Maybe rather than going on strike you and your union should propose some solutions? Performance related remuneration/benefits maybe? Resource sharing across authorities? Better value in procurement? Sorry, I truly value your profession however I don't think we currently get value for money. Though, in truth, there are far worse offenders in the public sector...
People's own fault. If parents raised their children to behave and apply themselves instead of like either undisciplined, over-entitled precious little flowers or undisciplined, neglected frog spawn, then they wouldn't be outperformed by kids from Third World economies. Same with the NHS. Want more value for money? Stop smoking, stop drinking so much, stop doing drugs, eat healthier. You'd be surprised how much things would pick up. Social services? I refer you to all of the above.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/07/how_should_incompetent_teacher.html Only in the public sector does that occur. Of course better student would make the school system perform better but its not an entirely one sided effort.
If that is so, why are there so many incompetent builders, plumbers, estate agents, IT helpdesk technicians, bankers, shop assistants, restaurant cooks, minicab drivers, to name just a few? How come there are so many drunk airline pilots? How come there are so many child-buggering priests? How come there are so many dishonest businessmen, leaving people bereft of their life savings? How come British manufacturing has such a poor reputation? How come Rover built such crap cars? Edit: how come that, if it weren't for true_gamer's astuteness timely compensating for other people's undilluted stupidity, a middle-sized town would have been blown off the map? QED. C'mon, son. There are incompetents in every profession, private and public sector, who miraculously manage to stay in a job because their clients/customers are naive or their line management ineffectual.
None of the above affect a child's chances in life do they though? Also that argument justifies just about everything. Other people are doing it. We can to. Its not a good shield to the current need of reform and competition within the otherwise stagnant public sector
A spokesman for the unions just said on BBC news that if strike action goes ahead, then it will last indefinitely ... SWEET! I'm reckoning a minimum saving to the public purse of £10million per day! Strike-on!
Hopefully the Unions will have their powers cut further The Unions only have the power/a remit to strike independently, on issues which affect that particular Union. Bullying talk of massive coordinated strikes, bigger than the general strikes and miner strikes (which is laughable; a small change to pensions isn't exactly comparable to the miner's situation - shows how deluded some modern day Unions are!) show that the Unions are going beyond their power and organising general strikes. The sooner Unions have their power cut further, the better for the country.
It interesting, in the various 'France on strike' threads there is generally a feeling of good on them what happened to the British back bone etc. When British unions do go on strike the feeling of animosity towards them is palpable. Weird no?
I can't speak for other people, however I certainly don't support the French Unions, no. I quite like the idea of an organised group of workers who can support each-other (i.e. the basic idea of a Union), but I loathe the RMT style of 'lets go on strike whenever a manager looks at us funny' (especially since Bob Crow is on a 6 figure salary and hates 'the rich' whilst spending 3 or 4 figures on expensive lunches..). Nor do I support the mob mentality of Unions. That is, if a worker - God forbid - wants to actually work and be paid on the day of a strike, they'll be outright bullied and harrassed if they try to break the pickit line; and if they get through, they'll be hounded out of the organisation via bullying and being called a 'scab'. Both the French Unions and some of the UK Unions in recent weeks are resorting to this style of unionism/outright bullying, and it's not something I care for.
As I've already said there's no way the government can back down to them. It it sets a precedent whereby every other union knows that if they strike to the government will back down plus the tories will be keen to further diminish union power.
I certainly hope you're right. It would be the end to Cameron's reign if he did back down, and it would hamstring the country politically until 2015 (nothing serious would get done, whether Cameron stayed or went). The problem is that Cameron has u-turned on pretty much everything over the past 5-6 weeks; now that the 'new Government honeymoon' is over, he does seem to be backtracking wherever possible. I just hope that he realises he'd be moronic to back down in this case. (Ironically, the more the bullying Unions - not all of them, but some of them - talk of winning and avenging the miner's who lost the strikes - the more the Tory right will block Cameron from giving any concessions - which might be the Union's plan, of course; some of them seem to be immensely happy about going on strike..)
To bring the thread back to the original subject I think the teachers do deserve special consideration in this. Public sector workers should have to work longer but in a profession where those few extra years seriously effect your life expectancy there should be dispensation.
Now you are shifting the argument. First you said: "Only in the public sector can people be so incompetent and still be in a job". I demonstrated that clearly is not the case. Now you are arguing that teachers are, in fact, a special case, because how well they do their job affects the future of children. Alrighty then, is cutting salaries and pension schemes really the best way of attracting the best of the best to the profession? Or is it more likely that the most capable teachers, those with the most valued skills and most get-up-and-go, will, well, get up and leave for the better paying private education sector (where, incidentally, the children are still hard-working, respectful and disciplined because the parents put some effort into it too)? If you want better teachers, there are better ways of going about it. First, you pay them enough so they don't have to worry about money. Then you promote mastery: give them the opportunity to develop their teaching skills by providing teachable children --which is the parents' job. Then promote autonomy by not having the government breathe down their neck with token curriculums developed by bureaucrats who never stood in front of a classroom. Then you promote a sense of purpose --which comes back to the parents providing teachable children again. Gosh, come to think of it, a lot comes down to the parents, doesn't it? Who would have thunk. My feeling is: if you don't have children, you don't have a right to speak out on this issue. It is not your children's future that is affected. And if you don't raise your children to be disciplined and motivated to achieve, you have no right to speak up either. If parents are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
Well you completely ignored my point that there is a much high proportion of incompetents within the teaching profession than any other highly responsible profession. Without that first changing this higher wages would only serve to attract highly qualified but awful teachers from other areas eager for an easy job with which to pad there pensions. Your idea that teachable children is solely the parents responsibility? No. A strong role to play but from my past experience as a pupil behaviour and learning varies enormously even with the same class group just depending on which teachers. Quality of children and the overall senior discipline of the school may provide a baseline of behaviour and learning but a teacher can modify that massively. How this union strike in any way benefits children I can't see.
No, I did not ignore it; I strongly challenged it. You then side-stepped the argument. If you think that teaching is an 'easy' job you need a dose of reality, stat! Also your argument that the performance and behaviour of a pupil is modulated most by the teacher is wrong. An exceptional teacher can salvage the situation a bit by providing a consistent attachment figure for the pupil who lacks one at home, but that is not their primary function. Teachers are supposed to be teachers, not child (group) psychotherapists. Again, if you feel that is their function, you better be prepared to pay bigger bucks and create better working conditions to attract the sort of people who are capable of filling that role. Me, as a very experienced and skilled clinical psychologist who can (and does) deal with quite literally anything that walks through the door, from axe-wielding psychotics to seriously ill people with one month left to live, don't come out of bed for anything less than £50.000,-- a year (in the private sector I could earn £75.000,--). The sort of teacher you want should earn the same amount.
You sir have to ask yourself the question, is it better for children to have 10 days away from school and have good teachers, or for children to be in school and have worse teachers. The best teachers will always be teachers because they love what they are doing. The people who will be lost are the good teachers in the middle, the mass of teachers that make up the bulk of the profession who really would be tempted away from the profession by significantly higher wages. edit: AND NO - CHILD DISCIPLINE IS NOT A TEACHERS JOB. We are responsible for behaviour in our classrooms because better behaviour leads to better learning and thus our jobs are more effective. The discipline of children is the sole responsibility of the parents/guardians and the reason teachers actually put so much work into this is because we care about the students.
I think builders, plumbers and electricians should be paid state pensions from the age of 50 due to the back-breaking physical demands. Maybe they should also come under the umbrella of a public service?
<Rant> First of all, I get extremely narked off as soon as everyone starts jumping on the "EVIL GREEDY BANKERS, BOO!" argument and flogging it to death. I do not disagree with the sentiment: greed in investment banking was indeed responsible for the current financial situation. What I do vehemently disagree with is trotting out this argument at every single damned opportunity. I work for a bank - to hell with anonymity, I work for Lloyds TSB Insurance, owned by the Lloyds Banking Group, now the largest financial institution in Britain - so you may think I have a bit of a biased opinion about it. You're damned right I do. The "BANKS ARE GREEDY" drum has been banged so often that the public will tar everyone that works for a financial institution with the same brush - suddenly everyone that works for them is greedy and in some way to blame. The reality is that it is only a very tiny minority of any particular "bank" employees that may have actually influenced the situation, and that is the people who work in the investment bank. Not the poor sod that you whine to and berate when you're in the branch or on the phone with your bank. And if you think that doesn't happen, then go and spend some time in a bank branch and just listen to the vitriol of some of the complaints. Prior to our buyout of HBOS, the UK workforce of Lloyds TSB was around 70,000 in total - how many of those, as a percentage, do you think should shoulder any actual blame? I can almost guarantee you that it will be a single-figure percentage, yet banks are treated as one homogenous entity. The person on the counter in the branch getting rants in their face all day may be representing the bank, but they are in no way responsible for many of the accusations that are flung their way. It further pisses me off when we get on to the subject of bonuses. My pay rises over the last few years have been at or around 1%. I'm right down at the lower wage brackets, so a 1% increase for me means utterly nothing in real terms - by the time I've paid the tax on that, I'm lucky if I see an extra tenner a month. Despite the fact that the cost of living continually rises at a rate which far exceeds the rate at which my pay increases. There's nothing I can really do about that - those are the terms of the job and even if I was inclined to complain to the unions about it, I'd be laughed out of the building because my pay rise is in line with the rest of the market. What I can influence however is the bonus I get because it is performance related. If I work my little balls off all year I won't see an increased pay rise, but I will see a nice little bonus package next April. This can be as much as 10% of my annual salary in one lump sum. This may be quite a bit of money in one lump sum, but it is certainly nowhere near the multi-million bonuses that City investors pay themselves. Your average bank employee works their arses off for every penny of their bonus. That's not to say that banks are a shining paragon of corporate responsibility either - even the retail side that you see on the high street. Too often people forget that banks are businesses. If they can see an opportunity to deprive you of your hard earned, then they will take it - admittedly this can be by unscrupulous means, in some cases. This is the same as any other business - if there's an opportunity to squeeze out even half a percent of extra profit, then that opportunity will be exploited. Banks have to be fair - which is why they are regulated (and the efficacy of regulators is a topic for another time) - but at the end of the day they are out to take your money; to believe otherwise is naive. Trust me on this, I work for possibly the guiltiest part of the bank: Insurance. I'm not accusing anyone on this thread of anything specifically, but please bear this in mind when discussing the subject of banks, bonuses and the financial collapse. There's not a damn thing I could have done about the financial collapse and I work my nads off for every single penny of any bonus or incentive I get. To paint me, or many others, in the same colour as those who caused the problems is offensively short-sighted. </Rant> Back to the point, however... My sypathy for those on strike has long since disappeared. Industrial action is wielded far too often, and in my view it's effectiveness becomes diminshed. I don't disagree with the grievances people might have, but I disagree with going on strike for all but the most extreme circumstances. Pensions aren't something to be sniffed at, but it's not as if teachers are under threat of swingeing pay cuts, mass redundancies or a serious detriment to their working conditions.
