'Workload - Required to work 195 days per year'- guaging by your ignorance did you attend  school on the other 170 days? What an ill-thought out comment, teachers work extremely hard & do not have a cozy little bubble- how ignorant you show yourself to be.

The problem I have about this strike announcement, and all the other times that teachers strike or threaten to strike, is that they always claim to have the students interests at heart! If we ever try to take our children out of school we are told how damaging it will be, and how few days teaching each year they actually have!!! Teachers get decent pay, 13 weeks paid holiday each year, and a very generous pension for such a small percentage contribution. People in the private sector can only dream at that!!!

I'm sorry pensionman but I don't understand your comment. Please explain yourself.



 

What a pathetic statement. I dont think the friends and families of the soldiers who have lost their lives serving their country in Afghanistan would agree. 

It  might be pathetic but is is literally true.   Given the choice of being a school teacher or joining the military I would unhesitatingly plump for the latter.   Indeed when I was made  redundant 40 odd years ago and the job centre suggested that I should retrain as a teacher,I instead applied for a short service commission in the Navy.  Fortunately a more appropriate job came up before I had taken the shilling.

Perhaps not.  But conscription ended fifty years ago.   Anyone joining the military must be aware that it is a very dangerous and modestly paid job.

 

Chapel High School wasn't the only school shut today:

http://www.buxtonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local/high-peak-school-closures-as-teachers-strike-1-6100801

How do you pay for these improved benefits? The policy of the Labour government of Tax, Spend and Waste has bled this country dry. Tough decisions have to be taken before Britain gets in the same state as France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.

I have never subscribed to the view that the best way to "level the playing field" is to push every one down to the lowest level.    Perhaps a better way is to insist that all employers offer a scheme comparable to the public sector schemes.

Edited by user 13 October 2013 11:07:22(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Oh no.  Nowhere as ill thought out as the original post :-)   My point is that we should aspire to give everyone a decent pension rather than a piss poor one.  Whether that is achievable is as much a matter of political will as of economics.



On those figures the average pension cost is about £3,200 pa on an average salary of, about £29,000.  So that is 11% of salary.  The new workplace pension scheme   https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/what-you-your-employer-and-the-government-pay  will, by 2018 , see 8% of salary going into the pension.   Not quite up to the same level but in the same ball park.

And I think you meant bearing not baring.  Maybe there is some justification for saying that English teachers are not earning their salary. :-)

I had a 14 yr military career that finished on redundancy. I served in Northern Ireland, South Armagh, the Balkans, and the first Gulf War. Then, as now, I knew the risks and conditions. Then, as now, had I had a change in ideology, no one would have tied me to a post and shot me,...it is not 1916. Opinions on what we are doing in Afghanistan vary. Personnel enlisting now, understand that serving there for a certain salary is a very real possibility. They have a degree of an excellent pension scheme factored into their salary.

To compare them to teachers, whom it could be argued that our nations future also depends, is ridiculous. Perhaps if we took time to look at what being a teacher actually entails instead of posturing with a Daily Mailesque attitude, then their issues would be greater understood. To cite that they, the teachers, have a lack of concern for the children is also farcical, when we know that in most cases this centres around irresponsible parenting with those who live so far beyond there means that they cannot provide a days childcare for the children that they chose to have? .........maybe if we are so concerned about our childrens futures, then a bit of empathy with those tasked to give them a vital springboard into adult life wouldn't go amiss? If we want quality, as in healthcare, sadly, we may just have to pay for it.