Teachers go on strike in UK after a 23% pay cut since 2010

FILE PHOTO: People hold placards defending the right to demonstrate during a protest outside the official residence of the British president in London, Britain, January 30, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Por Sachin Ravikumar y Will Russell

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – London-based teacher Lucy Preston will miss her son’s fourth birthday on Thursday as she has to work a second job in the afternoons as a private tutor to pay for childcare and the mortgage.

A day before, hoping to get a salary increase that alleviates her family budget, this single mother of two children will join more than 120,000 teachers who will not go to work.

Teachers in England and Wales go on strike on Wednesday, after a decade of low income in a state-funded school system that has led many of them to seek second jobs or leave the profession.

“It breaks my heart,” said Preston, 38, referring to the loss of his son’s birthday. She works as an English teacher three days a week and takes care of her children the other two, since she cannot afford childcare every day.

“If I could earn enough to not have to teach in the afternoons, I would be much happier. It’s a very, very depressing situation.”

Hundreds of thousands of workers, including railway workers and civil servants, will also go on strike on Wednesday, making it Britain’s biggest strike in decades, considering the range of sectors it will cover.

The National Teachers’ Union (NEU), which organizes teachers’ strikes, has called for above-inflation pay, fully financed by the state, so that schools can also cover other expenses, from material from stationery to textbooks.

With double-digit inflation last year, teachers have taken a 23% pay cut in real terms since 2010, according to the union.

Preston says the mortgage payments eat up two-thirds of her 1,800-pound-a-month ($2,230) salary, forcing her to find other ways to earn money, like renting out a room in her house to a tenant and buying groceries. cheaper frozen instead of fresh.

“The stress that that causes is absolutely incredible… Every month, it’s a struggle,” said Preston, who has worked as a teacher since 2011.

The government, which has held unsuccessful talks with the NEU, has called the 5% pay increase it offers teachers the highest “in a generation” and says it will invest £4bn in schools over the next two years.

MASSIVE ABANDONMENT

The NEU, which has planned a seven-day strike in total, claims that one in four teachers leave the profession within three years of graduating, which affects children’s education.

“I don’t remember a time when we had enough staff to comfortably cover the school,” says Sydney Heighington, 33, assistant headmistress at an east London school.

“Teachers are leaving en masse right now,” he added, noting that some of his fellow support staff have been forced to turn to food banks due to rising bills and others have simply left to find work. in supermarkets.

Heighington, a music teacher, said more than a third of full-time teachers and experienced teaching staff had left his school in the past year. Only a fifth of those positions were filled by trainee teachers.

Educators say that schools having to pay teachers’ salaries out-of-pocket has left classrooms without money for textbooks, computer upgrades and school trips.

“The trips are reduced, they don’t go to the British Museum, they don’t go to see things,” explains Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis charity, which runs more than 50 schools in the UK. “So the subjects become a little more sterile, because you don’t learn at all levels.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to expand math teaching in schools, but the NEU says his plan does not address a teacher shortage, which sees one in eight math classes being taught by an unqualified math teacher.

According to the media, teachers at the elite Winchester College in southern England, where Sunak studied and was principal, are among those who will go on strike on Wednesday. The college declined to comment.

(1 dollar = 0.8076 pounds)

(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar and Will Russell, edited in Spanish by Tomás Cobos)

---

Source

---