On Thursday 17th October the teaching unions NUT and NASUWT held a strike and a rally in various parts of England, including London, to protest against the changes in teachers’ working conditions which are being put forward by Education Secretary Michael Gove.
The three points central to the protest were pay conditions, the length of the school day and year, and pensions.
The key change to pay conditions is the decision by the Department for Education to dismantle the national pay structure and introduce performance-related pay for all teachers. The Education Secretary is also pressing for a longer school day and year.
Proposed changes to pension conditions would involve teachers working until 68, paying 50% more of their previous contributions and getting less in retirement.
Max Toynbee is a newly qualified teacher and an active member of the NUT and the Socialist Party of England and Wales. When asked why he went on strike, he declared to be protesting to defend education and to stop the “onslaught” to the pay conditions of teachers, who are being “degraded”.
Max is working ten hours a day, six days a week and, while he appreciates that these are the required working hours for newly qualified teachers, he is certainly not happy about the idea of having to retire at 68 and seeing the length of the school day and year extended. He considers the attack on pay conditions the worst of the changes proposed by the Department for Education, and finds it appalling that the national pay structure is being destroyed, giving individual schools the opportunity to determine teachers’ wages.
Instead, he thinks the national pay scale should be maintained, and the retirement age “should even be 60, not 65, let alone 68”.
The NUT’s General Secretary, Christine Blower, told parents and carers that the Union “sincerely regrets” the disruption caused by the strike action, but said “Teachers, however, feel they have no other choice to demonstrate their concerns about the Government’s proposals”.
She added that Michael Gove “has not engaged in negotiations with us to seek to resolve our dispute” and said his inaction on low morale “threatens the continued provision of high quality education in your child’s school”.
Ms Blower said the changes to “teachers’ pay, pensions and conditions…will make it harder for your child’s school to recruit and retain good teachers”.
Marta Pacini