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LETTERS


Please write
The editor welcomes your letters but reserves the right to edit them. Write to Your letters, The Teacher, NUT, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD or email teacher@nut.org.uk. Letters for the Jan/Feb issue should reach us no later than 11 December.

Please note we cannot print letters sent in without name and postal address (or NUT membership number), although we can withhold details from publication if you wish.

Supply teachers have their say

I was pleased to read your article on the raw deal given to supply teachers by agencies looking to undercut pay rates and take away pension payments (November 2009).

I’m not a supply teacher from choice. I’ve been unsuccessful in finding permanent or temporary work in the last 18 months, but mostly fortunate in being offered regular supply work in my local borough. However, the agency responsible for many placements destroyed my file because I’d had a six-month placement at a school. This agency had also lost my forms when I registered with them five years ago!

I am angered that supply teachers have to pay for their own Criminal Records Bureau checks, several times over, when they are usually the least well-paid members of the profession. They also have to pay their own General Teaching Council registration, without which they would not be allowed to teach.

Name and address supplied

People often have the mistaken idea that being a supply teacher is cushy. After all supply teachers leave school early, avoid copious paperwork and have a day off when they feel like it – don’t they?

Sometimes we don’t choose to have days off, it’s just that there is no work available. Schools range from being wonderful to making you feel invisible. The worry of not receiving work, and increasing use of higher level teaching assistants to do our jobs, can be demoralising. Being sick isn’t an option if we need the money, and sometimes work is cancelled after a long journey
to school.

Thank you NUT for offering us your support.

Name and address supplied

Your article on supply teachers offered a list of things schools should give supply teachers on their arrival. It missed an important thing: notes from the regular teacher on what they want their class to do.

I began supply teaching in Australia in 1996. There, schools always provide those notes first thing. On starting supply teaching in London, I’ve found the norm is you find the regular teacher’s notes only when you’re in the classroom. You have to start the students on the activity at the same time as you’re trying to read the notes.

Martin Thomas
London

I have just resigned from the NUT because I have run out of work. For 24 years I have worked as a supply teacher, mostly in special schools. I had regular establishments where I knew the staff and students. I was a professional with a box of tricks to educate and inform my students. I covered maternity leaves and long-term sickness. It was hard work but I enjoyed it.

All that has vanished; it is so much cheaper to put a classroom assistant in charge instead. They cost about £10 a day extra instead of my £135 (or £120 if I work for an agency). And they do not just cover the odd day’s absence, but sometimes work for one or two days a week for a whole year in a class with a part-time teacher. I believe this exploits them and can be stressful for other assistants, who feel they have to support them more.

I am sorry to be leaving the NUT because it is the best! I always enjoy The Teacher and have found it full of inspiring articles and useful information. The union paid for me to learn extra computer skills at my local college, which boosted my confidence and allowed me to start teaching IT again. The NUT seems to be the only union that has stood against government schemes and dodges and I have been glad to have them campaigning on my behalf.

I am now starting out as a child psychotherapist, so I’ll still be working with kids. But the day job has given up on me.

Name and address supplied


Classroom divas

Educational psychologist Rob Long, writing on classroom management in your last edition, should get real. Young teachers must feel it is normal to have to treat a class as some 30 potential divas whose delicate sensibilities make it impossible for them to follow requests


Continued on page 47


Can you help?

I’m an NUT member and co-ordinator of the End Child Detention Now campaign. Around 2,000 asylum-seeking children are detained in the UK every year. Recent publicity has highlighted the shocking impact of detention on children’s physical and mental health.

In his report on Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, Sir Al Aynsely Green, the outgoing Children’s Commissioner, found that children in these facilities are denied a decent education. They are often not allowed to collect their books from home when arrested, they cannot form good relationships with their teachers and classmates and, because there is one class for students aged 11 to 16, it is impossible for older children to continue GCSE studies properly.

I draw your attention to our petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoChildDetention and website at www.ecdn.org where you can find details on how to lobby your MP to sign Chris Mullin's Early Day Motion calling for an end to child detention.

Mary McCormack
End Child Detention Now Co-ordinator, Leeds

My PhD is exploring perspectives from citizenship teachers about citizenship education. I am looking for educators who teach any citizenship modules in K3/4. They should be citizenship co-ordinators or teaching any citizenship modules in subjects such as religious education, PSHE, history or citizenship.

I want to conduct interviews lasting approximately an hour and a half. Please contact me at malik.ajani@yahoo.com or on 07785 972563.

Malik Ajani
Royal Holloway, University of London

When a close relative passed away earlier this year, I was inspired to train to run the 2010 London Marathon to raise funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Could The Teacher help me raise the profile of this challenge? Details can be found at www.justgiving.com/JDRF-DM.

Dan McNaughton
by email