'People don’t want to go on strike. They want to be in there working.'
As schools across the county close and BBC journalists stopped broadcasting, we spoke to some of those involved in recent strike action
By Sarah Ward
Yesterday while hundreds of their colleagues stood on picket lines outside school gates, a bus loaded with Northamptonshire members of the National Education Union (NEU) went down to the #Enoughisenough march in central London. There they joined with thousands of others from across the unions, marching from Speakers Corner in Hyde Park to Trafalgar square where they called for better pay and working conditions amid the current cost of living crisis.
While the chancellor gave his spring budget inside parliament, he would no doubt have been aware of the strikers, who are now becoming a familiar feature on the streets of the capital and beyond. But yesterday the detail of those budgets would not have been reported in the usual fashion around throughout the BBC’s network of local radio and TV. That’s because thousands of its members, including those in Northamptonshire decided to distance themselves from the microphones in protest to cuts to local radio. The corporation is cutting the local radio budgets to increase its digital operations, a move which will mean BBC radio becomes far less local after 2pm.
North Northants NEU branch secretary Union Simon Rielly, was one of those who travelled to London yesterday. He says the teachers’ action is not solely about pay, but also about the lack of money coming into schools’ bank accounts from the government.
“The education system has been under-funded for 13 years now,” he says. “It has been attacked in a variety of different ways. The culture and ethos within schools has changed. From a caring and loving environment, it is now more of a cut throat industry, schools are being run as businesses.
“It is about getting education back to where it should be. Getting fully funded. It is not just about a teacher pay rise.
“We haven’t got enough teaching assistants in schools to support students who need it; we haven’t got enough school places for children with special educational needs
“What the NEU is asking for is that education is funded properly. There was a five per cent pay rise given last year but the schools had to find it out of their own budget. If that continues next year, what you are then looking at is redundancies, restructuring.
“These strikes are having an impact on education - I get that. But at the end of the day these strikes are about saving education for future generations. The short term impact is for the long term benefit.”
The NEU wants an above inflation pay rise for teachers this year and does not want to have it funded from existing school budgets. The government is proposing three per cent and this week education secretary Gillian Keegan wrote an open letter to parents saying the strikes were completely unnecessary. She has offered to talk with the unions about pay if they call off the strikes.