Teaching unions have announced their intention to strike later in the month in defence of members’ pensions – a move that could close thousands of schools and which has been described as ‘irresponsible and wrong’ by Cabinet Minister Francis Maude.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has announced ‘overwhelming endorsement for strike action by its members to defend teachers’ pensions’. The union will be campaigning alongside the Association of Teachers and Lecturers – traditionally the most moderate of the teaching unions.

‘Pay more, work longer and get less’
The NUT believes that teachers’ pensions are fair and affordable. It says the Government wants teachers to ‘pay more, work longer and get less’. It accuses the government of ‘pressing ahead with unnecessary reforms despite the changes already made to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme in 2007’.

NUT General Secretary Christine Blower said, ‘The Government’s unnecessary attack on public sector pensions has convinced NUT members that there is no alternative but to support strike action’.

‘It is disgraceful that the Government is pressing ahead with its reforms which will affect teachers’ pensions. The Government knows that they are affordable. This is a policy which has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with politics.’

‘The NUT is party to the TUC negotiations with Government to protect public sector pensions. It is not too late for common sense to prevail and for these unnecessary changes to be stopped. It is in no one’s interest to create a whole new swathe of people who are a burden on the taxpayer in old age.’

‘Irresponsible and wrong…’
However, cabinet office minister Francis Maude has appealed to those planning to strike to reconsider, calling the move ‘irresponsible and wrong.’

A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) said; ‘The Government is committed to working openly and constructively with unions to ensure that teachers continue to receive high quality pensions and that the interests of all professionals are represented fully as pension reform is taken forward.’

‘Lord Hutton has made it clear that there needs to be a balance between a common framework for all schemes and the need for flexibility to take account of specific workforce circumstances, such as those of the teaching workforce.’

‘We are clear that a strike by teachers will only damage pupils’ learning and inconvenience their busy working parents. The wellbeing and safety of pupils must remain paramount.’

What are your thoughts about the upcoming teacher strike? Will you be taking part in it or do you think it will do more harm than good?

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With Lancashire teachers taking the highly unusual move of striking over pupils’ bad behaviour and a ‘lack of backing from management’, we ask just how widespread these kinds of concerns are.

It’s an abnormal day when teachers strike over issues other than pay and conditions. It was widely reported in the media last week that around 70 staff at Darwen Vale High School in Darwen, Lancashire went on strike and formed picket lines to protest over what they described as threats, violence and ‘poor management.’

The Lancashire Telegraph reported that ‘members of the NUT and the NASUWT voted overwhelmingly to take strike action to protest against the management’s failure to support staff in dealing with challenging pupil behaviour.’

‘Children no better or worse than anywhere else’
A representative from the local NUT branch emphasised to the BBC that the school’s children were no better or worse than anywhere else: “This is not a strike against pupils. It is about management and management failure to support staff in dealing with challenging behaviour.”

The school is now said to be in discussion with the unions and staff to resolve the situation and to ensure “that staff feel well supported when they do need to deal with behaviour issues.”

‘Creating an allegations war zone’
The action came during a week when education secretary Michael Gove was accused of creating a “much more aggressive culture” and “creating an allegations war zone,” when he issued new guidance to schools on discipline, which reminds teachers that, where necessary, heads can bring criminal charges against pupils.

Darwen Vale has been rated as a good school, with pupils’ behaviour also given a good rating, by Ofsted (June 2010).

If you’re a teacher, do you feel supported by management over discipline issues? Do teaching staff need greater powers to deal with unruly behaviour? Why not share your views below?

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The Government has announced the scrapping of England’s national school redevelopment scheme, which will affect some 715 school revamps, with more to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Shelving Labour’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) programme could save billions in harsh economic times – but do you think it’s the right thing to do?

Education Secretary Michael Gove cancelled the BSF scheme, which was designed to replace out-dated buildings with modern facilities, telling the BBC that “…throughout its life [BSF] has been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.”

He described the scheme as “dysfunctional” and “unnecessarily bureaucratic”, with nine “meta stages”.

Waste
The BBC reported that some 180 schools have been rebuilt or revamped since the programme was introduced by Labour in 2004, with building about to start in 231 schools: “But 1,100 schools have already signed up to the scheme, investing time, energy and money into drawing up plans for redevelopment, but have not reached financial close,” said the Beeb.

The Guardian reported a Whitehall source as saying that the whole process of deciding how much of BSF would be scrapped had been “bloody chaos”, and that weeks of uncertainty had cost schools, LAs and the construction industry dearly.

‘Tragedy for teachers and parents’
Shadow Education Secretary Ed Balls was reported by the BBC as describing the decision as a “tragedy” for teachers and parents who would have benefited from new facilities.

Meanwhile Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers commented: “Michael Gove uses arguments against bureaucracy as a cover for massively reducing the BSF programme. Of course, there are always better ways of achieving major building projects but there is no excuse for leaving schools which were promised new buildings swinging in the wind.

‘Return to crumbling, inadequate schools’?
“Cutting the budget to rebuild schools, particularly primary schools, will be a huge blow to those that have been promised the sort of facilities you would expect in a modern school. We are in real danger of returning to the crumbling inadequate schools that were a signature of the last Tory Government,” said Ms Blower.

But The Guardian reported the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, as saying that he’d identified £1.54bn in spending commitments made in the dying days of the Labour Government that were not properly funded.

Cleaning up the mess?
“The reality is that these unfunded spending promises should never have been made, because the money was never there to pay for them. We did not make this mess, but we are cleaning it up,” Alexander told The Guardian.

What’s your view? Are we living in such harsh times that these measures are essential to balance the nation’s books? Will this signal a return to “crumbling, inadequate schools”? Is yours one of the hundreds of schools likely to be affected? What’s your story?

Speaking at the NUT conference in April, Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that the “workload issue” has become a “central pre-occupying concern within the teaching profession”.

“A culture of long hours and bureaucracy has left many teachers feeling swamped. The endless national initiatives, an overloaded and prescriptive curriculum and the range of high stakes national curriculum tests alongside the pressures of school performance tables have led to many feeling under constant pressure.

“No one enters the teaching profession expecting to work a 9 – 5 day, but a two day weekend is surely not asking too much. It is a fact that since the implementation of the workload agreement things have actually got worse with many teachers working upward of 50 hours a week.

Andy Mackenzie is a teacher with subject responsibilities in a sixth form college. He says he likes teaching, but he’s decided to take a cut in pay and go part-time so he can spend more time with his children.

“My job is very stressful, because I’m responsible for about 100 students on largely coursework-based courses,” he explains. “They need a lot of help and support to really develop to reach their potential. And the amount of time I can give each of them is very very short. That’s a major cause of stress for me.“

“I work an enormous amount of hours…”

“I would say my job is based on the absolute minimum amount of time that it could feasibly be done in. So, once my own children are upstairs and asleep, I work every evening. I work weekends. I work an enormous amount of hours.”

But he says he has consciously tried to reduce the 14 hours a day he was working before Christmas. The effect has been to reduce the quality of his work – and in particular the time he spends marking and the standard of feedback he’s able to give students.

“It sounds very harsh, but I think I’ve tried to emotionally detach myself from students and their performance a little bit more, and to say that if I’ve offered students the full classroom entitlement that they’ve got, and some extra support entitlement, if they’re still not reaching their potential then I’ll say that that’s a little bit up to them.

“The bottom line is, I like teaching…”

“I do genuinely care and want all my students to do well – and whenever I have free periods or after college I do give up my own free time to help students, so I do do all of that, but I’ve probably built up some slight emotional barriers. Whereas a few years ago I was quite a nice guy who always had time for people, now I don’t have time for people, especially other members of staff. So I feel I brush them off a bit when they could do with some extra help or support.

“The bottom line is, I like teaching. I’ve consciously decided to give up much of my management role to just be a teacher. I’m going a bit more part-time, because I am reasonably well paid, so I can afford to do that, and I’ve got my own children I need to give time to, so that’s a way of me reducing my stress. It’s not an option a lot of teachers have chosen, because of course if you give up some of your working hours you give up some of your pay. And most people don’t want to do that or can’t afford to do that.”

• Do you feel ‘swamped’? What should be done to reduce teachers’ workload? How do you manage stress? Why not share with Eteach readers…

Many of us are only too aware that teaching unions are to take industrial action to try to prevent SATs in maths and English taking place this May. But are these tests really “misused to compile meaningless league tables” which “humiliate and demean children, their teachers and their communities”?

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) have agreed not to administer Key Stage 2 SATs, due to be taken by 600,000 children in their last year of primary school from 10th May – 13th May.

Clear majorities of both unions supported the action.

The NUT stressed on its website that this is not strike action: “Schools will open and children will be taught” it said.

‘Meaningless league tables’
“SATs in their current form disrupt the learning process for children in Year 6, and are misused to compile meaningless league tables which only serve to humiliate and demean children, their teachers and their communities. The NUT and NAHT are supportive of a system of assessment that highlights what children can do rather than focussing on failure.”

The NUT explains in guidance notes to teachers from its website that, for head teacher and leadership members to receive the protection afforded by a lawful trade dispute and successful ballot, the action has to begin within 28 days of the ballot closing. This, says the Union, is why the ballot could not take place until late in the spring term.

‘Flawed testing regime’
Mick Brookes, General Secretary of the NAHT, said: “The Government missed the opportunity to reform the assessment for pupils in Key Stage 2 when they abolished the same tests in Key Stage 3 in 2008. We cannot continue to have our colleagues and their school communities in the Primary sector disparaged on the basis of a flawed testing regime. We guarantee that children in Year 6 will leave with accurate information about their achievements that will be both broad and positive.

“We are determined, for all the right reasons, to see positive change. This protest is a significant mark of that determination.”

Government consults lawyers
The action will put unions at loggerheads with the Government: schools secretary Ed Balls was reported in the Guardian to be consulting lawyers over whether “to mount a legal challenge against primary school headteachers in England who intend to boycott national tests for 10 and 11 year olds”.

The paper reported (21.4.10) that both Labour and the Conservatives say they want to keep SATs, although the Tories are considering moving the tests to the first year of secondary school. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats have pledged to scale back SATs and use teacher assessment alongside them.

What’s your view on SATs? Do they really humiliate and demean children, their teachers and their communities? Over to you….