Classroom Teacher: January 2008

This is *your* blog. Email entries to classroom.teacher@yahoo.co.uk

What have the unions ever done for us?

Strike Ballot on Pay

Linda Taaffe writes:

The national executive has announced a decision to ballot all its members for the first national teachers' strike for 21 years.

This is because teachers need a pay increase at least in line with inflation. The last two years have seen teachers' pay rise less than inflation and the prospect now is for a further three years of pay cuts against a background of rising costs for basic necessities.

The government says the School Teachers Review Body's recommendation of a 2.45% increase for September 2008, followed by 2.3% in 2009 and 2010, is above inflation. But they are fiddling the figures. Real inflation is reckoned to be 4% and rising!

With no let-up in the pressures on teachers, especially our long hours, which mean some teachers are working for as little as £10 an hour, there is a mood to have a go. But a real campaign needs to be launched to get a massive 'yes' vote for action.

The ballot starts at the end of February, closing at the end of March. This period must now be used to build teachers' confidence and win over those who are unsure.

The executive has decided to change the previous policy for "discontinuous action" to a one-day strike, apparently to woo the more faint-hearted executive members.

Discontinuous action would have been a more serious national strategy. The leadership would have had the flexibility to call a one-day strike, and then further action, hopefully with other public-sector unions - a demand that the NUT put forward prominently at the TUC.

Although still possible to organise further action, it would require further ballots.

But a one-day strike would be an enormous step forward. It would rattle the government. It would bring teachers into national struggle, many for the first time.

It would be a signal to other workers, the teachers being the first of the public sector 2008 pay round. Against a background of stockmarket volatility and New Labour digging in its heels, we cannot afford NOT to have a serious fight back.

Email to executive members.

Derek McMillan writes:

On the eve of the Executive vote I emailed

a.rutter@executive.nut.org.uk
h.brown@executive.nut.org.uk
a.swift@executive.nut.org.uk
h.danson@executive.nut.org.uk
p.murphy@executive.nut.org.uk
p.bevis@executive.nut.org.uk
m.reed@executive.nut.org.uk
s.jones@executive.nut.org.uk
h.andrews@executive.nut.org.uk
l.auger@executive.nut.org.uk
j.lyon-taylor@executive.nut.org.uk
e.ritson@executive.nut.org.uk
j.holmes@executive.nut.org.uk
j.rudon@executive.nut.org.uk
d.lyons@executive.nut.org.uk
r.king@executive.nut.org.uk
t.tonks@executive.nut.org.uk
m.hyde@executive.nut.org.uk
g.shepherd@executive.nut.org.uk
c.hood@executive.nut.org.uk
j.glazier@executive.nut.org.uk
r.wilkinson@executive.nut.org.uk
k.gardiner@executive.nut.org.uk
v.peppiatt@executive.nut.org.uk
t.lucas@executive.nut.org.uk
n.franklin@executive.nut.org.uk
m.lerry@executive.nut.org.uk
b.frost@executive.nut.org.uk
a.davies@executive.nut.org.uk
n.foden@executive.nut.org.uk
g.jones@executive.nut.org.uk
k.courtney@executive.nut.org.uk
a.kenny@executive.nut.org.uk
j.davies@executive.nut.org.uk
d.harvey@executive.nut.org.uk
h.roberts@executive.nut.org.uk
l.taaffe@executive.nut.org.uk

(You just cut and paste - it is no bother!)

suggesting that "a robust response" would be to call the ballot they have been talking about for almost a year. It would split the government-controlled unions. The NASUWT would be shamed into taking action and the ATL would come out in their true colours........Brown!

I got a positive response from at least one Executive member. Julie Lyon-Taylor "couldn't agree more."

TOO MUCH WORK, TOO LITTLE PAY

This is the text version of the first Classroom Teacher. To download and print out click here.

( Martin Powell-Davies, Lewisham NUT )

YOUNG TEACHERS ARE EARNING UNDER £10 AN HOUR!

"The more you learn, the more you earn?"

A poster in the corridors of a Lewisham

secondary school tells pupils to work

hard, get better qualified and earn

more. It explains that the potential

earnings of a school leaver with GCSE's is £9 per hour, with A levels £10 per hour, while staff with graduate degrees can expect to earn £15 per hour. But do they know how little teachers earn?

According to official Government statistics, teachers are working well over 50 hours a week at least 220 hours a month in term time. Our starting salaries are even at Inner London rates also well below average graduate earnings.

Look how little that means teachers earn per hour

Spine Annual Salary Monthly Salary Hourly rate of pay

Point A (A/12) (A/12/220)

M1 Eng. £ 20,133 £ 1677.75 £ 7.62

& Wales

M1 Inner £ 24,168 £ 2014.00 £ 9.15

London - no more than a school leaver with GCSEs !

M6 Eng. £ 29,427 £ 2452.25 £ 11.14

& Wales

M6 Inner £ 33,936 £ 2828.00 £ 12.85

London

- and all these figures are before tax !

U3 Eng. £ 34,281 £ 2856.75 £ 12.98

& Wales

U3 Inner £ 41,004 £ 3417.00 £ 15.53 still only just what a

London graduate could expect !

VOTE YES FOR NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY!

Classroom Teacher is a campaigning newsletter written for, and by, classroom teachers. If you want help organising a union in your school, if you want to take action to defend teachers and education, if you want to give us your views about the pressures teachers face:

Write to: classroom.teacher@yahoo.co.uk

WSTA oppose academies

Dave Thomas writes:

Teachers in West Sussex are planning a campaign against proposals to turn three of the County's secondary schools into Academies, starting with a Public Meeting on Thursday 7 February at 7.30pm in the Assembly Rooms, Worthing.

We are opposed to Academies in West Sussex because:

they undermine democratically controlled Local Authorities,
they put schools in the hands of unaccountable sponsors,

they threaten teachers' pay and working conditions,
they will introduce three more schools of a faith character, with minimal consultation and a reduction in parents' choice.

At a meeting of West Sussex NUT held on Wed 16^th Jan, the following motion was passed unanimously:

'WSTA is opposed to the establishment of Academies in West Sussex. It further deplores the lack of consultation by the Woodard Corporation and WSCC with the staff and their representatives in the schools concerned, namely, Boundstone CC, Kings Manor CC and Littlehampton CC.'

The meeting was attended by NUT members from all three schools and from other schools throughout West Sussex.

The public meeting is open to parents, teachers, support staff and others with an interest in state education to allow them an opportunity to air their concerns.

Workload or Pay

Derek McMillan writes:

Hands up all those who have had this experience. We called a meeting at school to discuss the issue of workload. And at the beginning of the meeting I had to read out all the apologies of people who could not come because they were too busy!

For teachers "excessive workload" means workload which seems to serve no educational purpose. Colleagues who voted to boycott the SATS on grounds of workload were coming in every weekend for rehearsals of the school play. The obvious benefit for the pupils of the school play outtrumped the demerits of SATS.

I think if people are going to refuse excessive workload they have to have some confidence the union will back them. And that would require a ballot.

At conference the Executive argued against a ballot on workload because it would confuse the issue and we needed to concentrate on getting a result in a pay ballot.

Then there was a bit of a hiatus and this week a decision has to be taken, a "robust" decision perhaps? Woe betide the NUT leadership if they come up with an invertebrate decision instead.

There is a discussion about this on the TES website
You can join in here

To the 190,883+ Women NUT members

Alison Long writes...

To the 190,883+ Women NUT members.*

* figures taken from SERTUC survey March 2004

76% of NUT members are women. Yet just 40% of the executive, and 12% of officers are women.

If you go to Conference you will see that the platform and the hall are dominated by men. Go to a fringe meeting, and chances are that once again men are making the running.

Does this matter? Consider these two facts:

Secondary schools have a higher ratio of TLRs/teachers than Primaries.
Primary schools have a higher ratio of women teachers than Secondaries.

You see what is happening here?

Most secondary teachers can get extra pay for extra responsibility. Their primary colleagues just get loaded with extra responsibly for no extra pay.

So where men are doing extra work, they tend to get paid for it. Whereas women are doing extra work for no extra money.

I could go on. Pensions. Promotion prospects. Provisions for Pregnant teachers. All too often women are keeping their heads down and doing their (pretty damn good) best while men are having discussions and making decisions on our behalf.

I believe it is time to hold our heads high, look around us and start to get active in OUR union.

Please let me know what you think. Am I just crying in the wilderness, or are there others out there who feel the same way?

Classroom Teacher will welcome views from other teachers. Email classroomteacher@yahoo.co.uk

Labels: women teachers

Action and Change for Teachers

A group of teachers who backed Martin Powell-Davies’ recent stand in the NUT Vice-President election met on Saturday January 12th . The meeting discussed what needs to be done to build action to defend teachers’ pay, cut our relentless workload and to halt the break-up of local authority education.

A leadership we can rely on

One thing that still holds us back is the lack of a fighting union leadership that teachers can rely on to build the united action we need. Martin’s campaign helped keep up the pressure on the NUT Executive to call the promised national ballot for strike action on pay. We hope that the Executive will vote to get the ballot under way when they meet at the end of January. By then the Government should finally have announced the miserly salary awards that they expect us to put up with for 2008-2010.

Building support for classroom teachers

Most teachers, struggling with the daily grind in schools, will know nothing about the debates within the Union. But they know they need support in standing up to the demands of bullying managers and the pressures of observations, league tables and performance management. Hard-pressed school reps know they need support in organising their school group and explaining union campaigns in a way that grabs classroom teachers’ attention.
Many hard-pressed Union Secretaries and officers will feel the same way. Too often left on their own to try and build school-by-school action in isolation, ground down by a rising mountain of individual casework, they also need support in building strong local Associations that can defend teachers and also to help bring in new members, especially young teachers, into activity.
It’s this vital task, of helping to develop a strong network of classroom teachers, school reps and campaigning union officers that the meeting agreed had to be our first priority.

A campaigning newsletter

We agreed to build our network by launching a new campaigning newsletter, “Classroom Teacher”, to circulate to schools, both by e-mail and as printed copies that teachers can distribute to their colleagues. It will focus primarily on the main pay and conditions issues facing classroom teachers and the campaigns we can build to defend ourselves.

The newsletter plans to be sharp and snappy, written by, and for, classroom teachers, reflecting the daily pressures we are under but also building confidence that together we can take action to turn the tide. We plan to put names to the articles reflecting the range of teachers involved in the network. At the same time, we hope to have room to include some more detailed commentary for teachers who also want to read something a bit more analytical about the problems we face. We also want to invite teachers to send in their own articles and comments and to be a real part of a growing network.

We hope that the newsletter can develop in to a larger bulletin – which will mean appealing for finances too. It will certainly be regularly produced so that ‘Classroom Teacher’ will be there in staffrooms at least every half-term for teachers to read.

A first flyer has been produced based on a Lewisham NUT newsletter “Too Much Work, Too Little Pay” which went down well at a recent national NUT Secretaries meeting. A further leaflet on the pay campaign should be out shortly.

The ‘Classroom Teacher’ network

The newsletter will advertise an e-mail, this blog and our website which will allow teachers to get in touch with the campaign and also post their own comments on our blog. We also have a Classroom Teacher account on youtube.

We have also set up a classroom teacher e-group which will allow members of the network to easily contact each other and exchange views and information.

We hope that teachers will forward our newsletter to colleagues and develop its circulation. We
want to make sure we know where it is being read, get feedback on what teachers have thought of it but, above all, get new teachers to join the network and write their own comments and articles.

Where there is support, we will also organise national or regional meetings around particular issues or campaigns so that we can bring teachers together and help plan a way forward. We can also produce material to be distributed at NUT Conference, although our main focus is going to be on classroom teachers rather than national NUT events.

We hope this initiative can help build a network of classroom teachers working together to defend our colleagues and to build a union ready and prepared to take action to change our pay, our workload, our union and our schools.

Contact:
classroom.teacher@yahoo.co.uk
Martin Powell-Davies 07946 445488

Young Teachers

Young teachers can transform the NUT. Those of you who want action on pay and action on workload can contact Young Teachers representative Phil Clarke by clicking here to join in the network and add your voice.

Labels: young teachers