Teachers on strike over pay squeeze

London school teacher Lucy Preston will miss her son’s fourth birthday tomorrow because she has to work a second job in the evening as a private tutor to make sure she can pay for her childcare and mortgage.

A day earlier, in the hope of earning a pay rise that will give her stretched household budget some relief, the single mother of two will join more than 120,000 other teachers on the picket line.

Teachers across England and Wales are going on strike today after a decade of meagre earnings in a state-funded school system that has seen many take up second jobs or leave the profession altogether.

“It’s utterly heartbreaking for me,” 38-year-old Preston said of missing her son’s birthday. She works as an English teacher three days a week, looking after her kids on the other two days as she cannot afford childcare every day.

“If I could just make enough money to not have to do the tutoring in the evening, I would have a much, much happier life ... It’s just a really, really depressing place to be in.”

Hundreds of thousands of other workers including rail staff and civil servants will also walk out today, making it Britain’s biggest day of strikes in several decades when measured by the range of industries it will cover.

The National Education Union (NEU) has asked for an above-inflation pay award funded fully by the government, so that schools can also cover other costs, from stationery to textbooks.

With inflation reaching double digits last year, teachers have seen a 23% real-terms pay cut since 2010, the union says.

The government, which has held unsuccessful talks with the NEU, has called its one-year, 5% pay award for teachers the highest “in a generation” and says it is investing £4 billion (about 162 billion baht) in schools over the next two years.