A teachers' union leader is to launch an attack on the Government’s pay freeze for teachers, saying it shows “appalling contempt” for the profession.
In her speech to the NASUWT union’s annual conference in Birmingham, which opens today (Saturday, April 15) new president Angela Butler will also describe teachers as "forgotten heroes" who were protected by only “fig-leaf mitigations” as they worked in “overcrowded and dangerous” conditions during the pandemic .
She is expected to say workloads need to be made more manageable, and that school staff must be protected from malicious allegations and abuse on social media.
In 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak paused public sector pay for all public sector workers with the exception of doctors and nurses. In March this year, the Government called for teacher starting salaries to rise by over 16% over the next two years, to bring them up to £30,000 by September 2023.
But proposed increases for more experienced staff are lower, and the Institute of Fiscal Studies has said that given rising inflation, they would mean a real-terms cut of 5% for more experienced staff between 2021 and 2023.
Ms Butler, 59, a chemistry and special educational needs and disability teacher from Powys, Wales, will tell members: "Teachers, along with other key workers, rose magnificently to the challenge (of the pandemic). Even as the virus was spreading exponentially and was mutating into more virulent forms, teachers were back in classrooms.”
“We know that black teachers were particularly vulnerable and our black members have told us that employers failed to address the increased risk to them. Teachers are the forgotten heroes of the pandemic. But, of course, it is not over."
Ms Butler will add that pupils have been “denied the order, discipline and care of regular school attendance” and that this has led to increased levels of mental health issues for pupils, affecting teachers in terms of their behaviour.
“Teachers have never been so important in the lives of young people, but we ourselves have felt the strains and challenges of the pandemic,” she will say.
“An exhausted, unhappy, disillusioned teacher is not an effective teacher. So those that have power over education must understand that they must respect, support and nurture their teachers. It is that simple. Yet they just don’t get it. And the price they pay for years of neglect is schools in crisis, battered and bruised by a pandemic, and neglected and misunderstood by governments.”
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