Martin Reynolds interviewed an NEU rep at a school picket in Waltham Forest, north-east London. 

This week has seen a wave of strikes across London by National Education Union (NEU) members. Teachers have walked out of schools in Willowfield, Lammas and Leytonstone. They’ve been supported by other worried teachers and union members on impressive picket lines as a result of a variety of issues and attacks hitting the profession. 

Why are you striking this week? 

We’re on strike to review performance-related pay and although the government say they’ll review PRP for the bottom six pay-scale rungs, for the top three, it’s effectively in place. It’s still possible for the head teachers to subjectively decide when or whether someone goes up through those three stages. 

What exactly is performance-related pay? 

It’s basically this nonsensical system, where if you do your job, but you don’t document the right things you’ve been set as a teacher, which are some arbitrary targets throughout the year, but you do everything else and you do your job in an exemplary way, you still might not get your pay progression. 

Why is this? 

This is because the schools’ system for measuring performance is an arbitrary system, and most schools have the same systems where it basically boils down to: has a teacher met or not met three completely random targets. In our school we don’t do this, but in some schools they’re trying to hold teacher’s pay back if a certain amount of pupils don’t get ‘A’ or ‘A*’ grades and things like this, which is ridiculous. How can a teacher fix that? In our school, the system means that we’ve had, in the last two years, twenty people overall not get their pay progression, so their pay didn’t go up with experience they’ve gained. Instead, it was held at the same level as the year before. 

Our school is a local authority secondary school. In many other schools, it is difficult to attain the targets if there are pupils with learning difficulties or different needs attending the school. 

The problem is the principle of PRP because it shouldn’t be in place, it doesn’t measure the quality of education, it measures how much teachers perform in terms of an exterior kind of appearance, for whether they’re doing the right sort of things as prescribed by management. Rather than doing what they know they can do because they’ve been trained as teachers, for example. Good pedagogy can’t be measured by someone coming into your classrooms maybe twice a year and then saying, ‘oh, you’ve done this, but not done that,’ and that is going to decide whether a teacher’s pay goes up another several thousand pounds or not. 

It’s just a ridiculous mismatch between the consequences of that and actually how much has been measured. We are arguing this should just be removed. Teachers should still be accountable for their performance, but not through their pay progression, but instead through the way that the school talks to them, collaborates with them and in extreme circumstances, possibly puts them on some kind of capability issue. 

Given that head teachers and the school board of governors are responsible for deciding who or whether a teacher gets their PRP, does that mean teachers need to be nice to the head teacher in their school? 

To a certain extent basically, yes! The issue is that this is open to subjective judgement. We want it to be completely objective. There’s nothing more objective than years of service and experience, and pay should go up with experience. We know that good teachers are experienced teachers and that’s the best measure of a teacher. 

Today in this borough, there are a number of NEU strikes, so are they national strikes? 

There are strikes across the country and then there are lots of strikes in this borough and in London around a range of issues. However, performance-related pay is one of the big issues for teachers. There are also a variety of issues that teachers are fighting for in different schools. 

The fight goes on for decent pay and conditions in our education system. 

Carole Vincent also reports that  Pablo Phillips, NEU Joint Branch and District Secretary explained further why the three schools in Waltham Forest are on strike this week and the coming weeks. The three schools currently taking action are, Leytonstone and Willowfield who are under Local Authority control, but Lammas is an Academised school. 

Pablo explained that the reason for the strikes across Waltham Forest are due to the council saying one thing and the head teachers are saying something different. At branch level, the NEU reps try to reach an agreement, but where they can’t get that, the members are consulted and balloted for action. Withholding educators pay to balance the books is part of a neoliberal, austerity-driven agenda to withhold funding for schools, at a time when schools are screaming out for funding. This industrial action by NEU member will continue from 4th March unless there are moves to rectify the situation. 

 Please check Counterfire for the latest strikes and support workers taking action if you’re able and send messages of support. Strike Map provides an updated view of industrial action countrywide.  

Further strike dates at the three Waltham Forest schools are: 4th, 5th , 11th ,12th, and 13th March from 7am. Solidarity to NEU comrades.