to see an improvement, or the hope of an improvement, for younger teachers and younger children. It has to happen.