The UK is now experiencing levels of industrial action not seen since the 1970s. At the forefront have been its healthcare professionals, for whom there is widespread support among the public after the COVID-19 pandemic. For the grievances of our teachers however, the effect of the pandemic on the public seems to be one of anxiety about the classroom time already missed.

Recognising that public awareness might be lower, I took the opportunity to conduct an anonymous interview with a primary school teacher to truly understand the nature of school life, and why so many consider that strike action is necessary.

The first and most prominent question I posed was whether they were planning on striking and their reasoning behind that decision. They answered: “Yes, I do support the strikes because the education system is breaking.” I soon learned that the DfE missed its secondary school teacher recruitment target for 2022 by a staggering 40%.  Primary school recruitment came in 7% under target (source: DfE). It was made clear to me that secondary schools are especially struggling because their budgets have been cut further than primary schools.

I also learned that situations are common now where you could find a Spanish teacher teaching ICT, or a PE teacher teaching Physics. These are becoming more frequent. According to my source, the unfortunate reason for a lack of applicants and an inability to keep people in teaching, is so often that they could take up a “…higher paying job that has lower stress levels.” 

This is evidenced by the fact that nearly one third of newly qualified teachers leave in the first 5 years (source: National Education Union). The most recent NEU survey backs up these statistics, with 52% of their members affirming that their workloads are 'unmanageable'.

What change did the teacher believe held the most importance? “An increase in school budgets.” It was hard to hear that: “Many school budgets are down by thousands, and teachers are buying resources out of their own pockets, or creating ‘Amazon Wishlist’s for the parents.”

After this came work/life balance. It was explained to me how, for a full-time teacher, their life is consumed by ever increasing responsibilities that come with the job (such as procuring lesson resources and attending agency meetings): “Many teachers will be working before school, after school and at least one day of the weekend.”

Asked about the negative public reaction to the strikes, the opinion of my source was that: “Many people in the public still have the misconception that teachers have an easy job.” While there seem to be legitimate concerns about workload, it was made clear to me that the primary purpose of this industrial action is to increase teacher reward to levels that would stabilise the resourcing crisis from which so many of the other problems stem.

What did I learn from the interview? It seems the education system is slowly breaking and even the utmost efforts of our teachers cannot compensate for the detrimental effects of the fall in real terms of many school budgets. This has been compounded by the increased unattractiveness of the reward (according to the IFS, experienced teacher pay has fallen by £6,600 on average since 2010).

It seems reasonable to me that the cumulative effect of these strains on our teachers has led them to this last of resorts; a nationwide strike. You may or may not agree with me on this but in forming your opinion, I recommend that you ask a teacher.