7th July 2016 15:00
By Blue Tutors
With only days to go until the end of the school year, teachers across England took to the streets as part of the latest NUT strike. While finding and budget cuts are clearly at the centre of the problem, the staff reductions, ever increasing workload and resulting deterioration in educational standards were all cited as the trigger for teachers’ decision to join Tuesday’s walk out.
At £40 billion, education spending is the highest is has ever been, however with costs rising and the funding per student frozen (not rising with inflation), the effective cut in funding in some schools amount to as high as 10%. At the current rate, schools are projected to lose 20,000 full-time teaching posts and 7% of funding per pupil by 2020. Teachers say the scarce funding has hit arts subjects hardest, prioritising English, maths and science. The increased pressure, “administrative overload” and reduced pay are driving out both newly qualified and highly experienced teachers from the profession. There have also been an alarming number of redundancies in the last 6 months, and class sizes are set to go up to 35 in September.
Teachers argue the controversial reclassification of schools as academies will only aggravate the problem. Academies are not required to adhere to the national pay scale and often expect teachers to work evenings and weekends for no extra pay. They have also been attributed the sharp rise in the number of unqualified teachers.
While many parents sympathise with teachers, the effectiveness and timing of the demonstrations was questioned given the fragile current state of UK politics. While teachers had support for their demands aimed at acquiring more funding for children, the strike action has caused inconvenience and irritated many parents who say they did not have sufficient warning. Teachers have also been heavily criticised by government officials including the schools minister. The Education Secretary went as far as to accuse teachers of “putting children’s education at risk” unnecessarily, when negotiations are already underway with the NUT and other unions over pay and conditions.
Despite the industrial action, two thirds of schools remained fully open and only 11% were closed entirely. The result of the strike has yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure, if things stay as they are, schools, teachers and students will all suffer, and the already high demand for private tuition is set to rise as a result.