'Schools in Peterborough are struggling': Striking teachers march on city council offices to plead for support

Peterborough teachers striking over pay and working conditions marched on the city’s council offices at Fletton Quays today (April 27).

More than 40 educators from across the city marched from St John’s Church in the city centre to the new council offices at Sand Martin House to hand deliver letters pleading for support from all 58 city councillors.

The march followed a morning of picket-line strikes which saw a good number of the city’s schools closed or running limited classes.

Charlotte Davis, the Peterborough Branch and District Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said “We have a bag of letters, 58 in fact, for all local councillors in Peterborough.”

She said the aim of delivering the same letter to all 58 councillors was to get them to see that, as well as demoralising teachers and reducing students’ life opportunities, poor and limited resources is putting people off joining the teaching profession.

“Our schools in Peterborough are struggling,” Ms Davis said.

“The letter explains what’s happening nationally, as well as locally and has quotes from local teachers and support staff about the pay, recruitment and retention issues that are affecting our pupils in our schools.”

Ms Davis said some of the quotes in the letters show the situation is “at the point that it’s an emergency now” with clear health and safety issues to consider.“We’re talking about classes that don’t have qualified teachers and haven’t got support staff for our most vulnerable children with special needs.”

“It’s a scary and worrying picture,” she said, and they [councillors] need to hear about it.”

John Cooper, who is the NEU Union Representative at Jack Hunt school was one of many teachers who echoed Charlotte’s concerns.

“Teachers are being underpaid and we are struggling to teach all of the subjects that we need to teach to the students in our classes,” he said.

Physics teacher Mr Cooper said he’d seen recruitment nose-dive over recent years. “Nobody is joining,” he noted, talking specifically about science teaching, “we can only recruit about 20 per cent of the teachers we need each and every year.”

The government had offered teachers in England a one-off payment of £1,000 and a 4.3% pay rise.

In addition, the starting salary for teachers in England is due to rise to £30,000 a year by September.

Ms Davis explained why all four teaching unions, including the NEU, rejected this offer.

“The offer that was made to us by Gillian Keegan was not fully-funded by government.

“So the biggest issue we’ve got here is - it may or may not have been a good offer - but because it wasn’t fully-funded, 98% of our members said ‘no - it’s not acceptable’.

“We cannot have anything coming out of school budgets which are already stretched: absolutely stretched beyond what is comprehensible at the moment, because of all the rising costs that are going on and the lack of funding over the last ten or so years.”

Ms Davis urged both national government and local councillors to listen to teachers’ pleas:

“Please listen to us,” she said, “we’re not trying to be difficult.”

“We’re trying to tell you what’s really going on.”