Teachers Strike
It’s Thursday in England and that means the NUT teachers have walked out over a row over pay causing disruption in 8,000 schools across the country. (For more information read the BBC article).
My school is one that is affected. However, only the high school part of the school is closed, the sixth form which I attend is open. Now, I’m a studious kid and I value my education but that doesn’t mean I’m not cheesed off that I didn’t get a day off. The teachers here that aren’t striking are annoyed as well.
I fully support this strike. I think teachers should get paid a lot more than they do. People argue and say they have short days, weekends and long holidays. In actuality it’s not like that for the vast majority, those who are actually good at their jobs. There’s preparation work and marking. I give in maybe three essays a week to my politics teacher, on average the length is two typed pages. There’s over 20 people in my class. The teacher takes at least five other classes of similar size in addition to mine and sets the same amount of work. That’s 300 essays a week to mark in addition to coursework, exams, classwork, extra revision work that make up the weekly workload. There’s also reports to produce, paperwork to fill in, resources to create, classes to prepare on top of the weekly meetings with other teachers and other obligatory events like parents evenings, open days and fundraising evenings.
Think about all that work on top of having to deal with kids everyday. They’re horrible, it’s a battle to keep them listening and quiet so those who want to learn can (because heaven forbid we exclude anybody) and then there’s the really obnoxious ones who answer back and can even attach physically as happens at some rougher schools. There’s all the pressure of targets and league tables, so time has to be taken to chase up the buggers who won’t do their work, who deserve to fail but who the teachers have to coach sometimes individually to make sure they pass as it looks bad if they don’t.
Perhaps teachers should be given the politicians salary. They certainly deserve it a whole lot more than they do.
Tags: Education