By an NEU member.
As delegates gather for the annual conference of the NEU, the result of the union’s consultative ballot was announced. It shows real anger exists about the erosion of teachers’ living standards in the past thirteen years. It is bad enough that the pay offer made by the government represents yet another cut in real pay, but to have it financed out of current school budgets is rubbing salt into the wound.
Among teachers in England, there was a greater vote against the offer this time around than there had been in the original strike ballot. At that time, on a turnout of just over 53%, 90% voted for strike action. This time, the turnout was a massive 66% and 98% of those voted to reject the offer. Admittedly, on this second occasion, the vote was not hampered by the unnecessary statutory insistence on a postal ballot.
It was not that long ago that the teachers’ unions found it hard to get past the government-imposed 50% deadline. That the deadline was breached so easily shows the frustration and anger that exists.
Teachers know first-hand the state of school budgets. Most teachers are just starting their Easter holidays, but it is not a fortnight of rest. Many are having to use the time to mark, prepare and do other essential tasks they have no time to do in term time. Many school run ‘cramming’ students in exam years facing GCSEs and A levels in a few weeks.
Promises on workload are worthless – we’ve had them before
One survey after another shows that teachers are as much fed up with workload as they are with poor pay. The NEU’s own survey showed that 48% of teachers find their workload “unmanageable” and only a tiny 1% thought their workload was OK. Nearly two thirds of teachers worried “very often” about their well-being. The government’s offer of a new “taskforce” to look at workload is not work the paper it is written on – we’ve heard it all before. Even the DfE’s own (unpublished) survey shows that a quarter of teachers are thinking of leaving the profession.
And even though there is still a long way to go to end of the academic year, most teachers are already ‘rationing’ everything tiny bit of spending they have to make. Some schools already have an absolute embargo on any new photocopying for classes, for example. There is no spare cash for text books or materials and the tightness of the budget is having a damaging effect in all aspects of school life, including the availability of support staff.
As bad as this appalling financial mess is, the Tories want to make it far worse by taking the pay rise – a one-off payment of £1,000 this year, with a miserly 4.3% from September – from school budgets. It will mean inferior standards of education for children, it will mean vacancies not filled, it will mean necessary school repair and equipment replacement not done. It is just not acceptable – and more than 190,000 teachers have said so.
Schools have to ‘compete’ for vital cash
The Guardian ran a story just over a month ago (Feb 21) about the state of dilapidation in schools because of the government’s policy of starving education of cash. “At least 39 state schools in England” the Guardian found according to government figures, “have been forced to close either partially or entirely in the last three years because one or more buildings have been deemed unsafe.”
A school in Essex recently had to close its sixth form block because it was deemed to have an unsafe roof. Yet the same school had ‘bid’ for cash for repairs by the County Council for several years – schools have to compete with each other for necessary expenditure – and were turned down year after year. Now the education of the students has to suffer because of the County and government short-sightedness.
Not only is there a shortfall in expenditure on school buildings, but the recent budget has made it worse. Jeremy Hunt a few weeks ago cut the set aside for capital expenditure in schools by £400m compared to what had been allocated in the November statement.
According to an article in the Guardian three weeks ago, “Research published by the House of Commons library found that between 2009-10 and 2021-22, overall capital spending on England’s state school estate fell by about 50% in real terms.”
Teachers have made it clear what they want – a pay rise that at least keeps them up with inflation – and paid for with new money, not from the already-miserly school budgets. With a mandate for strike action from previous ballots and that reaffirmed by the latest consultative ballot, the union should now step up the action going into the summer term.
NEU must impose a marking and assessment ban.
NEU members are due to strike for two more days, one at the end of April and the other in early May. But if the pay issue is not resolved in the immediate future – within weeks – then after the exam period is over teachers will have lost a lot of the leverage they have and the issue will drag on to September.
In the last few months, the union has recruited over 40,000 new members and that has been on basis that the union is doing something. It needs to build up momentum on pay, or those same new members will drift away again. The University and College Union is going to serve notice of a marking and assessment ban and the NEU must now do the same for the Summer term.
The NEU should consider all-out, sustained, strike action in selected areas – perhaps West Sussex, part of which is represented by Education Minister Gillian Keegan – and the membership nationally could be involved through regular two-day strikes, combined with rallies. Calling for financial donations to the National Strike Fund is good, but the national union has to use its structures and networks of reps and lay officers to build for a membership levy to pay for those who are on all-out strike. If the dispute appears to drag on interminably, then support and morale among members will be eroded – despite this latest vote – so the NEU has to step up the action to bring the issue to a head.
A government for the rich and super-rich
In the longer run, many teachers will also come to realise the political character of the dispute. We have a government that represents only the very rich – a tiny 1% of the population, whose wealth is growing annually at the expense of everyone else’s. The rich and the super-rich are content to starve services and run them to their knees, because they do not personally use the health, education and local government services upon which workers rely in their daily lives.
It is simply not true to argue that the ‘slice’ is limited by the size of the ‘pie’. It is the capitalist system, an economic system based on corruption and a rigged market that limits living standards, not the fundamental wealth and potential in the economy.
We need a government that represents the interests of the big majority of population, not one based as it is now on greed, tax-dodging, corruption, and the enrichment of a few. It will take socialist policies and a socialist outlook for education to be given the social priority and funding it needs and the more teachers come to realise that necessity, the sooner the crisis in education can be resolved.
*Full support for the teachers’ pay claim! Pay the full claim!
*Step up the action to win this Summer!
*Restore all the education cuts introduced since 2010!
