Talking point: to strike or not to strike?

With news moving fast about industrial action across the UK, we asked Key Workers to share their opinions on this question: do you think strike action is the right thing? Here, a teacher and a teaching assistant tell us what they think.

Yes

Nadeine Asbali: secondary school English teacher and media columnist

When the government slashes funding, decimates vital public services and vilifies the very Key Workers who kept the country afloat during the pandemic, industrial action is our last and only port of call to make our voices heard. And to show those in power how indispensable our labour is.

As a secondary school teacher of seven years, I’ve seen first hand how austerity and harsh social and economic policies have directly impacted what happens in the classroom and the lives of my students and colleagues.

Even after the government’s recent 6.5% pay offer, a teaching salary constitutes a year-on-year pay cut once you factor in the skyrocketing rate of inflation. Couple our dwindling salary with a recruitment crisis of unprecedented scale, the impact of the pandemic still hitting educational attainment hard and the soaring cost of living and what you have is a situation that is nothing short of dire.

Whilst successive governments have fought with unions over paying teachers fairly, we teachers have been getting on with the job. A job that has become increasingly challenging and all-encompassing. Teaching ever bigger class sizes as our colleagues leave in droves. Becoming social workers and child psychologists and family counsellors whilst trying to get kids through exams because those services are on their knees. Buying our students food and resources out of our own pockets because families are drowning in poverty with a lack of government relief. And all the while having to take on second jobs or debt in order to keep the roof over our own heads and feed our families because a teaching salary is simply not enough to exist on.

The government’s 6.5% pay offer is by no means perfect and barely touches the sides of the sustained, targeted funding and support that schools need in order to give the next generation the best start in life possible.

But we wouldn’t have got anything at all without showing those in power what happens without teachers. When teachers and other Key Workers strike, we forfeit days of pay at the detriment to our own families in order to call for wider systemic change, often creating more workload for ourselves when we do return.

But in the face of a government all too keen to overlook our worth, what other leverage do we have?

No Sophie King: teaching assistant

Having worked as a Teaching Assistant at a number of different primary schools in the last nine years, I fully appreciate the stress teachers are under. I completely understand the effort put in and the hours worked.

So, when these hard-working teachers ask for more money, especially when it is to pay for the resources they are having to bring in from home and fork out for themselves because of a lack of funding, I am totally behind them.

However, I am woefully unsupportive of striking as the answer and my main reasoning behind this is the long-lasting effects of lockdown which can still be felt in the classroom, as children are levels behind where they used to be at the same age, emotionally, socially and intellectually.

By striking, teachers are forcing children and parents back into the same situation.

Ask any working parents if they enjoyed that quality time at home, trying to teach their child the correct way to learn fractions whilst holding down a full-time job and they will tell you they never want to go through that experience again.

With this strike action the only people who will suffer are the children who have just got back into the routine of school and socialising and just started to narrow those emotional, social and intellectual gaps.

I also fear for those children in Years 11 and 13 who, stressed enough about exams, are having valuable time with their teachers replaced with handouts from Teaching Assistants who are not trained in delivering the subject or controlling the class … I should know, I’ve been in that position. They could find themselves missing elements of the curriculum when it comes to crunch time.

I agree that teachers deserve more money but disrupting pupils’ education is not the answer.

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