Today I am striking. I am not going into school and I am sitting at home, writing this and contemplating catching up on my marking.
According to the NUT; these are the reasons we are striking;
- Excessive workload and bureaucracy
- Performance related pay
- Unfair pension changes
- http://www.teachers.org.uk/campaigns/protect-teachers
I love my job. I love my school. I love (most of) the children I teach and I am absolutely committed to getting them the grades that they deserve. The issues about which I am striking are preventing me from doing my job. The job I love. Anecdotally, many teachers at my school have told me that today they are striking when they didn't last time because they have so much work to catch up on. No, really. The irony is not lost.
Do we have too much work? I am part time and am seriously contemplating reducing my hours next year so I have time to do my job. Each additional class I take on involves not only the 4 hours a week, but the 4 hours or so preparation time for those lessons, the additional 4 hours or so marking, an additional parents' evening, another set of reports and so on. At the moment I can just about get my own children in bed by about 8 pm, after which I return downstairs to wash up, make sandwiches, clean the kitchen and settle down to work at about 9 pm. I work on the evenings I work, the evenings on the days before I work, holidays, Sundays and a few Saturdays and Fridays. I can usually finish by midnight. That's not so bad. But my children are getting older and Max only finishes cubs at 8:30; what do I do then?
I'm part time btw. I mentioned that.
Does this excessive workload mean that we don't do a good job? Not really, because each one of those hours, those books, to us represents an individual student. At half midnight, when we have just 3 books left to mark, having put the scruffiest one to the bottom of the pile, then the most hard-working one, then one-most-likely-to-be-absent; we can't bear the look on the face of little Leonie who asks plaintively; "Why haven't you marked my book Miss?" Anyway, so much of what we do depends on giving the students the opportunity to respond to our marking and set themselves targets based on that, that marking is often only the start of the lesson planning. So tonight it's a 1am finish.
So what about Performance Related Pay? Should we get paid for what we do? What we achieve for the students? What they achieve for us? What about my friend Linda? Every year she took the bottom set, we offered to swap, she didn't have to do it, but she was good with them. Almost all demotivated boys, or girls that could hardly string a sentence together. The option subjects couldn't cope. They were a health and safety risk for science. Mitchell would have been banned from PE after the javelin incident. The German teacher would refuse to teach Shayne after the "sandwich" incident. But they had to do English, and on the days when they weren't in some kind of Pupil Referral Unit, anger management course or bricklaying day at college, Linda dragged each of them through persuasive letter writing in some kind of vocational course; before they were forbidden; so each of these boys left school with something, a real life qualification or GCSE grade G.
Would Linda pass her Performance Management? Before Callum threatened his sister with a kitchen knife, he was targeted a C grade based on his year 6 SATS level. That target stands. That's what most of his peer group would get, if they weren't in care. So who wants to teach that group now?
And when they fail Linda, put her on capability and get her out quick, because she's a bit expensive, you could get a young, inexperienced teacher in to teach that group at half the price. And when that teacher goes off long term sick with stress, you can always get a non-qualified teacher in on instructor's rates because you can't afford a proper teacher and that group, well they're not worth it are they?
And breathe.
I love my job. I want to do it well. I love being a parent. I would quite like the time to do that well, too. I want my children to matter as much to their teachers as my students matter to me. And since some of them are your children, or soon likely to be, I hope you understand the reason why I am striking.
