Tag Archives: morale

Morale matters

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Earlier this week the NHS as an organisation were awarded the Nation’s highest civilian award; The George Cross. This was in recognition of the huge efforts staff made, and indeed continue to make, during the on-going covid pandemic and the direct and indirect effects upon all the staff working within the service created as a result of the pandemic.

The award, created in 1940, sits at the top of the UK honour’s system joint with the military Victoria Cross and is the highest civilian gallantry award. It is given for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard and May Parsons, a matron for respiratory services who delivered the world’s first Covid vaccination in December 2020, were presented with the award by the Queen at Windsor Castle.

This is only the third time the George Cross has been awarded to a collective body, rather than an individual. It was previously awarded to Malta in 1942 and to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1999.

Should some sort of collective thank you is also due to our schools, and those that staff them, for remaining open throughout the pandemic. A signed certificate for every school thanking everyone for their ‘service’ during the pandemic and signed by the Monarch as Head of State might not come amiss.

Using the Platinum Jubilee to create some Regis Professors of Education to celebrate both the 150th Anniversary, in 2020, of 150 years of State Elementary Education and its successive expansion into the present system, and in 2022, the 210th anniversary of state funding of the education of children for the first time would have been a nice gesture. Yes, I know that they were children of soldiers that were funded, and it was The War Office that paid for the education in 1812, but it was still the start of state schooling.

The 150th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act, as a milestone, disappeared in horrors of the pandemic, but should not be forgotten. The ‘thank a teacher’ movement has raised the profile of teachers at the individual school level, and since the Blair government more school leaders, but not classroom teachers, have received awards in the Birthday or New Years’ Honours lists. But, do we need to do more to raise the morale of the profession?

As an employer, I know the importance of motivation, and of saying thank you for working through trying times. I can award a bonus, something not really available to the public sector as a whole, especially in this time of fiscal challenge.

Morale, workload and pay are the three key areas that support the successful staffing of any organisation. Managing morale is the cheapest and most overlooked, possibly because it is difficult for politicians to seem genuine. But, missing key anniversaries is a sign that morale isn’t taken seriously enough amongst senior decision-makers and those that shape the policy of our education system.

With a week to go to the end of term, there’s still time to wish everyone the best for the summer, and to say a Thank you to everyone for their dedication to the cause of education. So, from me, at least, a great big THANK YOU to everyone in our education system.

How rich are teachers?

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With the details of the 2016 School Workforce Survey still awaited, we have to turn to data on salaries from the 2015 Survey, effectively reflecting pay during the 2014-15 school-year. Using the published data from the DfE, it looks as if some 8,700 of the 484,000 teachers, where the State pays their salary and the figure was disclosed, earned more than £70,000 at the reporting point. This is the figure that makes you rich if Labour is to be believed. In total that represents just 2% of the teacher workforce. However, we cannot know how many of the 22,900 with unknown salaries, earn more than £70,000. But, since over half of those where the salary was unknown were younger than 30, they are unlikely to be amongst the highest paid teachers.

By contrast to the top 2%, some two thirds of employed teachers earned less than £40,000 at the census date in 2015. They are unlikely to have seen much of a pay rise since then. The top 2% earning more than £70,000 include teachers working in London, as the summary data takes no account of the extra salary paid to teachers working in the capital; presumably because of higher costs, especially housing. It was interesting that Labour when making the announcement about taxation didn’t have anything to say about workers in London. Presumably Labour believes you are still rich in London if you earn £70,000?

Of course, pay is a crude measure of rewards, as Labour found with its pay policies in the 1970s. Too draconian an anti-high pay regime and employers turn to non-monetary benefits. The cult of the company car owes a lot to pay policies in the 1970s, a period when teachers’ non-monetary benefits came to be seriously eroded compared with those of other workers.

Public sector pay, including that for teachers, may well become an issue in the general election campaign once everyone has decided where they stand on Europe and the Tories hard BREXIT stance. I suspect many voters already know how that issue will influence their voting, especially where there are local elections and it has already been discussed on the doorsteps, as it has in my part of Oxford. Voters will want something else to talk about over the next seven weeks.

The issue is whether the many young teachers, increasingly saddled with big student loan debts and trying to build their lives, feel well off? I suspect most don’t, especially in high cost areas outside of London, of which Oxford is one. How much of the increase in jobs for teachers is due to large numbers quitting the profession: we don’t know, but with other opportunities on offer why wouldn’t you, especially if workload and low morale are affecting how you see your job.

Perhaps the political party offering most on improving workload, CPD and morale might win the teachers’ vote this time around. Here’s what the 2015 Lib Dem offer was in 2015:

Guarantee all teachers in state-funded schools will be fully qualified or working towards Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) from September 2016

  • Introduce a clear and properly funded entitlement to professional development for all teachers
  • Raise the bar for entry to the profession, requiring a B grade minimum in GCSE maths and English
  • Establish a new profession-led Royal College of Teachers, eventually to oversee QTS and professional development.
  • Continue to support the Teach First programme
  • Establish a new National Leadership Institute

So certainly room for more this time around, especially on workload pressure; retaining teachers in the classroom and making everyone working in education feel properly valued as a public servant.

Readers are reminded that for the past four years I have been the Lib Dem spokesperson on education on Oxfordshire County Council.