Last week Britain’s teachers joined the other workers in taking strike action over decades of poor pay and increasingly deteriorating conditions. And naturally, the right-wing media and YouTubers sneered and complained. One berk who phoned up Mike Graham on LBC radio claimed to have been married to a teacher, but that they were actually well-paid with plenty of spare time and holidays. This was pounced on immediately by various left-wing YouTubers, who pointed out that teachers don’t have plenty of spare time, because they’re still required to work after the official end of the school day, on things like sports and so on. Plus they have to take the kids’ schoolwork home for marking. This means that in practice they’re working much longer than their official hours. I know, as my mother was one. Another pratt appeared on GB News or some other right-wing internet news channel to claim that they were being selfish and should put up with low wages like others were doing. But, he said, he would have been prepared to support them if they had been striking over the poor conditions and state of Britain’s schools. Michael Walker of Novara Media pulled that one to shreds, stating that teachers couldn’t actually do that by law. Current British legislation states that workers can only strike over pay and conditions, not over anything else.
But the state of Britain’s schools has always been a major concern to teachers aside from their own personal interests. It was one of the reasons behind the teachers’ strike when Thatcher was in power in the 1980s, and it’s a major cause of their discontent now. I also found a video on YouTube, in which they describe how underfunded schools are and the shortages of necessary teaching equipment and resources this causes. I can’t put it up here, as I’ve since lost it unfortunately, but I hope you’ll accept what I’m saying.
Schools have been underfunded and teachers poorly paid for a very long time, because Thatcherite ideology doesn’t like state education. Hence the transition of schools from the state sector, run by the local authority, to academies, managed by private companies. The companies owning them are often in tax havens, and these schools are frequently no better than the state management they replace. In fact many were so dreadful themselves that the chains running them collapsed and they had to be taken back into state management. But this hasn’t deterred the Tories. A few years ago, mad-eyed Nikki Morgan wanted to bring back grammar schools and but that was quashed. The idea is still out there, however, floating around on the right.
The point here is that teachers aren’t just striking for themselves, but because they are acutely aware of how poorly the state education sector is being treated by decades of Thatcherite mismanagement, cuts and underfunding. They aren’t striking because they want to harm the education of the children they teach by stopping work, but to force the government into treating schools fairly.
There’s also a class element there as well. Private school fees have rocketed while funding of state schools has remained level. This means that the rich are receiving a much more expensive, and presumably better education, than state pupils. This may allow them to position themselves as in a natural position to take up top jobs and social positions than all those pesky state students.
So when you hear the Tories whinge about teachers, remember: they want state schools and their staff to be poor, so that their pupils will always remain, compared to them, at the back of the class in terms of jobs and prospects.