Teachers in talks to do less work for more pay
TEACHING unions have entered into “intensive talks” with the Education Secretary over their demands to be paid more for less work.
The National Education Union (NEU) has agreed to talks with Gillian Keegan on pay, conditions and workload reduction after shutting more than half of schools in England to some or all pupils during two days of strike action this week.
The union has demanded inflationmatching backdated pay for the present academic year, as well as an inflationmatching pay rise for next year.
The talks come after health unions recommended an average 5 per cent pay rise offer to nurses, midwives and ambulance workers in 2023-24. The offer included a one-off bonus worth 2 per cent of salary for 2022-23, as well as an “NHS backlog bonus” worth at least £1,250 per person.
The Treasury has not confirmed any additional funds to cover the bonuses, which means it could come from efficiency savings.
Luke Sibieta, an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, warned that taxpayers would have to foot the bill if teachers are offered a similar one-off
payment. He said schools would have “little to no wriggle room for back pay for this year”.
“They will already have spent most of their budgets for this year. I can’t see how the Government does this without providing additional funding,” he said.
Mr Sibieta suggested that a bonus payment could come from Treasury emergency reserves. Mark Lehain, the head of education at the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “Anything for this current year would have to be extra, via a pay grant.”
Schools were given £2.3 billion additional funding for 2022-23 at the last Autumn Budget. However, that money has gone towards costs such as 5 per cent pay rises for most teachers this year and energy bills.
Teaching unions are demanding extra cash for future pay rises, on top of
the extra £2.3 billion they were awarded for this year and next year in the Autumn Statement.
Mrs Keegan has proposed a 3.5 per cent salary increase for next year. The NEU said the offer failed to come close to its demand for pay rises to “at least match price increases, and for pay rises to be fully funded in school budgets”.
Teaching union leaders started talks with Mrs Keegan yesterday and they plan to continue negotiations over the weekend. The Association of School and College Leaders, the National Association of Head Teachers and NASUWT teaching unions, which have not secured mandates to strike in England, are participating in the negotiations alongside the NEU.
In a joint statement yesterday, the Department for Education and teaching unions said they have “agreed to move into a period of intensive talks”.
They added: “The talks will focus on teacher pay, conditions and workload reduction. In order for talks to begin and, we hope, reach a successful conclusion, the NEU has confirmed it will create a period of calm for two weeks during which time they have said no further strike dates will be announced.
“The Education Secretary and all unions will meet today, beginning intensive talks, which will continue over the weekend.”
A Treasury spokesman said: “We are committed to ensuring the NHS has the funding it needs and these pay rises won’t impact on frontline services or the quality of care that patients receive.”
It would have been unusual if Budget week was not dominated by industrial disputes, which have become so ubiquitous that collectively they now have a relentless life cycle of their own: newly announced; in talks; or settled. The dispute that has plagued much of the NHS looks to have been settled by a generous lump sum payment plus a 5 per cent rise for next year. Meanwhile fresh talks have led teachers to put on hold more action of the kind which this week blighted the lives of countless schoolchildren. But just as consensus was reached in some sectors, new industrial action was announced elsewhere: this time a five-week strike by 1,000 passport office workers that could cause havoc for more than million people in the run-up to the summer holidays. In all, it represents a succession of disruption the end of which is hard to see.
Clearly, inflation is a significant factor. Workers across the country, in the public sector or private, will understandably be hoping for bumps in their pay packets after a torrid year of price rises. The critical difference when it comes to public services, however, is what the taxpayer gets in return for that extra cash. Can we expect better public services for increased spending? Or must we simply accept business as usual?
Because if it is business as usual, the trends are disastrous. Public sector productivity is poor – yet among the first concessions teachers have demanded in strike talks is a reduction of workload.
The NHS, despite billions in extra funding, is getting ever less efficient, with fewer treatments delivered. As a former health secretary, the Chancellor knows how serious a problem this is. Perhaps that is why he helped set up a review by Patricia Hewitt, herself a former health secretary, to see where the NHS could improve outcomes for patients.
We await to see her report, which is now due. But other expert analysis is already clear that bureaucracy, organisational muddle, poor training and bloat are crippling NHS services and making them less useful to their local residents.
Such dispiriting productivity slumps mean taxpayers are constantly being asked to accept less for more. As time goes on, a growing proportion will see what they get in return for their taxes as a poor deal. This is politically toxic. That is why it is imperative that the Government finds a way of delivering for taxpayers, demanding better from the public sector in return for generous pay settlements.
The end of strikes is always welcome, but they must be good value for the taxpayers who fund them, as well as those whose salaries benefit.
Covid inquiry timing
One of the reasons the disclosures in the Lockdown Files were so important was the fear that, unlike other countries, Britain would take an age to complete its official inquiry into the handling of the Covid pandemic – so long, in fact, that lessons may not be learnt in time for the next public health emergency. Now, as we report elsewhere on these pages, it seems those fears are being realised, with contracts for key participants that suggest marathon proceedings to come, perhaps as long as seven years.
The central system for securely transferring documents online, for example, has potentially been contracted up to 2029. This, if it were an end date for the inquiry proper, would be far too long. While no one disputes the need to be thorough, an endless process is the enemy of useful scrutiny.
Do we really want, a decade or so hence, to see greying, long-forgotten ministers defend actions none can quite recall?
It is difficult to comprehend, moreover, how some £114 million has been spent before the inquiry has even interrogated its first witness. The expenditure appears to have come from the handing out of just 37 contracts, and is a figure we should expect to rise significantly – not least to pay for the 150 lawyers already associated with the proceedings, either directly or as representatives.
Whether or not it is necessary, this legal bonanza can only be justified if, soon enough, the Covid-19 inquiry helps to explain not just the course of the disease, but why the nation was subjected to numerous lockdowns which so clearly damaged health, wealth and social cohesion.
What your socks say
Socks generally have a good reputation. If we become slack we might be advised to pull them up, but otherwise a pair of socks is a comforting two-legged friend. Now, though, there is an idea that they might report on whether we have fallen over, or even if we have stumbled. The super-sensory socks are said to detect falls with 99.4 per cent accuracy. That sounds impressive. But a third of people over 65 in the United Kingdom fall at least once a year, which suggests that if they all wore supersocks, the woolly accessories would send out 22,000 false reports: of falls where there were none, or of no fall where there was one. Earlier this year we reported on a watch intended to detect a car crash; but it was bamboozled into false alarms by the sudden movements of skiers. It is to be hoped that socks can be trained to be more accurate.