Conference Season

I really don't like Easter. It's not the holidays because after all, that is one of the few benefits of being a teacher. It's because the three major teaching unions (NUT, NASUWT and ATL) have their conferences.

Now I like unions, and I think that they have an important part to play in the life if any teacher (those who aren't members of a union are fools I'm afraid). They provide support for any teacher who finds themselves in a bit of a jam whilst at work. They will, if the case warrants it, provide legal support whose cost would be prohibitive otherwise.

So if I actually like unions, why do I dislike their conferences?

The problem is that anyone who is a member can make a speech in theory. Now I might sound undemocratic at this stage, but some people need to be prevented from talking in public. All unions have militant members, many of whom probably have a reasonable point, but the fact is that they just sound a bit pathetic and ranting.

Currently teaching has a few issues of which these are the main two:

1. Ofsted - the fear of senior management in schools is almost unbearable and the Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw comes across as a bully and an idealist living in a fantasy world. The workload his rhetoric has produced is unsustainable and is driving people out of the profession.
2. Michael Gove - Secretary of State for Education. He is in the process (presumably because he knows that his party won't get voted back in at the next election) of radically changing the way schools work and teach the youth of the country at a frightening pace. Some of it is sensible and needs doing but much of it is lamentable, and this has been stated to him repeatedly by "experts". He ploughs on regardless.

There are others: pensions, pay freezes, attitude to learning and pupil/parental behaviour being among them.

The problem is that rather than focusing on pointing out the flaws in Wilshaw and Gove's policies, members if the various unions have cried "strike" at every given opportunity. There's a reason that this is a stupid and frankly annoying way to go from those speaking at the various conferences. The votes of no confidence are fair enough however - Gove and Wilshaw need to know just how unpopular and unwanted they are.

In the public's eyes teachers are doing a job that few would choose; on a par with the police if truth be told. Teachers do get 13 weeks of holiday each year (something the police don't get), and it's an accusation regularly levelled at teachers. So when the NUT are reported to have asked for teaching time to be limited to 20 hours per week this doesn't go down well with Joe Public as our Joe doesn't realise that classroom time is the least of a teacher's worries. The general public have no idea what goes into a lesson, and why would they? They just assume that teachers turn up and whitter on about stuff then mark a few books - end of.

What teaching currently needs is public support before a series of strikes over pay and pensions from the NUT and NASUWT who represent around 90% of teachers. By asking for what the public will perceive as less work is frankly idiotic. The fact that most teachers have little more than 20 hours per week of teaching time makes the request even more idiotic.

Teaching unions must get their act together. Most of the country find politicians abomnible, but by making silly requests they are playing into these people's hands. I have no idea if the unions have a PR department, but if they do they need replacing. It's inviting the press and public to label teachers as lazy, whinging freeloaders with too much holiday.

That's why I hate Easter.

More Strikes Ahead

The two biggest teaching unions, the NUT and the NASUWT are having their annual conferences this week you are bound to see plenty of articles about strikes over pensions. It seems that anyone who is either a teacher or is related to one seems to be on the side of the teaching profession, but anyone whose experience of teaching is that they went to school a while ago seems to keep pointing out that teachers' work short hours, get long holidays and should see their job as a "vocation".

Whilst I sympathise with those on the outside seeing teachers striking seemingly on a whim, meaning that they are inconvenienced over strikes/closure of schools, something has to be done. I am not convinced that striking is the answer however, as dwindling public support will only give politicians ammunition.

It's funny how those who don't teach like to point out the benefits of the job - if the benefits are so great, why haven't they chosen teaching as a career?

So what are the benefits according to those who don't?

1. Holidays - 13 weeks per year in state education. Bear in mind that teachers have no choice over when they can take their holidays, and the lovely, supportive travel companies double their prices at least to cash in on the increased business. Also take into account that teachers don't get paid for the holiday time, only the time they spend in class - the wages are spread out across the year.
2. That leads me onto pay - competitive, indeed, and one can't grumble about the hourly rate paid for classroom time, but teachers get nothing for planning and preparation time outside of school hours, which is normally around the same number of hours as the time spent in the classroom. All of a sudden that hourly rate for time in the classroom is halved and not so attractive.
3. It's a vocation, as someone pointed out on a recent BBC message board, so teachers should just be happy to have their dream job and the money is irrelevent. I'd like to spend time on the cloud that poster came from, it must be lovely surviving on happiness alone.
4. Apparently teachers only work from 9am to 3pm during the week - I wish! I am not unusual in that I arrive before 8am and leave at around 5pm every day, occasionally taking work home. I know that many colleagues work at home until late into the evening - they certainly don't pay me enough to do that every evening. If something is urgent, then fair enough, but there was something called a work/life balance a few years ago, although you'd need a good memory to recall those days in teaching!

The problem is that people remember the bad old days when some teachers (the ones we all seemingly remember) were, shall we say, less inclined to plan lessons and spent much of a lesson sat at their desk reading a newspaper. They were few and far between, but for some reason everyone seems to think that they were the majority rather than the minority. In very expensive schools, you didn't even need to be qualified so essentially made it up as you went along!

What teachers and potential teachers face nowadays is the following:

• Training for a minimum of 4 years at the cost of thousands of pounds per year, and if you don't get a first or second class degrees, forget it. With those sorts of qualifications in some subject areas (eg. maths and physics), you could earn a lot more in industry with far less grief. Ultimately there will be no teachers in some areas of the curriculum.
• Pay freezes for a couple of years, meaning that teachesr are increasingly worse off.
• Pensions where you pay increasing amounts in and receive ever decreasing amounts when you retire, assuming you haven't pegged out by then.
• Retirement age increases to 67 or 68: I heard a great statistic the other day. Teachers who retire at 60 live for 17 years on average; teachers who retire at 65 live for 17 months on average. So the policy seems designed to kill ex-teachers off! Almost genocide!!!
• Conditions that are almost unbearable due to unsupportive parents and a system so wrapped up in red tape that students who cause a problem can't be dealy with effectively.
• A curriculum that is constantly being tinkered with by people who have no experience of teaching in the modern classroom, meaning extra work (in their own time) for teachers trying to keep up with the changes.
• Ofsted and politicians insisting that all students get good grades, whether they make any effort or not. If the student refuses to work, that's the teacher's fault.
• The threat of the sack hanging over every teacher due to recent government policy changes,
• The drive for all schools to become academies meaning that headteachers get more power and can sack any teacher they aren't keen on, regardless of teaching ability.
• Changes in regional pay to reflect the area in which the school is situated, which can only mean one thing: many teachers will see a drop in pay, or a frozen pay packet for far longer than previously advertised.

The list could go on and on and adds up to the fact that fewer and fewer people will enter the profession and more and more will leave. You don't have to be a genius to work out that this situation isn't healthy for anyone: teachers, parents or students. Politicians won't care, as long as they look good in the press.

I do understand that the general public are getting a bit tired of hearing/seeing whinging teachers in the media, but there are good reasons for the moaning, I just wish we could avoid strikes. The NASUWT had the right idea by working to rule, but it needs to go a bit further to really make an impact. Any suggestions?

Teachers Pensions - A New Deal?

I thought I'd go and see what changes were offered by the government today and copied this from the official government leaflet:

What will stay the same?
You will continue to receive a guaranteed income in your retirement.
You will keep the pension and lump sum you have already earned and this will remain linked to your final salary on retirement.
Regardless of any changes to teachers’ Normal Pension Age or the State Pension Age, you will retain options to retire at any age between 55 and 75.
Those within 10 years of normal pension age on 1 April 2012 will see no change to the age at which they can retire, and no change in the amount of pension they receive when they retire.
What is proposed to change?
A move from a final salary pension to a career average pension scheme.
A phased increase to teachers’ Normal Pension Age in line with changes to the State Pension Age.
A rebalancing of employee and employer contributions to provide a fairer distribution between members and other taxpayers.
When will this happen?
The intention is for a phased increase to employee contributions from 2012.
The other reforms are proposed for 2015.

Call me picky, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of change there.

• We still work until we're well beyond the age that anyone can function effectively as a teacher.
• We still have an average salary assessment rather than final salary meaning we'll lose out.
• We will still pay more and as a result of the previous point, get less.

I don't really understand the difference from the previous one, despite it being described as a deal for a generation by those in power. I therefore reckon that strikes may well be forthcoming, althoughI won't be joining in as I can't afford to lose a day's pay. And before anyone says that I'll be losing out in the long run, I'll have paid my mortgage off by then.

All another strike will do is alienate the popultion once more as they have to take days off or pay for child care.

Less and less desirable...

Strike Action

Today was strike day and due to being a rep for a striking union I duly stayed at home. I actually voted "No" on the strike, but as the union apparently overwhelmingly voted in favour of industrial action and the subsequent correspondence seemed to imply that I had little choice, I toed the party line.

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!

Work to rule people, and stick to it for a while! It's the way forward.

The Call of the Wild, sorry, Ofsted

Middle managers are running around like headless chickens with reams of data falling from their sweaty palms. The headteacher amazingly hasn't got meeting after lunch every day, new furniture that arrived weeks ago is being hastily assembled and put in place and flowers have arrived in reception. It can only mean one thing: Ofsted are coming.

We had the call on Monday and they are in on Wednesday. We've had the profiles of the inspectors, which makes interesting reading. It appears that none of the 5 illustrious people have taught for a number of years, with the Maths, MFL and Music "expert" (what a bizarre combination) having never been a teacher. It's difficult to tell with a couple of the others' profiles as they are vague, saying something along the lines of "has worked in education for 37 years and inspected lots of schools in the state and independent sector". I am writing this at about 5am because although I'm not that stressed about it, I had this nagging in the back of my mind that I should find another quiz for my form to do in tutor time, even though I know I've got plenty. I opted to download a Toy Story trivia quiz from the site (www.quizardry.com - try it, it's brilliant). Not sure how well that will go down with our illustrious inspectors, as let's face it, when, or even if they were teachers the internet probably didn't exist.

I know that all schools do it, but Ofsted inspection teams never see any school in its true light. If they were really serious about inspecting schools, they'd just drop in to them without telling anyone, not expect to see lesson plans (which are a total load of waffle) and see how the school runs from day-to-day. I did duty at lunch yesterday (the day before the big arrival) and it was carnage. There are normally a number of assistant heads out there (we have numerous) but there was only me and 1 colleague to cover the entire outside space due to number crunching and general panic attacks in various offices around the building.

A colleague said to me yesterday that the importance of Ofsted has been made very clear by the length of time it takes. When Ofsted inspections started they lasted 5 days; now they last about 1.5 days. It say a lot really.

Just remember fellow teachers, as your pensions are being cut, contributions to it are increasing and retirement age being pushed further away, Ofsted are spending £200 million per year. Reassuring, don't you think?

Anyway, I can't sit here blogging all day, I have mini-plenaries to plan!

Teachers' Pensions and Strike Action

It looks very much like the entire teaching profession in the state sector is going to strike. All the unions, including the one for headteachers, are balloting their members to see whether they want to walk out for a day (or however long it takes). I have to say that I am personally not in favour of strike action, although I do agree that the British government is clobbering teachers in many different ways by ploughing on with their policy of cuts to public services.

Why don't I agree with strike action? I think that there are pros and cons with it and the cons outweigh the pros.

Pros:
1. People notice that you are actually quite annoyed, rather than nodding and grinning in the right places.
2. Since all the unions appear to be behind the action that shows an unusual amount of solidarity between the various parts of the profession.

Cons:
1. You lose a day's wages, which in times of economic hardship is hardly desirable.
2. It annoys the general public because they then have to look after their children instead of the state doing it.
3. It can therefore make the public unsympathetic to your cause and ultimately defeat it.
4. If a march is organised it will almost certainly be taken over by idiots who like smashing stuff up, and your cause will be tainted by their actions.

Instead of strike action, in my view, working to rule would be far more effective because it means that you take home a full pay packet, you don't annoy the general public and the general public might notice that teachers do a lot more than turn up at 8.30am and leave at 3pm, looking after their offspring in the meantime.

Working to rule would highlight the fact that teachers work a lot harder than many give them credit for as many of the extra, "outstanding" lessons are planned in a teacher's own time. The free time given as part of the timetable for planning (PPA time) is only enough to cover the curriculum at a basic level, not produce resources that make Ofsted inspectors dribble. You would also find that teachers would be less tired because they will get the opportunity to rest properly, and no-one can tell you that you're not doing your job because you are actually working the hours that you are paid for.

Just a thought...

Pensions, Pensions, Pensions

Do they really want to force everyone out of teaching. There have always been two major advantages to teaching as a career:

1. The holidays.
2. The pension.

If they tamper with the holidays there will be major unrest within the profession, so in a bid to save however many billion pounds, they are having a go at the pension. For the first time since the 1970s all the teaching unions are talking about a strike. Not only are they telling teachers that they are useless in various different ways (if other people want to attempt to do the job better, they are welcome to try) but they now want teachers to pay more towards their pension and receive less, or at best, the same at whatever age they are allowed to retire - at the current rate when teachers are about 102.

This is what happens when people who don't actually do the job anymore make decisions that those who do the job have to implement, normally against their better judgement.

Please don't think that this is a party political thing; it makes no difference what colour rosette the government wears, the results are still the same: worse conditions, higher (if not impossible) targets and more inspections from people who aren't worth the paper they are printed on.

The pension thing is just the tip of a very large iceburg, and I would put money on the fact that teachers will strike at some point very soon.

What fun - can't wait!