First School Kids’ Strike? Cobblers!
“Thousands Support First School Kids’ Strike”.
Sky Headlines, 3rd May 2016.
Sky journalists really should go back to school. They are way behind with their history – as any teacher who is a member of the Unite union could have told them.
Two years ago, hundreds of members of the Unite union gathered on a village green in Suffolk, with ginger pop and balloons, hummus and rocket sandwiches, stilt walkers and ‘inspiring’ Union speakers to electrify the crowd – and celebrate the 100th anniversary of ‘the first kid’s strike’ in history! They even made a film of it – the ‘Burston Kid’s Strike’ is embedded into the soul of every left wing teacher in the land!
The event was so important that Jeremy Corbyn and Clive Lewis were drafted in to speak to the crowd.
If you watch the film I linked to, you will see a genuine indoctrinated kid….’we watched a movie about this’…two girls, lived with a ‘rich lady’…and the ‘teachers got sacked because of their lies that they had been caned’…
Oh the evil influence of those toffs!
NO they didn’t! The allegations that two Barnardos girls had been caned was disproved – the teachers were sacked because they were at loggerheads with the school governing board – albeit for what sounds to modern ears as thoroughly altruistic motives. ‘Lighting a fire to dry the clothes of three shivering waifs who had walked three miles to school in the rain’….
It was of course, a classic battle for control between two early union agitators and the local farming community who financed the school – both teachers objected to children leaving classes to help bring in the harvest.
The teachers set up a ‘strike school’ on Burston village green, attended by 66 of the pupils – which lasted for for 25 years, making it the longest strike in British history. The ‘new’ Burston school was financed by donations from the rail and mining unions. The school is still there and maintained as a museum – to which adoring members of the Unite party make an annual pilgrimage…
Present day union campaigners say the focus on testing has left the kids:
“over-tested, over-worked and in a school system that places more importance on test results and league tables than children’s happiness and joy of learning”.
A group of parents, nothing whatsoever to do with teacher relatives, or fellow union members, nothing whatsoever, says:
“We’re a group of Year 2 parents who’ve had enough… enough of endless testing, enough of teachers not being trusted to teach, enough of an Ofsted driven, dull, dry curriculum aimed solely at passing National Curriculum Tests (SATs).
They complain that ‘games have been replaced with grammar, playing with punctuation’ and that school should be a time for fun and frolic…
And so the chidlren have been persuaded to take a day off school – coincidentally, the very day they were due to sit those tests, thus ensuring that the performance of the teachers will not be comprehensively assessed.
For it is the teachers, and the schools, not the pupils who are being assessed here. There is neither reward nor punishment for the pupils as a result of taking this test. If pupils are ‘stressed, moody, anxious and not themselves’ as a result of taking the test, as one Mother was complaining on the news this morning – that is the fault of the teaching staff. They have created this atmosphere – there is no reason why the children shouldn’t view the test as they would a game of snakes and ladders played after school.
Perhaps this generation might even grow up to be Sky journalists who know a little history…
- Paul
May 3, 2016 at 7:59 am -
Brilliant.
I never understood why people got so stressed over exams, although I never got the rewards my peers got for passing, I passed some failed some and sure I could have done better but probably not if I was as stressed as my peers.I was not entirely happy with the content and style of that year two exam but when the time comes I was quite ready to explain to my kids that the world is a funny place and often we have to do strange things, sometimes they matter sometimes they don’t. In my experience tests are solely to help you find out what you don’t know so that you can learn it if you wish.
- Mudplugger
May 3, 2016 at 8:33 am -
As you correctly identify, this is a manufactured issue, developed solely by teaching staff who would rather not be subjected to types of objective performance measures similar to those applied in real-world jobs – you know, those jobs where you don’t get three months of holidays. you have to work full-length days, you don’t get a gold-plated pension and you may get fired if you don’t deliver the goods.
If the kids really are feeling stressed and pressured, that’s a measure of how worried the teachers are that their game may finally be up, so they’re desperately trying to demonstrate some success in forcing knowledge into kids – and if that’s the case, then it’s working.
I know that, at that age, I would have treated any such test as just another different thing to be doing in a school day, a game, a chance to shine even, but certainly nothing to trouble my puerile self into sleepless nights of tortured stress – that came years later when I had a proper job.- Peter Raite
May 4, 2016 at 5:25 pm -
Every worker in the UK is entitled to 5.6 weeks/28 days of paid leave, and are therefore actually work 46.6 weeks/233 days. The old “teachers get three months off” canard suggests teachers work for 39 week or 195 days, and therefore get an “extra” 38 days off.
On paper my wife has 197 days when she is required to be actully in school, but there are a few additional Saturdays, plus 12 parents/options/other evenings. Effectively it amounts to at least 200 full days, and it is full days because – and I know people still have difficulty grasping this – her school day is much longer than the hours when children are actually present.
The vast majority of days she’s at school before 08:00, and leaving after 18:00, only to often do more work at home. And at weekends. It says a lot that she has a commute about a third of the length of mine (which is at least 75 minutes), but leaves the house before I even get up, and arrives home later than I do.
So, we’re talking in the region of 45-50 hours for each of those 40 weeks of the school year, which invariably encroaches into the supposed “three months off.” That amounts to around 1,800-2,000 hours per year. Contrast with those in an average 38 hour week, who – accounting for those 28 days off – are actually working around 1,771 hours per year.
Many teachers are actually working pretty much exactly the same hours as those in non-teacher jobs, by many of them are working a whole lot more, and without the flexibility of taking their leave actually when they want. Need to take a day off for a wedding or a non-blood-relative’s funeral? Forget that.
- Lindsay
May 4, 2016 at 11:01 pm -
My next-door neighbour is an art teacher at the local comprehensive down the road. He leaves home at 9.00 a.m. and is back home at 4.00 p.m.
Last year he ran an evening class for 2 hours each week but that seems to have been too demanding since he has now dropped that.
It’s a tough life for some teachers.
- Peter Raite
May 6, 2016 at 2:08 pm -
The government’s own statistics suggested the he is very much the exception, rather than the rule.
- Peter Raite
- Cobblers
May 5, 2016 at 10:07 am -
Many workers outside of teaching have long commutes, put in 45-50 hours a week, and more, and in unpaid overtime, and take work home with them too, but don’t get 13 weeks annual leave to compensate for it like teachers do.
At the end of a school day when visiting schools (any time from 2.30pm onwards these days) I’ve often been crushed in the rush of students AND teachers to exit the building. Not all of them stay late, or stay that late if they do.As for the tests, I recall a test every term when I was at primary school, lasting a good hour. Where you sat in the class during the next term was determined by those results. The best performers sat at the back of the class and the worst sat at the front. It worked well, and I can’t recall any of us being particularly stressed – or stressed at all- by the process.
I also remember a friend only needing 2 E’s as the requirement to do a teaching degree. Since she did only get 2 E’s and wanted to do a degree she fell into teaching rather than had it down already as a chosen career path.
- Peter Raite
May 6, 2016 at 2:12 pm -
You totally missed the point. I said I have a much longer commute than her, yet she leaves home before I even get up, and (on the days I go straight home) is invariably arrives back later than I do. I work a “ordinary” 09:00-17:30 day, so what does that say about hers? It’s not rocket science….
As for some teachers going home “early,” they’re usually the ones who have to collect their own kids from elsewhere. You have literally no idea of a) what work they subsequently do at home, or b) the number of other teachers staying behind in the first place.
- Bandini
May 6, 2016 at 2:50 pm -
I’ve never understood the desire to drag everyone else down to the lowest level, and I very much doubt those working 45-50 hour weeks are eying enviously those working 55, 60 or 70 hour weeks. Where will it end? Let’s pick the most maltreated, poorly paid worker in the UK (or the EU? or the world?) and aim our ambitions downwards until EVERYONE is miserable & broken!
There were several teachers at my secondary school who were simply not up to the job, but with the exception of one (and even here I’m not sure as he claimed to be able to levitate after having briefly ‘died’…) they were burnt-out, mental wrecks. Was it those ‘long holidays’ which took their toll, or was it having to deal with unruly children (and increasingly their uncontrollable parents) day in, day out? My money’s on the latter!
- Bandini
- Peter Raite
- Lindsay
- Peter Raite
- Fat Steve
May 3, 2016 at 9:10 am -
They have created this atmosphere – there is no reason why the children shouldn’t view the test as they would a game of snakes and ladders played after school.
Too bloody right Anna. I suggest a large part of a teachers job is to guide a child with kindness to see value and fun in academic study for itself and not simply view it for its utility to Society. - DICK R
May 3, 2016 at 9:26 am -
The communists have been politicising young children for decades it’s one of their main tactics
- English Pensioner
May 3, 2016 at 9:54 am -
My sister was a teacher and forty years ago used to argue that tests were as much a test of the teacher as of the child which was why the unions opposed them. It is as true now as it was then.
- Moor Larkin
May 3, 2016 at 10:26 am -
Funny you should say that https://twitter.com/moor_facts/status/727411519416373248
- Moor Larkin
- Bandini
May 3, 2016 at 11:21 am -
These poor kids should be playing with the non-binary bits of dolls & exploring their gender-identities, not having grammar and punctuation shoved down their throats!
I’m with the complaining parents on this one, and wonder if those commenting here are comparing their own experience at school (a long, long time ago…) with a significantly different modern testing-regime.
My schooling was pretty non-aspirational & failed miserably anyone not showing natural ability – if you fell behind you were left behind, something which in retrospect makes me quite angry. So I can see there is a case to be made for monitoring the pupils’ development; perhaps the rigid system in place is a price worth paying to weed out the total failures (teachers, not kids).
But society as a whole has changed and I imagine most of the stress is coming from the parents themselves, demanding that their little treasures can speak a foreign language fluently while playing the mini-cello. I suppose it comes down to the atmosphere in which the wisdom is imparted – the joy of learning versus the fear of failure.
P.S. The first ‘SATS’ page that Google coughed up has adverts for IQ test kits, ‘brain boosting’ flax seed extract (“the key to better behaviour and academic achievement?”), and, er, oxygen canisters. The latter might help with the hyper-ventilating kiddiewinks!
- ivan
May 3, 2016 at 11:41 am -
Fifty odd years ago when I used to teach mathematics and engineering science I would very often start a lesson with a snap 20 question test. The students loved those tests for two reasons, they were fun and they checked if they knew the work. They also helped me by letting me know how well I had managed to pass on the necessary information.
Twenty odd years ago when I did a stint as a supply teacher I used the same idea. The kids loved it for the same reasons, the other teaching staff did not because it did not put them in a very good light.
As Anna says, it is the teachers that have the problem not the students.
- Don Cox
May 3, 2016 at 11:43 am -
“games have been replaced with grammar, playing with punctuation”
Isn’t that the point of going to school ? You can play at weekends and during the holidays, but you will learn grammar and punctuation only in school. That’s what schools are for.
- Bandini
May 3, 2016 at 12:00 pm -
Year 2 students are 6-7 years old & they are being tested in English, maths and science. Do you really think a nervous parent needs to be told how far below the 100% ‘normal’ level their toddler has fallen? “Oh God, Timmy’s only 84% of an average 6-year-old!”
I’m in favour of the teachers’ results being monitored, but even here it must be frustrating for someone working in a run-down area (broken families, multiple spoken languages, high percentage of transient pupils) having their best-efforts compared with someone employed in a leafy suburb.
- Moor Larkin
May 3, 2016 at 12:40 pm -
“Toddler”? Jesuits used to say give me the child until it is 7 and I will give you the man.
At 8 I was cycling several miles to my friends house and mum wouldnlt see me all day.- Bandini
May 3, 2016 at 12:53 pm -
I’ve just been skimming through the Ofsted reports into my primary & secondary schools, neither of which seems to have changed much: the former good-but-not-great, the latter in ‘special measures’!
But I was surprised to see that my old primary is now taking children from the age of 3, so maybe by the age of 6 they have skills worth testing. I started at age 5 already knowing how to read, write & ‘add up’ – thanks to ‘lessons’ on my mother’s lap. But my very hazy memory is of some youngsters barely knowing how to hold a crayon, let alone write with one.- Moor Larkin
May 3, 2016 at 12:59 pm -
As has been mentined, this is not essentially about the children, it is more about the adults; as in so much “child protection” these days. A child’s mind is like a sponge and it will quickly learn to read’n’write if it’s given the water of teaching, but equally can remain dry and listless like a sponge too, if it all it gets offered is dull, mindless kindness. Children tend to lack initiative and if not pushed will stand still.
The socialist mantra is keep them a child until they are 18 and then we have control of the man.
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 3, 2016 at 6:10 pm -
But my very hazy memory is of some youngsters barely knowing how to hold a crayon, let alone write with one.
A while back we were visiting Granddaughter1 , and CBEEBIES (or whichever) was on the WideScreen. The mulatto (can one still say that?), gender dysphasic, slightly differently abled ‘presenter’ instructed the children to take their ‘swizzling books and swizzling sticks’.
I assume because the word ‘crayon’ is beyond the pronunciation skills of the average 4 year old.
- Bandini
May 3, 2016 at 6:26 pm -
Oooh, that’s weird TBD – I was laughed at by school-friends over my pronunciation of the word ‘crayon’, and it left me eager to avoid its use. (I still think my ‘version’ was the correct one, but…)
Mulato? They still use it here in Spain, though a quick check suggests it may now “possibly be offensive”. There’s still a famous ice-lolly with the name – creamy white innards covered in a chocolate coating. Oh-err!
http://kalise.com/img/productos/fotos/mulato-kalise-l.jpg
- Bandini
- Moor Larkin
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 3, 2016 at 6:15 pm -
At 8 I was cycling several miles to my friends house and mum wouldn’t see me all day.
- Moor Larkin
May 4, 2016 at 7:46 am -
6p? Call themselves workin’ class? Bloody middles-class toffs…
- Moor Larkin
- Bandini
- Peter Raite
May 4, 2016 at 5:37 pm -
Part of the frustration is that the monitoring makes no allowance for the wide variation that can occur in any one year group. It doesn’t matter if the year above and the year below are doing significantly better than the one inbetween, the latter is always seen as the teacher’s failing, regardless of the other two.
- Moor Larkin
May 5, 2016 at 10:37 am -
it is all about the teachers then
- Peter Raite
May 6, 2016 at 2:12 pm -
They can’t always make bricks when sometimes there’s not enough straw.
- Moor Larkin
May 6, 2016 at 3:40 pm -
Don’t let the NUJ hear you suggesting all are not equal…
- Moor Larkin
May 6, 2016 at 3:41 pm -
or the NUT for that matter…..
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Raite
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- Bandini
- Pericles Xanthippou
May 3, 2016 at 11:58 am -
“… this generation might even grow up to be Sky journalists who know a little history …”
Ivan puts it well.
More likely, I think, they’ll grow up to be teachers that know little! In criticizing schools politicians seem to forget that the teachers — themselves victims of modern education and ‘educationalists’ — are now required, with a quiver deplete, to impart the skills they never learnt.
ΠΞ
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 3, 2016 at 12:22 pm -
I attended 6th Form in the mid 80s. A’level students were getting offers of ‘ 2 Es’ or even ‘1E and 1 Ungraded’ to become teachers.
So nothing, absolutely nothing, that teachers come up with surprises me.
Bear in mind too that those ‘2 Es’ contemporaries of mind are now of an age to be in senior teaching positions.
- Bandini
May 3, 2016 at 12:41 pm -
“Es are good, Es are good.
He’s Ebeneezer Goodenough…”
- Bandini
- Tom
May 3, 2016 at 2:40 pm -
Actually the first school strike was in the 1970s and was organised by the Schools Action Union — the youth wing of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) – a Maoist faction. In my politically misguided youth I was a member of the SAU.
- Carol42
May 3, 2016 at 2:56 pm -
At primary school we had tests in the basics every week, I enjoyed them and it gave me a competitive streak which stood me in good stead for later A levels and degree exams. They were all ‘sudden death’ in those days no course work taken into account. Wonder how some of today’s kids will cope with the real world. I do agree that many teachers were badly taught themselves. Looks like the teachers and parents are stressing the kids not the tests.
- Fat Steve
May 3, 2016 at 5:11 pm -
@carol 42 ‘sudden death’
I remember that expression well for exams (I used the expression sudden death playoff), never once did I question it and actually came to like the experience……I am not sure they ever tested my true depth of knowledge or understanding but they did test something …..possibly more an ability to square up to an academic challenge ….and signified if one passed one might have ability to progress further.
Sad thing was my Prep school was probably the only educational establishment that thought about educating rather than just training me and oddly (or not) I remember those who taught me there but few of the others. My major recollection of school and teachers? SUCH A WASTE OF A CHILDHOOD …..taught properly by which I mean teaching TO the child not AT the child there would have been all the time in the world to have gotten so much more out of it- Carol42
May 3, 2016 at 6:20 pm -
I actually liked exams, I liked the challenge and I think to this day I could write an essay in 45 minutes but I was maybe unusual as most people seem to hate them. Like all schools we had good and bad teachers, I had a wonderful science teacher who unfortunately left to take up a headmaster post in my second year. He was one of the few who even thought girls could be good at science in those far off days. A history teacher gave me a life long love of history and a terrible maths teacher made me hate the subject. There doesn’t seem to be as many dedicated teachers now and they have lost much of the respect they once had.
- Fat Steve
May 4, 2016 at 9:25 am -
@carol 42 I could write an essay in 45 minutes
In the light of your comment I recalled the standard exam formula last night . Two exam papers per subject , four essays per exam , each exam 3 hours giving 4 essays per exam, Choice of four questions out of seven/eight .All exams sat usually within no more than a ten day period ….usually in the poorly insulated School gymnasium in hot ‘exam’ weather with a large number of other students sweating more profusely under mental exertion than the average P.E. lesson .The anxiety beforehand the relief after and two long summer months before the results occasionally interrupted by nightmares which in my case took the form of falling off a cliff.
Happy days in retrospect though …..and a rite of passage of sorts the value of which I have never questioned and don’t question mow though i am less certain of the destination- Carol42
May 4, 2016 at 4:13 pm -
Yes, that was the format ! I remember my finals when I had nine 3 hour exams. Two each Monday – Thursday and one on the Friday morning, I nearly collapsed from exhaustion by the end. I well remember the awful wait for results but I still think it was worth it. I wonder if some schools and universities still do it this way?
- Fat Steve
May 4, 2016 at 5:36 pm -
@carol 42 I nearly collapsed from exhaustion by the end
I remember after my finals I simply fell into a long non communicative silence for some days though whether through exhaustion or bewilderment at having crossed that particular line I don’t know. My son has been reading English Literature at KCL …..no exams in his final year …..just essays in on time and his final piece of work, a dissertation due in a few days time. In fairness he has been far far more engaged with his degree than I ever was with mine and so he has gotten more out of a coursework format which is nevertheless graded on his essays and dissertation …but Eng Lit is tougher than the Law I studied in that it tests intellect more than memory . Darling daughter who read classics at UCL though went through pretty much the same as me …..and her weakness in Greek was exposed by the trial by fire …..but she still pulled an Upper whereas Papa was awarded only a Desmond.
But yes important and happy memories and nice to have been prompted by you to recall them
- Fat Steve
- Carol42
- Fat Steve
- Carol42
- Fat Steve
- Roderick
May 3, 2016 at 5:47 pm -
In the real world of work, adults test other adults all the time (think targets, KPIs, performance bonuses and the like), and the results can be career-influencing – basically you go up, or out. The fact that in the cosseted world of teaching such tests on teachers are – in large part – abhorred speaks volumes about those whom we entrust with our children.
- Moor Larkin
May 3, 2016 at 5:49 pm -
Those who can do.
Those who can’t teach.
-Grandad- ivan
May 3, 2016 at 8:21 pm -
And those that can’t teach become politicians.
- Ted Treen
May 4, 2016 at 12:32 am -
The “full version” I heard was:-
Those who can do.
Those who can’t teach.
Those who can’t teach, teach teachers to teach.
Those who can’t teach teachers to teach, administrate. - Bandini
May 4, 2016 at 11:32 am -
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
-Teacher- Moor Larkin
May 5, 2016 at 10:39 am -
we don’t need no education, education, education.
we don’t need no thought control.
-Pinko Floyd
- Moor Larkin
- ivan
- Moor Larkin
- VileSubvert
May 4, 2016 at 4:58 am -
Happily now revealed via pro social Anna’s SO good site.
This lying overpaid cult of cunts (not cuts) began with the very first Brit cop, anti social Vile Victorian Bob Peel.
He employed the dregs of ex-forces thugs, Waterloo veterans, sadists and known criminal ‘enforcers’ to subdue and brutalize Britain’s growing underclass in the new overcrowded urban industrial slums.
No more rural, sylvan, pastoral bucolic idylls just a load of Old Bill bollocks & bullshit!
- WizedUp
May 4, 2016 at 5:23 am -
SeXtend VileSubvert: ” Of course, it’s all changed since then. Its far worse, but their cover ups are SO much better! “
- WizedUp
- VileSubvert
May 4, 2016 at 5:36 am -
Sorry, wrong topic – DOH!
Meanwhile why, after 300 years of gross inequality, can’t underclass UK kids now have the same high ‘edgukayshun’ that sooo successful Lords Snooty & Pals/CamerCon & Co get at elite Harrow, Eton, et al?
- binao
May 4, 2016 at 8:06 am -
It seems to me Mr Blair’s ‘education, education, education’ really meant perpetual adolescence.
No wish to knock the achievers of course, but no matter how much fun a good teacher can make learning, for most it still requires effort.
It’s work for the child and the teacher, perhaps not as bad as crawling under looms.
That’s why we also had playtime. - Peter Raite
May 4, 2016 at 4:19 pm -
A lot of comments here seem to woefully underestimate the kind of pressure teachers are now under. Earlier today I did a fag-packet calculation of hours my wife was expected to devote to classroom time and amrking, and it came in at over 40 a week. That’s before totting up the preparation, one-to-one sessions, playground duty, field trips, and all the other stuff she’s expected to do (she’s also effectively a head of department without the benefit of being graded and paid as such).
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 4, 2016 at 4:38 pm -
Earlier today I did a fag-packet calculation of hours my wife was expected to devote to classroom time and amrking, and it came in at over 40 a week.
Uhm that’s why they ‘get 6 weeks holiday a year’- and that’s a quote from my Aged Mother, a teacher , as was most of my family. Infact the fact Aged Mother fell pregnant with me whilst still at Teacher Training College, in a drunken ‘once without can’t hurt’ late 60s sorta way tells us something about teachers’ level of common sense even back then.
- Bill Sticker
May 4, 2016 at 11:30 pm -
When my wife was teaching in the UK, her working week began, Sunday from 5pm (Lesson plans, weekly objectives) and ended Friday 7pm (Marking & grading). Each working day began at 8:30am with a half hour lunch break (Her little darlings got 90 mins, but there were meetings to attend, playground duty & admin). Then after finishing ‘officially’ at 4:30pm (More often 5pm) and another hour and a half admin at home. Throw in another nine evenings a year, unpaid of course for parent / teacher events. As for the ‘six weeks summer holiday’, weeell, it never quite worked out like that. Neither did term and half terms. Or weekends if there was a new brainwave from the local LEA. Or if the head had, for example, ordered new ‘interactive’ whiteboards everyone had to master for Monday morning, especially if said headteacher had forgotten to buy vital USB cables, which hubby (me) ended up chasing around PC bloody world on a Saturday when he wanted to be out riding, then ending up as unpaid technician instructor for any other tech stuff. That of course does not include the regular additional upgrade courses she had to do as IT coordinator for her school. Unpaid, of course.
Teaching is not an easy gig. I estimate my wife used to routinely do fifty five hour weeks during term time, around twenty non- term time. What with my odd shift patterns, it was a wonder the kids ever saw us. That was over eight years ago, and I’m told it’s even more intense now.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- TheyFearTheHare
May 5, 2016 at 8:38 am -
Teachers are certainly a special breed, they’ll be first up against the wall come the revolution. Hypocritical toads
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