The teachers pay strike across England and Wales this thursday could “damage pupils exam revision” reckons the head of the school employers organisation. I’m currently sitting here trying to work out whether they’re dumb, stupid or quite possibly both.
In all honesty, do they think a day off college/school is going to hinder your exam revision so badly that you’re going to fail everything? If your college timetable is anything like mine I’m only due to be within college grounds for 3 hours on a thursday, and 1 1/2 of those hours is a cancelled lesson considering my lecturer is too busy swanning off elsewhere. If you’re that deadly serious about your revision and passing the exams, the absense of a teacher for ONE DAY should have absolutely no effect on your revision process what so ever.
And of course, the Labour Party has sat on it’s fat arse criticising the decision to go on a strike. The Schools Minister Jim Knight stated – “We believe that all teachers should be teaching and talking – and not walking out next week,” Well it seems a little late for talking considering you gave the entire Civil Services a nice pay rise to tie in with the 3.8% Retail Prices Index inflation measure… and yet you DEDUCTED the pay for teachers… do the maths huh?
Both teachers and lecturers do some of the most stressful jobs in Britain’s society today and yet they are part of a profession where unless you’re employed privately it’s hard to earn anything over 22k a year… Politican’s, MPs, Doctors, Nurses, Binmen! even earn more money then the people who plow over 90+ hours a week into educating Britain’s next generations… 22k for 4680 hours of work a year… hardly seems fair? And they wonder why the ammount of people training to teach in England is on such a deep decline?
But the bottom line is if they don’t get this rise then the teaching standards are going to decline further, and the “Almighty” labour party will put us deeper in the shit then they have already. If I’m gonna get my QTS in a little over 4 years, I’d kinda hope I’d have more then a 22k salary waiting for me…
Its all good and well telling the government that they want a pay rise to be fair… but the chances during the economica crash (so its being called) of 2008 of getting the reduction reversed and actually getting something postive from this entire political crack pot of New labours failures…. is very very low indeed.