Why We Are Striking

The National Education Union has announced four days of strike action this spring affecting schools in the north on the 1st February, 28th February, 15th March & 16th March. On these days, teachers will take strike action in pursuit of two key demands: a pay award that matches inflation and extra funding for schools. 

No-one takes strike action lightly: it is disruptive and will result in serious financial hardship for ourselves and our members. However, we believe that we have little choice but to strike unless there is a serious change in education policy. As the local county representatives, we wanted to explain the strikes to you as members of our community and, hopefully, open a dialogue into how we can ensure a properly funded and well led education system in the future.

Teachers’ Pay

Teachers’ Pay has fallen over 20% in the last 13 years. For experienced teachers, this has resulted in the loss of over £64,000 in that time. Over that time, below inflation pay awards have successively weakened the purchasing power of teachers’ pay. This has several negative impacts on our children’s education:

• Teachers can now often get higher wages for much less intense work elsewhere. 

• Many new teachers leave the profession in their first years, realising that they are working extremely hard for not much money.

• Many graduates do not train to be teachers, meaning there is a lack of new teachers to fill the gaps left by those leaving the profession.

These factors can result in children having a disrupted education as teachers leave mid-year or schools struggle to recruit staff. It also means that children may be taught by non-specialist teachers or be left with long term supply cover, neither of which is ideal.

Funding

A major component of the dispute, and the reason why many teachers at our school are striking, is the issue of school funding. School funding has been consistently cut by successive governments since 2010. A lack of funding has several negative impacts on children’s education in schools:

• Many of the extra-curricular activities that require funding get cut.

• Schools sometimes have to ‘make do’ without essential equipment.

• Class sizes for your children get larger, leading to less teacher time for each individual child.

• School buildings become overcrowded as more pupils are added to the school to increase funding.

• There is less staff flexibility, leading to teachers taking classes outside their specialism.

We believe that education is a key public service that requires thoughtful, professional and properly resourced leadership from the Department of Education (DfE). This is crucial to ensuring that pupils at our school, and across the country, are able to have an educational experience that gives them the skills needed to play an active role in the world, that can develop their unique and individual talents, and that can contribute to our wider community. We believe that the sustained attacks on school funding and teachers’ pay carried out by the DfE is falling well short of this goal: our strikes are the only path open to us to encourage the DfE to listen.

We sincerely hope that these strikes are over quickly and that a proper settlement is arrived at soon. However, please be assured that we will continue to campaign until we feel that the children in our care get the best education possible.