'We want to feel valued': Teachers in Scarborough walk out as part of national strike action

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) have walked out as part of the first in a series of planned strikes.

More than 120,000 NEU members across England voted to strike in a ballot with a 90 per cent majority.

It is the latest strike to hit the UK this winter that has also seen nurses, rail workers, postal staff and paramedics join picket lines – with train drivers also striking today.

Thirteen schools in Scarborough have been affected by the strikes, either closing fully or partially.

When asked why teachers were striking today, Trudy Oldroyd, a teacher at St Augustine’s and NEU Workplace Representative, said: “Well it’s to do with funding. It is to do with pay, but for me it’s mainly funding.

“Education services have been slashed along with other essential services for children and that’s just putting a lot of pressure on schools, leaders, teachers and the cost of living crisis has really highlighted how a lot of us feel undervalued.

“We’re doing all this extra work and we’re not getting recognised for it. We want to feel valued.”

It is not only teachers who are frustrated at the Government, but other members of staff too.

Janet Spittal, Headteacher at Hackness and Wykeham Primary Schools, said: “Teachers are striking because schools are critically underfunded by the government and have been facing a blackhole in our budgets, related to pay awards, energy increases and rate of inflation increases, which has not been met by single government.

“The teaching staff know I am facing difficult decisions around finance which mean that I am reducing staff to pay electricity bills! I am managing to maintain frontline staffing but I am not sure for much longer I can sustain this.”

Most state school teachers in England and Wales had a five per cent pay rise in 2022.

But with inflation at over 10 per cent, the NEU says this has resulted in a real-term pay cut for teachers.

The NEU believes low pay has led to thousands of teachers leaving the profession, including a third of those who have recently qualified.

Amanda Daynes, head of humanities and history teacher at Scarborough Sixth Form College, said: “Our pay has been cut in real terms by 24 per cent since 2010.

“That means although we are paid more than some, teaching is a professional job and we’re no longer getting paid at professional levels so if you look at teachers' pay after tax then there’s some of us who are really struggling, particularly those in single-income households.

“There’s been a decade or more of slowly having pay cuts and we’ve avoided striking but this year the cut is going to be so big that we can’t keep accepting this.

“The other reason we’re striking is over funding. The pay award that’s being offered by the Government are not funded so what that means is that the funding of the whole college is affected. We’ve been offered 5% but that 5% has to be taken from the college budget.

“The college budget has been cut year on year on year and we’re at the point where that’s having a major impact and everything’s being cut to the bone and ultimately, we need any pay award to be properly and fully funded otherwise that could start having an impact on the quality of education that we can deliver.

“I feel like the Government is deliberately presenting this as teachers are being lazy, selfish and wanting more money.

“They haven’t touched bankers’ bonuses or people who have made a huge amount of money over the last decade or more so I feel like the government wants a dispute. I think they've deliberately under-offered a pay award so they get a series of strikes and protests to push through even more draconian union laws.”