Manchester was brought to a standstill for a short while this afternoon as striking teachers marched through the city.
Members from the National Education Union (NEU) began their march on Liverpool Road, walked along Deansgate, then Peter Street, before heading down Oxford Road for a rally at All Saints’ Park. Traffic and trams were held to allow the procession to pass at lunchtime.
Teachers from across Greater Manchester, and the north west, attended the rally — with many saying they had taken the decision to strike because of working conditions, and fears over the quality of education they were able to give pupils. Others were motivated by breaking-point levels of stress.
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“I want to cry,” Sandra Mounier, a teacher at Manchester Academy, told the MEN. “I am always behind, even though when I calculate my hours and for the past few years I have been working five weeks per month. That’s 35 hours of overtime a month.”
Sandra, who is French and teaches English as an Additional Language, has also worked abroad and said conditions in the UK were poorer compared to her previous schools.
The 41-year-old continued: “I go home and I have no energy — I had three plates in my sink to clean and I started to cry. It is a mountain.
“Today isn’t about pay for me, it’s about working conditions. We really care and I want to stay, I have been here for six years but I am not sure I can stay. I love teaching and my kids. I don’t know what to do.
“I feel guilty in the holidays for not doing any work. Why should I feel guilty about taking a holiday to clean my house?”
Also at the rally was Alice Hothersall, who left teaching after just two years. She explained why: “I was making less than minimum wage and I did not feel like there were opportunities for me.
“I went in with really good intentions — I wanted to share the knowledge I had— but I spent my time arguing about glue sticks. I needed support there but because it had so many issues [I didn’t get it].”
She was accompanying Grace Berry, a 30-year-old secondary school music teacher in Chorley. Her reasons for striking included the lack of resources for extra-curricular activities which children ‘love’.
“My budget has just got smaller and smaller each year,” she said. It’s got to the point of deciding which instrument needs replacing when I get that money.
“We are doing a school show and we cannot get everything like lights and sound. We have had to choose sound or lights. It’s important children study English and maths, but it’s really important for them to have the extracurriculars as well.”
Perhaps the most striking sight of the day was Daniel Hatton, 31, who dressed up as a dinosaur to decry ‘prehistoric pay’ in the industry. Mr Hatton works at Abbot’s Lea School in Liverpool, which is a specialist SEN facility.
“We need to bring happiness to this,” he said when asked why he chose to dress up as a dino. “It’s a low point and we need to bring joy in. I work in an SEN school and they love dinosaurs. This is my way of showing I care.”
There was a strong show of support for NEU Joint General Secretary, Mary Bousted, who addressed the thousands in attendance. Originally from Bolton, she said: “This is a government which has made working families’ daily lives a misery. We are fighting for what’s right, what’s fair, and what’s decent.
“We are fighting for fairness so families can live decent lives free from poverty, hunger, and cold. We are ready to negotiate any time, any place, anywhere. We want a resolution to this.”
At picket lines across Greater Manchester, staff mentioned many of the same problems as those listed at the rally. Thomas Jukes, a science teacher at The Heys school, Prestwich, said: "The main thing is that it’s fully funded and not affecting the kids that we’re trying to help.
“I know places that are running out of budget already and it’s a real worry. It’s only going to keep getting worse.
"Not many jobs are you expected to work outside hours. It’s marking until 10 or 11pm, planning lessons and just working to give them what they really deserve. If we just worked school hours, nothing would get done.”
His colleagues Erin Caine, a Design and Tech support technician, agreed. She said: "We don’t want to be on strike but this is what we have to do because we want a fully funded above inflation pay rise that doesn’t come out of the students’ pockets.
"A lot of people think that teachers start at 8.30am and finish at 4pm. It’s definitely not the case and all teachers I know work through the weekend. The job's never done.”
Chloe Phillips, a History teacher and head of year 10 and 11 at the same school, added: "It’s not just about pay but also the working conditions that we’re having to put up with and the additional time that we’re having to put in. My role is pastoral so I can be here from 6.30am easily until 5pm and when I get home I’ve still got stuff to do.
"I’ve been teaching six years and you can see the difference. We don’t have glue sticks half the time or pens.
"The generation of kids we have now are not the same generation we had before. They’re more challenging and we’ve not got the support or funding we need. In our local area we need a bit more when it comes to alternative provisions. There needs to be funding from the government for that.
"It’s 100% for the kids. We give so much and we’re expected to give even more.
"All the people who say we have all these holidays don’t see what a teacher does. It isn’t that we come to work and finish at 3pm. We need this funding to support these kids."
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