The NUT industrial action

On Thursday, April 24th, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) members went on strike for one day, but there is the possibility of further action in the future. The reason for the strike was poor pay and conditions, however I think that this is a dubious claim and the type of action was the wrong one.

The following is a statement from the NUT website:

"Thousands of members turned out to support this day of action. It shows the NUT made the right decision to call upon its members to strike. Erosion of teachers’ pay is now firmly on the public agenda as a result. We have highlighted the case for pay which at least keeps up with the rate of inflation as measured by RPI."

So, the main point is that they feel they are not being paid enough for the work that they do. I will agree that teachers do an absurdly large amount of work and can get very stressed as a result. However, I do think they get decent wages. In this document, the following pay scales are shown:

Level	E & W	I. Ldn	O. Ldn	Fringe
M1	£20,133	£24,168	£23,118	£21,102
M2	£21,726	£25,548	£25,548	£22,692
M3	£23,472	£27,327	£26,247	£24,438
M4	£25,278	£29,328	£28,053	£26,250
M5	£27,270	£31,584	£30,432	£28,239
M6	£29,427	£33,936	£32,751	£30,393

N.B.: E&W = England and Wales, I. Ldn = Inner London, O. Ldn = Outer London

That doesn't seem too bad, even on the bottom end of the scale. It means that a relatively inexperienced teacher gets more than I do in a year. However, that is an unfair comparison as their work goes beyond 9-5. I'll compare the above rates of pay with the wages in nursing - another high pressure job with long hours:

Level	Min.(£)	Max.(£)
Band 1	12,182	13,253
Band 2	12,577	15,523
Band 3	14,437	17,257
Band 4	16,853	20,261
Band 5	19,683	25,424
Band 6	23,458	31,779
Band 7	28,313	37,326
Band 8A	36,112	43,335
Band 8B	42,064	52,002
Band 8C	50,616	62,402
Band 8D	60,669	75,114
Band 9	71,646	90,607

According to the NHS payscales, a teacher at the M1 level in England and Wales gets paid more than:

• Clinical support workers (both nursing and community)
• Clinical support workers - higher level (nursing, community and mental health)
• Maternity care assistants
• Nurse associate practitioners (acute, community and mental health)
• Nursery nurse (community)
• Midwife (entry level)

A more experienced, M6 level teacher gets more than those plus most non-management nurses. I should point out that there's a scale of pay for teachers above the one that I have shown where they get paid more and advanced skill teachers can get over £30, 000. These numbers make me think that teacers aren't the ones who are struggling.

Support for the strike
Despite this, there are groups who support the strike. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) recently did demonstrations that called for teachers to get better pay.


Photo originally taken by Dave Lewis and can be found here.

Finances
In the Independent, there were quotes from a few supporters and they were mainly people who'd recently graduated from university and were still saddled with debt:

Carrie-Ann Taylor earns £25,000 a year and is paying back her student loan at a rate of £1,000 per month:

"That's half my income gone. I'm getting a 2.45 per cent pay award but inflation is at about 4.5 per cent. Even as an English teacher I can see that the maths doesn't work."

Catherine Tooley survived on £3,000 as a student and is paying back her loan with a rate of 4.8% interest:

""Only half that as a pay rise is a bit of an insult," she said. "I have to spend part of the summer holiday working at another job to pay back this debt I got in order to be a teacher."

I have to agree that the situations described above are tough ones. When I was studying for my degree I often heard stories of people struggling due to lack of funds. For some of them that was the case even if they had a proper budget and didn't spend their money too quickly. However, paying back their student loans won't be as difficult as it is for other people.

Other teaching unions and the government
It seems the NUT are the only union that want strike action (it's important to note that even though the UCU want better pay for teachers, their members are not on strike). The Association of Teachers and Lecturers strongly advise their members to not show support as they say the action is unlawful. The NASUWT agree with the pay offer and have no plans to strike. According to their website, when other teaching unions go on strike, it is unlawful for any NASUWT member to join them.

According to this article, all of the main political parties condemn the strike aswell. With this lack of support from a number of major bodies, their chances of getting what they want have to have been reduced.

What about the children?

• In Liverpool, 135 schools were either closed or had to turn some pupils away. Council officials had predicted 67.
• In Birmingham, predictions were that 75 schools would be affected; 164 closed and 84 turned some pupils away.
• Camden, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Warwick, Middlesbrough, Oxfordshire, Doncaster and Bristol all reported more schools affected by the strike.
• In Wales, half of schools were shut or partially shut.

Those stats were in this article. The children who go to the schools in all of those areas had their education interrupted. It might only have been for a day, but that could still cause problems as it's e.g. harder to get all the required knowledge across to the pupils/students in the time that they have (that will be even more apparent if there is more strike action).

This also affects working parents. They will have to rush to find necessary childcare for the time that would normally be taken up by school. They might even have to take a day off, which will disrupt their working routines too.

Summary and Conclusion
As I have alreay mentioned, teachers have an incredibly stressful job. The media piles pressure on the curriculum that they teach and they can frequently get abuse from some of the pupils/students. They may even get criticised by parents at times. However, they do get decent pay (especially when comparing it to some people in the medical profession) and the strike action is unlawful. Any future action has the potential to harm the progress of many pupils/students. In short, I didn't support the action that took place yesterday and I won't support further action from the NUT either.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: NUT, Strike, Teachers, Employment

The Blair Effect

The year was 1997 - Tony Blair had just won a historic general election and become Prime Minister. There were crowds of people cheering as he went down Downing Street. The following are extracts from his victory speech on May 2nd of that year:

"And this new Labour government will govern in the interests of all our people — the whole of this nation. That I can promise you. When I became leader of the Labour party some three years ago I set a series of objectives. By and large I believe we have achieved them. Today we have set objectives for new Labour Government - a world class education system. Education is not the privilege of the few but the right of the many.

A new Labour Government that remembers that it was a previous Labour Government that formed and fashioned the welfare state and the National Health Service. It was our proudest creation. It shall be our job and our duty now to modernize it for a modern world, and that we will also do."

and...

"And it will be a government that seeks to restore trust in politics in this country. That cleans it up, that decentralizes it, that gives people hope once again that politics is and always should be about the service of the public. And it shall be a government, too, that gives this country strength and confidence in leadership both at home and abroad, particularly in respect of Europe."

There were plenty of promises and 10 years of leadership should be time for those promises to be delivered. The list of achievements below is taken from the Keeping the Faith website, which is dedicated to supporting Tony Blair (or was):

• Britain now has the lowest inflation for thirty years and the lowest mortgage rates for forty years - saving homeowners an average of £3,700 a year compared to the Tory years. We have the longest period of sustained growth for 200 years.
• The number of people in work is at a record level, up by over 2 million since 1997.
• Over 1.5 million working people are better off thanks to the National Minimum Wage.
• Hospital waiting lists in England are at their lowest since 1987.
• In the NHS there are 19,300 more doctors and over 77,500 more nurses working with modern equipment, giving faster access to more people, all free at the point of need.
• Standards are up across the board including the best ever primary school results. More teachers are in our schools than at any point in last 20 years - 28,500 more than in 1997.
• Police numbers are at record levels - up over 12,500 since 1997, and are assisted by over 4,000 new Community Support Officers.

Seven achievments in 10 years. Wow - that's impressive (you might note a tiny bit of sarcasm there).

Let's think about the point about employment 2 million more people in work is absolutely brilliant. Well, it is brilliant until you find out that Britain is capable of increasing it's population by 1,420,306 in four years. That 'achievement' assumes that the population is static for 10 years.

Another interesting thing is that 'full employment' is frequently mentioned in New Labour propaganda (for instance, Gordon Brown mentioned it in this speech back in 2005). Full employment is - and always has been - impossible. There's always going to be a certain amount of people who spend a few days or week 'between jobs'. This could be due to resignations, redundancies and all sorts of other things.

The point about the NHS is interesting. It mentions how many doctors and nurses that have been recruited since 1997 (a combined total of 96,800), but it doesn't mention how many doctors and nurses have left since '97. According to this article, 20000 nurses have left the NHS (not sure whether this is since '97 or later than that), in 2006 3000 nurses went to work in Australia and there'll be a nursing shortfall of 14000 by 2010. That makes the recruitment figures less than impressive as it means there could either be a smaller overall gain or even a loss.

After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Patricia Hewitt lost her job as Health Secretary:

"She was widely expected to lose her post after increasing pressure over NHS deficits and doctor training schemes."

That doesn't sound particularly good, does it? This article states that a study reveals that only 34% of the country believe that the Labour government had made the NHS better (this study was done by the British Medical Association, so it's a reputable source). Is that good? I don't think so. It's also interesting to note that the 2005 general election exit poll showed 37% of the vote was Labour (although this is made slightly less relevant by the fact that the turnout was 61.3%). That might account for some of the percentage at least.

Now for education. This was one of the things Blair and the New Labour regime focused on the most (at least initially). As well as the point in that achievements list, they often mention the City Academies, the 50% target for Higher Education and lifelong learning.

On the subject of Academies, this is how they're defined:

"Academies are all ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith or voluntary groups working in highly innovative partnerships with central Government and local education partners. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) meet the capital and running cost for the Academy in full."

Tony Blair has said that parents back the scheme and Gordon Brown intends to continue with the plans under his regime, but people such as Estelle Morris (former Education Secretary and now a university Pro-Vice Chancellor) has her reservations. The academies scheme has also been criticised by the Education and Skills Select Committee and the Liberal Democrats.

The 50% target for universities is ridiculous. What about people who don't want to go down the academic route and want a more vocational style of education? What about the people who don't need that level of education for the job that they want to do? If the cap is to be taken off fees, then less people will be able to afford that level of education - which means the target will never be reached. For those who get to uni, it will mean that they'll have to take on even more part-time work, which will increase their stress levels and affect their academic performance. Sure, I think unis needed more money to improve resources for the increasing numbers, but I don't think the cap should be removed.

Lifelong learning has been a success. More and more mature students are coming to universities now to seek a higher level of education for a variety of reasons. However, if the cap were to be lifted - what would happen to them? A lot of mature students have extra responsibilities such as children and a lot of their money goes towards caring for them. How could lifting the cap make it easier for them to get into HE?

I won't cover this much more though, as I have an educational blog to go into more detail about this. I won't go into detail about the 'war on terror' either - as I have made it clear in a previous post on this blog that I strongly oppose it.

Lets not forget that Blair and Labour have done some good things during the past 10 years. They helped to secure the 2012 Olympic Games and....erm...help me out here!

Now we hear that Blair has become a Middle East Peace Envoy. I'm not quite sure why anyone could see him being effective in that role. Alongside George Bush, he went to war in Iraq and has stood alongside Bush in his opposition to any nuclear weapons programme in Iran (as I stated in a previous blog post, they have no proof of that programme yet).

There are plenty of other things I could comment on, such as the failing immigration system, the failed ASBO system, The New Deal or the fact the for years we have had a Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) who has done very little apart from go on junkets, have scandalous affairs and speak completely incoherently, but I won't as I'd be here forever.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Government, War, Healthcare, Education, Democracy, Tony Blair