Haha only on OA 
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How you gonna call people at war cowards then lmao
Lmao
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I’ve had emails and texts from the NEU today saying there’s a big zoom meeting for the union tomorrow because of news about our pay dispute so I’m going to go ahead and assume some sort of settlement has been agreed for teachers pay.
Interesting. More often than not, they (the government and LEAs) give with one hand and take with the other.
These strikes aren’t really about pay - they are for funding and workload. Will be interesting to see what happens.
Well funding and pay are very linked because if pay goes up but funding doesn’t then redundancies often follow because schools can’t afford their payroll.
As to workload, teaching is a very workload intensive job but the situation has, in my experience improved quite a lot since I joined the profession just after the Gove years when he essentially tried to get the profession to work for less than minimum wage if you worked out what we were paid Vs the number of hours required to do the job with all the admin that was being demanded.
It’s still a hard job but workload has come down a lot over the last decade. There are some schools out there still demanding ridiculous workloads but they’re sufficiently in the minority that you just don’t work at them.
Unless you’re a primary teacher. I have to say whenever I run into them I think their workload is insane.
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I am a primary teacher. This is interesting as often times the main challenges that I have in the job in comparison to secondary teachers are often not the same.
Maybe I’m giving a primary take here as well? I agree on the redundancy point that you made, but at primary level it is the support staff who are chopped when the budget doesn’t stretch. The invisible cost is huge. There was a time not that long ago when you’d have at least two adults in a class, sometimes as many as three or four depending on the needs. Now, it is pretty rare for a school to have two adults in a room.
Teaching assistants are invaluable, 3k extra on the pay packet at the expense of two TAs in a school will send workload up and the quality of education delivered down significantly.
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I think support staff are also the first cut at secondary level but a pay rise without funding is still concerning for teachers because the wages of support staff is so ridiculously low that they won’t plug a significant funding hole if they’re cut. As a non-core subject teacher, I don’t see support staff very often in my classrooms unless there is a student with one to one support. They are more common in core subjects though.
When I’ve had the relative luxury of support staff, they’ve always been invaluable. Their job is well above the unskilled pay they get for it and really part of a rise in school funding should include keeping those staff and paying them properly so they don’t go off to work in other low paying jobs.
But this is what I mean when I say funding and pay go hand in hand. Lots of schools would like to pay to keep hold of their best support staff but can’t do it as things stand.
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We agree. My worry is that the unions might bend on the ‘fully funded pay rise’.
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I think that’s likely. It’s the easiest way for the union to claim victory.
The scale of the strike action they wanted wasn’t sustainable for many I don’t think. 4 days money is considerable, especially with 3 in the same pay cycle.
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More teacher strikes being proposed for the 27th of April and the 2nd of May. At this rate any potential payrise would barely cover the 6 striking days.
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Yeah the NEU wants us to reject the offer. I can kind of see why, it’s not really anywhere close to the demands. But equally I’m not sure what the union is especially realistic.
At the start of this, when I had a little more to do with the Union the intention was to campaign for 10% and settle for roughly what we got already this year and they were a bit taken aback that the government gave us that but they still are pushing for more, and have now been offered more.
Well, a 4.3% payrise has been offered plus a 1,000 pound lump sum. I believe the 4.3% is to be back paid as well.
It’s not an awful offer. The problem seems to be how it is going to be funded.
Welsh and Scottish teachers get paid more than English teachers. There’s no logic as to why.
I think the 4.3% is from next academic year. But yeah, the funding is a concern.
Just read up on the offer. Less than 1% of the proposed payrise comes from additional funding. So in essence, next to no increase in school budgets.
Bullshit.
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Businesses not passing wholesale price cuts onto consumers? I’m shocked
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Im admin in the rail sector, and we were given a payrise recently without being attached to any union or any strikes.
Was backdated to the start of last year.
First payrise ever in my life, without it being attached to a promotion
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Got a 5% payrise yesterday in recognition of the cost of living. Given the organisation’s finances could be better, it feels pretty generous. They gave employees a lump sum back in mid November in recognition of cost of living, which was a month’s salary. I’d literally been working there for two weeks and still qualified for it. So I feel pretty happy with my employers. It doesn’t match inflation but there’s no chance that was ever gonna happen lol, so I’ll take what I can get.
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That is absolute class, you must be well pleased with that. Feel free not to disclose obvs, but what kind of percentage are we talking here?