Teachers' strike

Just some of them, then! X

Not all solicitors are rich - it is mostly the corporate, private client and tax lawyers that rake in lots of money.

They quite rightly should loose a day's pay. I hope that is a process adhered to.

I hear solicitors are to strike over legal aid funding! Poor hard up things! x

No doubt some parents will, too.

They will lose a day's pay.

(There was a letter today in our local rag asking why, if parents are fined for taking their children out of school, are the striking teachers also going to be fined for non attendance?!)

Practically everyone I know in work is having to work longer hours than they are contracted for, usually unpaid, many not having the time to take holiday and loosing it.
Teachers are in the same boat as everyone else. Somewhere along the line things are out of kilter. There are enough people to do the jobs without the need for all these extra hours but there is constant demand to keep costs and taxes down. We all (including those with plenty of dosh) want quality, a good standard of living, cheap food, free medicine, quality teachers for our children, but, for for whatever reason aren't prepared to pay for it.

Teaching was my second career; I trained and qualified as a vet nurse and worked in the veterinary profession till I was 36, when went to uni to do teacher training. The hours were long, the pay awful and I had to work some weekends and bank holidays as well as being on call on a rota. Very different to the 32 hour week, 13 weeks holiday and index linked pension of teaching. But if I had to go back to work now it would, without a shadow of doubt, be to vet nursing and NOT teaching, much as I loved it.

I know it wasn't grandjura Good for her that's what I say !!

I think perhaps teaching is a little like nursing. Children look at nurses and their teachers with admiration and think "when I grow up I want to be a teacher or a nurse" however it takes more than the qualification in itself and perhaps too many people enter the profession with a general dislike of children and/or people and probably should have chosen to do something elose entirely.

My DD went to uni to be a teacher (she has an English degree) but later confessed that she didn't actually like most children very much. She then went on to do a management training course with McDonalds and more recently has moved to a large coffee chain. Many people have commented on her "wasted" degree but she loves her job. The pay is rubbish, the holidays are basic, the hours are awful but she is happy..... much happier than she might have been with two or three times the salary in teaching.

Oh how I wish some of the teachers at my DGC's school had thought the same.....................

gillybob- the mention os salary was not to boast- but to show the reality re good graduate salaries. She got there by her very own hard work, via the local comprehensive and a red brick uni- and I do take my hat to her- the only in her firm from a comp, the only from a red brick and the only woman.

My point was that good graduates with talent will very rarely choose teaching- and that the more we undermine the profession, the less there will be and the more unqualified- this is NOT what I want for my grand-children (at their local primary school btw, not private).

I do have a pension now- but I didn't get one for a long time when I retired. I could have claimed ill-health and got early retirement, but I didn't (part of the exhaustion was due to ill health). I just gave my notice in and made sure I finished the year as I didn't want to let my GCSE and A'Level students down, nor the school- found a great replacement, and left at the end of the year, aged 52.

Granjura How many years ago did you retire ? I don't understand why you have no pension. Most of the teachers I know have retired on fairly good pensions, certainly as much if not more than friends in the private sector.

I can never understand why they stop working and go on strike when it undermines the children's education. Why do they not just refuse to do the extra work that interferes with their teaching. Only then will the authorities realise just how much time is taken up with these extra jobs. is it because they will not all work together. If so it probably means that do not all support the strike.

I'ts in your hand, gillybob!

I wish I earned 1 x teachers salary ginny never mind 10 x

Still we can't all teach can we? some of us have to do !

Now where did I put that spoon?

I certainly wouldn't deny that there are many very dedicated teachers and also some useless one. That is the same as any profession.

I do know a number of teachers and have worked at a school in learning support and I have found that there is a tendency for teachers to think that everyone else has it easier than they do. Maybe it is because most have never worked in anything but a school environment.

My DH and millions of others work hours over their contracted hours for no extra money and it has always been a sore point that he is often contacted even when on holiday. There are assessments, paperwork, targets and plenty of goalpost moving too.

I wish he or I earned 10 x a teachers salary and I bet my DDs who have and do work very hard and have good qualifications do too !

I don't know why we have this them and us attitude between the private and public sector workers in this country. Why can't we appreciate that neither could exist without the other. No-one is any more special or important than the other.

Thanks, Drangonfly1 - I was wondering how they were supposed to work for 195 days plus another 1265 hours!

I don't think there is an issue as to whether or not teachers are hard working, conscientious, etc. etc. I would think most people would say they approach their chosen employment in that manner too. Teachers , like most 'bodies' of workers do however give the impression only they are being hard done by and this is the answer in my mind I am trying to establish, are they or not.

I am giving this further thought but I have to say initially I am thinking on the figures so far put forward.

If you work a 32.5 hour week and have 13 weeks holiday but you work half of your holiday working, as an example, not fact one way or another obviously, is that better or worse than other employment.

A typical day for another job could be a 40 hour week and 4 weeks holiday + bank holidays. Also a lunch at the desk because they are too busy to go out or because they only have half an hour for lunch, which is the norm for those I speak to. Plus many jobs do require a certain amount of work being done at home. Yes it's unpaid hours but that is the reality for many workers in the private sector too.

I'm still thinking.

" But I think teachers are just so frustrated by the constant goalpost-shifting, interference and endless pointless paperwork and box-ticking."

For teachers, also read doctors, social workers, nurses etc. Sigh.

I enormously admire teachers - I could not do what they do and know how hard they work. There are rotten ones - I have encountered them - but they are thankfully few and far between. The job that they do is endlessly exhausting - in a sense they are like actors performing all day, whilst at the same time being sensitive to the moods and needs of children and young people. Oh - and then they have to fill in the forms, tick the boxes, mark work, prepare lessons..................................

I am intrigued by the way a good teacher can control a class - it is a fascinating skill. As governor I sometimes observe lessons and there is one teacher who has the class in the palm of her hand - she is quiet and gentle, serious and purposeful, and has something that holds the pupils. They hang on her every word.

The performance related pay is a thorny one. There is something to be said for quality control in order to weed out the ones who are bad at their job, but the onus for collecting evidence of quality teaching now rests with the teachers themselves and it is just one more chore - I can see why they are not entirely happy about it.

Agreed Aka- but not to protect teachers as such- but to explain that if we want excellent teachers to teach our grandkids, and the future of our country- we need to respect the profession and pay them fairly- and that if there is a shortage- bringing in unqualified staff is NOT the way to improve the situation. If we constantly undermine the teaching profession- we will get what we deserve- but certainly NOT what our grand-children deserve.

(no she is not a barrister, but a senior partner of a London firm).

I have to admit that I have never been in a union so don't directly understand the strategy behind the strikes but it often seems to me that strikers are asking for things that many of us could only dream of!

How hard it must be for teachers to understand what the rest of us do as most of them have not ever been outside an educational establishment? How hard it is for the rest of us who have only seen schools from a parental point of view to understand what a teacher's job is like?

If teachers are all working 60 hour weeks then all their employers are breaking the law! What about the Working Time Regulations, have they gone?

When you work for a large company you see closely many different types of workers and their conditions. Having worked with the CEO and CFO of an enormous company and then gone on to work in other departments I may well have seen far more different roles than many and I can assure you that the idea of a 9 -5 day is for many just a dream. 'Comparisons are odius' might well apply on this thread as none of us really know.

Aka I so agree with you, it is really nice for us to be able to say what we want to without anyone deciding to take offence or put the boot in. Long may it last!

Perhaps we're just trying to explain what the job really entails and defend our colleagues, children and friends still in the profession who are struggling with even heavier burden???