Will it make any difference? No, in my opinion. At the moment we appear to have the backing of the general public but if there are more strikes (and I hear rumours that there will be) the sympathy will quickly disappear.
Is there an alternative? Yes - work to rule. Teachers are paid from the hours of about 8.30am to 3.30pm roughly. In that time they get free time (PPA time) to plan lessons and write reports (a mandatory one per year per student). Teachers are also supposed to go to one meeting per week and a parents evening for each child. The work to rule policy would mean that the statutory requirements would be covered but nothing else. No lunch duties for example (teachers aren't paid in their lunch hour) so children would have to be unsupervised or told to leave the school grounds during lunch. Meetings would end on time as people would just leave at 4.30pm (most should end long before then anyway, and many meeting. are ultimately pointless). This policy would not annoy the general public. This policy would not leave teachers out of pocket. This policy would give teachers a proper work/life balance again.
Surely it's a no-brainer. I won't be striking next time as I can't really afford to. It's not that I don;t agree that we should fight to save our benefits, but I think that we are essentially cutting our noses off to spite our own faces.
All those private sector people who say we're lazy and say that they have to contribute to expensive private pension schemes seem to conveniently forget about their hefty annual bonus, the fact that they are paid more to work longer in general, and can therefore afford to make bigger pension contributions.
The so-called benefits of being a teacher are these:
- Long holidays - they indeed are, 13 weeks per year to be precise, where travel companies double or triple their prices meaning that you can't afford to go anywhere.
- Good pension scheme - not any more!
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