More teacher strikes

I know a few teachers. They work hard at the start of their career but once settled with good course work and better time management they don't do more than 40hr weeks and are fairly flexibly with their time. E.g., they might work until 7pm on some week days to get marking done and then leave at 4pm the rest of the week, or work all Saturday but leave 4pm all week. Longer hours near exam time and at the start of term but most don't find it too much work at all.

You also have to consider that 50+ hr weeks is common in many industries where the holiday entitlement is a fraction of what teachers get.
 
D.P. said:
You also have to consider that 50+ hr weeks is common in many industries where the holiday entitlement is a fraction of what teachers get.
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If everyone else jumped off a cliff would you do it?
 
Given that parents get fined for taking their kids out of education during term time, can we expect a £60 per pupil per day fine to be levied on striking teachers?

Given the chronic poor performance in our state schools, a cull of poor performers and jobsworths among teachers is certainly needed.
 
Dolph said:
Given that parents get fined for taking their kids out of education during term time, can we expect a £60 per pupil per day fine to be levied on striking teachers?
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I would certainly write a letter of the same to the Head, see what he/she says.

But of course you won't get £60 back, they probably did a course of double standard as part of the PGCE lol
 
I don't get this stupid mentality that if one industry is having a bad time of things, that everyone should be dragged down to that level. Sounds like jealousy and selfishness. If your career/job sucks then do something about it, why does everyone else have to suffer too?

Life isn't about being a slave and if you feel that you are, do something about it!
 
Chris1983 said:
I don't get this stupid mentality that if one industry is having a bad time of things, that everyone should be dragged down to that level. Sounds like jealousy and selfishness. If your career/job sucks then do something about it, why does everyone else have to suffer too?

Life isn't about being a slave and if you feel that you are, do something about it!
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+1
 
Storm3y said:
I have to disagree. He's doing a brilliant job with the education system and reforming exams and the curriculum.
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lol what the actual... :confused::p

My sis taught, head of department 60+ hours a week inc marking and lesson planning.

it will get easier with experiance as lesson planning becomes more practiced and routine kicked in.

Still one hell of a job :(
 
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Chris1983 said:
I don't get this stupid mentality that if one industry is having a bad time of things, that everyone should be dragged down to that level. Sounds like jealousy and selfishness. If your career/job sucks then do something about it, why does everyone else have to suffer too?

Life isn't about being a slave and if you feel that you are, do something about it!
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+1

Good on the teachers for having the balls to do something about it. We should all be doing something about the race to the bottom mentality of employers and government, public & private should both act, its the old divide and conquer of driving a wedge between private and public sector workers that has worked so well for this evil government.
 
I suppose it could be worse, teachers could be forced onto the same kind of contracts that I had when I taught in colleges. Back then, all teaching staff were on a flexible contract, that only paid for classroom hours, the rest was made up for with allowances. At that time, I had 20 hours per week in a classroom, plus 2 hours a week at 'meeting rate', and 2 hours per week 'course administration'. Along with lesson planning and everything else, I was working 60 hours a week pretty easily. Oh, and unpaid holidays.. in fact, every summer I had to sign on and wait for the college to renew my contract. Which caused no end of issues with the job centre.

While I disagree with striking for the sake of it, teachers across the board, get a generally rough deal.
 
MrMoonX said:
+1

Good on the teachers for having the balls to do something about it. We should all be doing something about the race to the bottom mentality of employers and government, public & private should both act, its the old divide and conquer of driving a wedge between private and public sector workers that has worked so well for this evil government.
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But do they have to do it every year?

To me they are either incompetent at strike or incompetent at negotiating a decent enough package that can keep them happy for more than 12 months or too greedy or all of the above.

This happens every year !

You bet there will be another strike again in a year. I do not know any other profession that strikes this much.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
But do they have to do it every year?

To me they are either incompetent at strike or incompetent at negotiating a decent enough package that can keep them happy for more than 12 months or too greedy.
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So what you're basically saying is, a) it's their fault or B) it's their fault anyway?

Excellent, with that sort of attitude you would fit right in at the Department of Education I would imagine. ;)

Raymond Lin said:
This happens every year !

You bet there will be another strike again in a year. I do not know any other profession that strikes this much.
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Government pretend they can reform, unions pretend they can have an impact.

Ad infinitum.
 
[TW]Fox;26191082 said:
But in order for that to be the average they can also be a lot lower, presumably. Or the average would be higher.
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You always came across as a 'glass half empty' kind of guy.

What is it with bean counters? ;)
 
Biohazard said:
So what you're basically saying is, a) it's their fault or B) it's their fault anyway?

Excellent, with that sort of attitude you would fit right in at the Department of Education I would imagine. ;)



Government pretend they can reform, unions pretend they can have an impact.

Ad infinitum.
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I am saying that an agreement that they signed after the last strike is now suddenly not good enough 12 months later.

Why? It's 12 months, not 12 years.

Then it happens again in a year. Why not ask for a % increase from the outset. So it begs the question of are they incompetent at negotiating or do they secretly love having a strike? Part of me think they do, they sure do do it regularly enough.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I am saying that an agreement that they signed after the last strike is now suddenly not good enough 12 months later.

Why? It's 12 months, not 12 years.

Then it happens again in a year. Why not ask for a % increase from the outset. So it begs the question of are they incompetent at negotiating or do they secretly love having a strike? Part of me think they do, they sure do do it regularly enough.
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I would imagine it would reflect budget and pay negotiations.

Things change yearly, occasionally more than once in terms of FTE's and budgets and so on.

I'm confident they've went in with a figure, they're clearly not getting it and thus we have the present situation. That's not to say they're entirely to blame, far from it, industrial relations is a two way street and episodes have strained relationships.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Actually, i apologise, i got the fact that they strike every year wrong.

It's not every year, the last strike was 26th March, 2014.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-26729786
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Yes and demands weren't met of the striking unions (in fact the government didn't care) and so theres another strike. It's not all about pay, there is also striking about how inept the government seems to be with regards to education, how there isn't enough time in a school year to actually teach everything that's required for examinations classes, how pensions for new teachers (that's me) have been slashed compared to older teachers, how pay is now performance related - oh that's fair its the same as industry, now tell me where in industry your pay is determined on the outcome of what essentially is random chance of which classes you get, get bottom set and your unlikely to ever hit your performance targets. There are teachers in my school who set off teaching when pay was guaranteed to be risen each year, now sitting on a very nice salary waiting for their very nice pension literally sitting in the classroom, whilst those of us at the bottom of the ladder are pretty much screwed in terms of pay rises.

I say again, I disagree with striking as all we are doing is hurting children's education, but how do we let the government know otherwise?

As for the comment on teachers paying £60 per pupil for the day striking, great - however what about those teachers still in work, still working - we don't have a day off, last strike day I spent the day, with all of my colleagues (none of us were out) second marking the students work - which with all the cut backs at the school we would have had to spend our own time doing as there is no time to do it during working hours.
 
1. & 2. = Yes.

3. Sometimes, it's all that's left in the armoury.

I know several teachers - close friends and relatives - and they work insane hours and immensly hard. I wouldn't do the job they do for the pay they get and respect they don't.

It annoys me when I hear/read people, that obviously know nothing about what teachers actually do, complaining about how easy a life it is and how much time off they get, or the hours they do. (There are a few in this thread.) They think because their kids only do 9-3 and have loads of holidays that the teachers do too - numpties.

Of course there'll be a handful that are the exception, you get that in all sectors, but you cannot extrapolate.

And to suggest that once you've been doing the job a few years it's all plain sailing is ridiculous. The job is constantly changing. The way it has to be taught is constantly changing. Just because 2 + 2 still equals 4 does not mean that a maths teacher can just coast through their job. Maybe decades ago, but certainly not now.

I asked my 8 year old's teacher what studying I could do to help him with his maths. It's all very well teaching him how I do it, how I was taught, but it's different to how they teach them today and it would only make matters worse. Her reply - 'they're' (not her) changing the tools/methods next term (again) so whatever I show you now will be an obsolete method.

A lot of the materials they use are paid for out of their own pockets.

And then there's the grief they get, the abuse, from parents and pupils. It wouldn't be accepted in any other job, but because they're public sector and it's kids they have to live with it.
 
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