IMMEDIATE RELEASE 17 June 2003
Commenting on the speech by David Miliband,Schools Minister, Doug McAvoy, NUT General Secretary, said:
Mr Miliband may be passionately committedto modernising the school workforce but he is employing the oldest trick in thebook introducing conctractual changeswithout funding them. To reduceby three-quarters the promised money for Septembers workload reforms is asleight of hand which is very unmodern indeed.
This summers funding fiasco required theGovernment to take one obvious course restore the money it promised toschools. Despite the Ministers claim of an increase in the number of teachers,in fact what we have seen is a cull of teachers jobs about which theGovernment wont come clean.
The Government claims credit for boostingteachers basic pay. What Mr Miliband ignores is the fact that pay in othersectors of the economy has risen far faster than in teaching. This yearteachers had a pay cut. The rise was 2.9 exactly the same as inflation but theythen lost a further 1.1 per cent in national insurance contributions.
Government claimed that teachers paycould not increase by more than inflation because of the need to fund theworkforce reforms. They have not been funded: the Government has broken itspromise. Teachers urgently need the removal of excessive workload.
That workload must be reduced but not atthe expense of childrens education. Classroom assistants do a great job butthey are not qualified teachers and should not be used as such.
A modern thing to do would be to recognisefailure. Performance related pay has not met a single one of the Governmentsobjectives of recruiting, retaining and improving the morale of teachers.
E N D PR.47/03
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