I call them the Covid generation. The children whose schooling I believe has been more damaged than any others in postwar history. They have already lost months of teaching, of seeing their friends, of being able to develop normally as kids. They desperately need to make up for that lost time. Their lives will be irrevocably damaged if they can’t.
And yet for the third time in three years, their education is again grinding to a stop. Last term, the National Education Union (NEU) called six days of regional and national strikes. Next term, the same union has voted to call five more days of strikes across the country between April 27 and early July.
Kids in my city of Stoke and all over England could lose a substantial chunk of their scheduled education for the term – with more disruption than just the five days, really, because it takes you a day or so to get them back into the groove after they’ve been out of class. And more disruption still, if the union calls more strikes. And potentially more in the new school year too, because they’re re-balloting for further action in September.
I was a teacher until literally the day I became an MP in 2019 – I taught classes on the morning I was elected, and went there straight from the count. I worked in state schools my whole career. I was even a union rep. I’ve got a lot of time for teachers’ concerns, particularly about workload and targets.
But what’s happening now is wrong. It’s like kicking someone who’s already broken their leg. The NEU, of course, blames the government for not offering enough money. But that’s not right.
