Is most people's outrage more to do with the inconvenience of having their child minders withdrawn ?
Oh give it a rest it's law they have to go to school! Of course people are going to make good use of that time and go to work when they are there so they have every right to be annoyed!
Oh give it a rest it's law they have to go to school! Of course people are going to make good use of that time and go to work when they are there so they have every right to be annoyed!
Oh give it a rest it's law they have to go to school! Of course people are going to make good use of that time and go to work when they are there so they have every right to be annoyed!
It's law that they have to be educated, not go to school, but who can afford to do anything other than send them to school so they can work themselves?
There aren't many professions that have to deal with 30 "clients" all at the same time all day.
That aside. Striking seems pointless in the UK. The UK should be more like France, not have a one day strike that rarely achieves much but instead striking until they get what they want. There is also not the hatred towards the strikers by the non strikers. Secondary striking is banned here in England isn't it?
Two weeks paid leave would be illegal in the EU. The minimum to someone working in the UK full time is 28 days including public holidays.
You really ought to check your facts before posting inflammatory nonsense.
Mustn't get the facts get in the way of a good rant:D - as if this topic hasn't been done to death a dozen times.
First, you don't get £30k straight out of training that's top of the scale for an unpromoted teacher
Second, you don't get any more paid holidays than anyone else.
(both these facts have been posted many times on this forum - are you new, OP, or do you just hope that people will have forgotten what has been said?)
The Tories thrive on pitting different groups in society against each other.
Public sector vs private sector.
Rich vs poor.
Employed vs unemployed.
North vs South
Disabled vs the healthy.
Migrants vs Brits.
People who lived through the previous Tory government used to tell me this. I was too young at the time to notice or care. But I see exactly what they mean now.
I support them. Had their pensions whacked, pay freeze for four years now I think. Despite that my kids teachers have continued to be frankly excellent, out with the high standard of teaching, they are constantly arranging out of hours events, which help bind the community. I am behind them all the way.
I hope they get themselves a little better organised than they have done on other strikes (I think partly because there are two or three unions) get a good vote, and allow less room for criticism of their mandate.
That's certainly been proven already on Channel 4 Dispatches tonight.
Also a shame to see the usual damaging misinformation about teachers being paraded around. Teachers and strikes are like waving a red rag to a bull - well, a right wing leaning bull anyway. Quite apt too to use the example of a bull, because the right wing tabloids are certainly full of it!
I am behind our public sector workers and I hope if I needed support they would get behind me. This is more about th government picking on the little people, whilst the tax avoiders and corporate sponsors get away with practical murder.
Oh Yeah!, didn't they go out in their tens of thousands when their mate Gordon, Stripped the private sector's pensions of over £100Bn,
No?, Can't remember that?, funnily enough neither can I, Cause it didn't happen!
Following that, I have ZERO sympathy for public sector workers, do like the rest of us have to in hard times and SUCK IT UP!
It all seems very divide and conquer, which is it what has been suggested the governments tactics are. If so they are doing very well at succeeding.
Also seems to be a secondary tactic within these debates, who can outdo each other in having worse workplace conditions and rights, a race to the bottom as it were. A case "I can't have it so no-one else should". Rather than these individuals complain negatively about how they have it bad, how about improving their lot in a positive way?
Ok, I tried to avoid getting involved in this thread as it's a no-winner. Teachers will always get their way by holding the rest of us to ransom. I say this not only as someone whose own job was affected by their last strike action, but also someone who workesin the public sector (NHS Ambulance service) and prior to that in a secondary school.
Years ago I worked in a secondary school as an administrator (who got shafted into covering lessons and even had to cover lessons for the supply teachers who couldn't cope with the kids!!) I worked all year, and you wouldn't see hide nor hair of the teachers all summer until the final few days before term began. They would be in the staff room comparing holidays - (now we're not talking a week at Butlins here, but month long exotic trips), then run around like blue-arsed flies panicking to get lessons prepped at the last minute. The level of teaching at the school was appalling (with just a few exceptions) and eventually I decided to leave. I could not stand the way the school was failing (it went into special measures).
I then moved into the Ambulance service - my dream job at last. You could call it a 'vocational calling' rather like some describe teaching. My starting wage was £14000pa , and it's not much more now! Anyhow, striking is not an option for us, nor would I or my colleagues EVER consider it. We knew the hours would be long (12hr days/nights), shifts would run over bank holidays and Christmas, but that's what we knew would happen.. Our t &c's are always shifting, but we do the job because we love it, not to get comfy and complacent.
Anyhow, my last gripe is that whenever these teachers strike it affects the rest of us, (whatever our occupation). We have to try to beg for leave to cover our children's absence from school, and in my case that would mean our supervisors trying to cover my shifts. If the shift couldn't be covered, the crew was one down, therefore affecting patient care.
Any teachers reading this - please don't strike! It could be your relative that doesn't get an ambulance because crews are short thanks to us having to be at home when our children should have been in school!!:mad:
Fairly comparing teachers is something that the western world has struggled with for years. You can't simply compare results: classes have greatly different levels of ability. You can't just compare "improvement": a very smart class will probably "improve" the least, yet have the best results. You can't base it off children's feedback: they often love the least strict teachers, not the best teachers.
Most people don't object to the idea of performance related pay, it's just that there's no quality method to do it.
It's actually the other way around. Able pupils will be able to improve beyond what anyone might expect. Low ability classes often struggle to improve because low ability classes usually have a larger number of disruptive students that slow down progress.
The problem starts at primary school. Primary schools are rated and ranked on their results, so they make stuff up. Kids are coming up with, for example, a level 5 in Science. Yet the science teachers assess and in reality the kid is actually level 3. But our levels of progress are judged on what the primary school teachers say.
So if some primary school teacher lied or just didn't know her stuff a few years ago, I'm going to get my pay REDUCED based on that next year because I can't keep up with impossible expectations.
And what about the children who don't want to improve? What about the children who say "I only need a D to get into college, I already have an offer, the only person who wants me to get an A is you". That kid is going to come out THREE GRADES below target because he wants to, and yet that will be judged as my fault.
And of course, if I'm going to get paid based on the Controlled Assessment results of my children, take a wild guess what I'm going to do to ensure my quality of life. And you don't think that's going to reduce the quality of education overall? How do kids benefit from me doing more of their Controlled Assessment for them so that I don't get a pay cut due to their laziness?
I'm a Technology teacher. I'm pretty sure by the time I get there the retirement age is going to be around 78. You think I can handle a bunch of 16 year olds when I'm elderly and probably arthritic and can barely hold a soldering iron? Look around schools. A lot of teachers are on their last legs at 50. There are studies out there showing that teachers die younger than average because of the stress of the profession. We're being steered to a point that people of my generation probably won't live to see the reduced pension we're paying more money into because we're going to die first.
As for 30k a year straight out of training, I'm on... I don't know. 25k in my third year after training, I think. I'm not going to be on 30k for years. If ever, given that apparently next year my headteacher can reduce my pay based on whether or not he likes me.
Let's take another look at manipulation, though. I'm a Graphics/Product Design teacher. Technology is seen as the dumping ground for badly behaved boys in many schools. I'm getting stuck with a bunch of boys who can't be arsed, so how am I supposed to match the achievement of my colleagues?
As for job security, I've been through two redundancy processes in the last two years and only survived one of them. Luckily I got another job but I was the only person in the SCHOOL to be hired that year because every other department had people made redundant. My future job security does't look great either, because there are less kids coming in due to the lower birth rate in my city.
Don't forget a lot of us have to accept rudeness and abuse as a matter of course in our jobs. Doctors get the luxury of removing patients from their lists if they are verbally abusive. We just exclude them for a few days, accept an apology and keep on taking it.
So those poor teachers, who have to somehow survive with barely 30k a year straight out of training, unbelievably long paid holidays, incredible job security and a normally very early retirement compared to the rest of us working fools, are unhappy with their lot. Boo hoo. Quick! Striiiiiiiiiiiike!
Maybe they should come to the real world: low wages, no guaranteed pay rises, two weeks paid leave and you work till you drop dead.
Is it just me or are you also getting pissed off with public service workers holding us all to ransom? Its not the seventies anymore, and most of the private sector workers who pay your wages aren't getting anywhere close to your level of work related benefits. Deal with it!
you should step in the shoes of a teacher for a year, you will be boo hoo'ing & look forward to a strike!
they do not work 9-3... ~sighs~ at the ignorance of some people
I'm still working. I'm planning for a double Year 10 lesson tomorrow. I'm working at 10pm by choice, of course. Who wouldn't? It's the fun thing to do.
Ok, I tried to avoid getting involved in this thread as it's a no-winner. Teachers will always get their way by holding the rest of us to ransom. I say this not only as someone whose own job was affected by their last strike action, but also someone who workesin the public sector (NHS Ambulance service) and prior to that in a secondary school.
Years ago I worked in a secondary school as an administrator (who got shafted into covering lessons and even had to cover lessons for the supply teachers who couldn't cope with the kids!!) I worked all year, and you wouldn't see hide nor hair of the teachers all summer until the final few days before term began. They would be in the staff room comparing holidays - (now we're not talking a week at Butlins here, but month long exotic trips), then run around like blue-arsed flies panicking to get lessons prepped at the last minute. The level of teaching at the school was appalling (with just a few exceptions) and eventually I decided to leave. I could not stand the way the school was failing (it went into special measures).
I then moved into the Ambulance service - my dream job at last. You could call it a 'vocational calling' rather like some describe teaching. My starting wage was £14000pa , and it's not much more now! Anyhow, striking is not an option for us, nor would I or my colleagues EVER consider it. We knew the hours would be long (12hr days/nights), shifts would run over bank holidays and Christmas, but that's what we knew would happen.. Our t &c's are always shifting, but we do the job because we love it, not to get comfy and complacent.
Anyhow, my last gripe is that whenever these teachers strike it affects the rest of us, (whatever our occupation). We have to try to beg for leave to cover our children's absence from school, and in my case that would mean our supervisors trying to cover my shifts. If the shift couldn't be covered, the crew was one down, therefore affecting patient care.
Any teachers reading this - please don't strike! It could be your relative that doesn't get an ambulance because crews are short thanks to us having to be at home when our children should have been in school!!:mad:
so all year you covered for supply teachers, never took it to the board of governors complaining about the way the school was run?
you wouldn't see hide nor hair of the teachers ? don't believe it
You do realise strikes are supposed to cause disruption, don't you?
No, should they??:rolleyes:
The trouble with that is, as I said before, you wouldn't be very happy if you had a close relative having a cardiac arrest/stroke, or was choking etc and had to wait 30 or more minutes for the nearest crew to get there as front line staff numbers were reduced that day thanks to the strike.
It may be hard, but try to think of the bigger picture.
In fact, let's hear from other workers, and how their jobs were affected by strike action
No, should they??:rolleyes:
The trouble with that is, as I said before, you wouldn't be very happy if you had a close relative having a cardiac arrest/stroke, or was choking etc and had to wait 30 or more minutes for the nearest crew to get there as front line staff numbers were reduced that day thanks to the strike.
It may be hard, but try to think of the bigger picture.
In fact, let's hear from other workers, and how their jobs were affected by strike action
Same thing happens with annual leave, I know too well about where I work, also in healthcare. Will you also condemn people taking annual leave on the same principle?
Same thing happens with annual leave, I know too well about where I work, also in healthcare. Will you also condemn people taking annual leave on the same principle?
Should they be on 24 call?
Otherwise people could die.
Where do you draw the line as to what you can accept?
Or should you slave away all the time because people depend on you?
And for teachers, the parents depend on you to look after their kids (although some are spectacularly ungrateful for anything done for their children).
Comments
Oh give it a rest it's law they have to go to school! Of course people are going to make good use of that time and go to work when they are there so they have every right to be annoyed!
It's law that they have to be educated, not go to school, but who can afford to do anything other than send them to school so they can work themselves?
That aside. Striking seems pointless in the UK. The UK should be more like France, not have a one day strike that rarely achieves much but instead striking until they get what they want. There is also not the hatred towards the strikers by the non strikers. Secondary striking is banned here in England isn't it?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-smith-blocks-plan-for-childcare-tax-breaks-in-budget-8537670.html
Mustn't get the facts get in the way of a good rant:D - as if this topic hasn't been done to death a dozen times.
First, you don't get £30k straight out of training that's top of the scale for an unpromoted teacher
Second, you don't get any more paid holidays than anyone else.
(both these facts have been posted many times on this forum - are you new, OP, or do you just hope that people will have forgotten what has been said?)
Don't forget the elderly against the young
I hope they get themselves a little better organised than they have done on other strikes (I think partly because there are two or three unions) get a good vote, and allow less room for criticism of their mandate.
Also a shame to see the usual damaging misinformation about teachers being paraded around. Teachers and strikes are like waving a red rag to a bull - well, a right wing leaning bull anyway. Quite apt too to use the example of a bull, because the right wing tabloids are certainly full of it!
Oh Yeah!, didn't they go out in their tens of thousands when their mate Gordon, Stripped the private sector's pensions of over £100Bn,
No?, Can't remember that?, funnily enough neither can I, Cause it didn't happen!
Following that, I have ZERO sympathy for public sector workers, do like the rest of us have to in hard times and SUCK IT UP!
Years ago I worked in a secondary school as an administrator (who got shafted into covering lessons and even had to cover lessons for the supply teachers who couldn't cope with the kids!!) I worked all year, and you wouldn't see hide nor hair of the teachers all summer until the final few days before term began. They would be in the staff room comparing holidays - (now we're not talking a week at Butlins here, but month long exotic trips), then run around like blue-arsed flies panicking to get lessons prepped at the last minute. The level of teaching at the school was appalling (with just a few exceptions) and eventually I decided to leave. I could not stand the way the school was failing (it went into special measures).
I then moved into the Ambulance service - my dream job at last. You could call it a 'vocational calling' rather like some describe teaching. My starting wage was £14000pa , and it's not much more now! Anyhow, striking is not an option for us, nor would I or my colleagues EVER consider it. We knew the hours would be long (12hr days/nights), shifts would run over bank holidays and Christmas, but that's what we knew would happen.. Our t &c's are always shifting, but we do the job because we love it, not to get comfy and complacent.
Anyhow, my last gripe is that whenever these teachers strike it affects the rest of us, (whatever our occupation). We have to try to beg for leave to cover our children's absence from school, and in my case that would mean our supervisors trying to cover my shifts. If the shift couldn't be covered, the crew was one down, therefore affecting patient care.
Any teachers reading this - please don't strike! It could be your relative that doesn't get an ambulance because crews are short thanks to us having to be at home when our children should have been in school!!:mad:
It's actually the other way around. Able pupils will be able to improve beyond what anyone might expect. Low ability classes often struggle to improve because low ability classes usually have a larger number of disruptive students that slow down progress.
The problem starts at primary school. Primary schools are rated and ranked on their results, so they make stuff up. Kids are coming up with, for example, a level 5 in Science. Yet the science teachers assess and in reality the kid is actually level 3. But our levels of progress are judged on what the primary school teachers say.
So if some primary school teacher lied or just didn't know her stuff a few years ago, I'm going to get my pay REDUCED based on that next year because I can't keep up with impossible expectations.
And what about the children who don't want to improve? What about the children who say "I only need a D to get into college, I already have an offer, the only person who wants me to get an A is you". That kid is going to come out THREE GRADES below target because he wants to, and yet that will be judged as my fault.
And of course, if I'm going to get paid based on the Controlled Assessment results of my children, take a wild guess what I'm going to do to ensure my quality of life. And you don't think that's going to reduce the quality of education overall? How do kids benefit from me doing more of their Controlled Assessment for them so that I don't get a pay cut due to their laziness?
I'm a Technology teacher. I'm pretty sure by the time I get there the retirement age is going to be around 78. You think I can handle a bunch of 16 year olds when I'm elderly and probably arthritic and can barely hold a soldering iron? Look around schools. A lot of teachers are on their last legs at 50. There are studies out there showing that teachers die younger than average because of the stress of the profession. We're being steered to a point that people of my generation probably won't live to see the reduced pension we're paying more money into because we're going to die first.
As for 30k a year straight out of training, I'm on... I don't know. 25k in my third year after training, I think. I'm not going to be on 30k for years. If ever, given that apparently next year my headteacher can reduce my pay based on whether or not he likes me.
Let's take another look at manipulation, though. I'm a Graphics/Product Design teacher. Technology is seen as the dumping ground for badly behaved boys in many schools. I'm getting stuck with a bunch of boys who can't be arsed, so how am I supposed to match the achievement of my colleagues?
As for job security, I've been through two redundancy processes in the last two years and only survived one of them. Luckily I got another job but I was the only person in the SCHOOL to be hired that year because every other department had people made redundant. My future job security does't look great either, because there are less kids coming in due to the lower birth rate in my city.
Don't forget a lot of us have to accept rudeness and abuse as a matter of course in our jobs. Doctors get the luxury of removing patients from their lists if they are verbally abusive. We just exclude them for a few days, accept an apology and keep on taking it.
you should step in the shoes of a teacher for a year, you will be boo hoo'ing & look forward to a strike!
they do not work 9-3... ~sighs~ at the ignorance of some people
so all year you covered for supply teachers, never took it to the board of governors complaining about the way the school was run?
you wouldn't see hide nor hair of the teachers ? don't believe it
No, should they??:rolleyes:
The trouble with that is, as I said before, you wouldn't be very happy if you had a close relative having a cardiac arrest/stroke, or was choking etc and had to wait 30 or more minutes for the nearest crew to get there as front line staff numbers were reduced that day thanks to the strike.
It may be hard, but try to think of the bigger picture.
In fact, let's hear from other workers, and how their jobs were affected by strike action
Should they be on 24 call?
Otherwise people could die.
Where do you draw the line as to what you can accept?
Or should you slave away all the time because people depend on you?
And for teachers, the parents depend on you to look after their kids (although some are spectacularly ungrateful for anything done for their children).
Teachers should play hardball, in my opinion.