East London school strike: ‘We strike to make our school better’

Strikers at Newbury Park School in Redbridge, on strike over conditions in the school, spoke to Martin Reynolds

“I think the biggest issue that is concerning staff and parents is ‘split classes’ where, instead of finding cover for a class when a teacher is sick, they put the children into other classes. Those classes end up with 40 or so children, some without a chair, without pencils, sitting on the floor all day. No other school in our borough is using split classes.

We’ve been trying to communicate with management to resolve the dispute, yet parents have been told it’s all resolved, and it’s not! There was one meeting, I believe, between the union and management, and in that meeting they denied that split classes even happen! When in the autumn term it happened 39 times.

Newbury Park School
Newbury Park School Strike picket
Photo: Waltham Forest Socialist Party

The teachers at this school do not want to leave. We love our community, we love our children. But at the moment most of us are looking for other jobs. The reason we strike is for the children, because we want to change the school. We want it to be better so that we can stay and carry on with the jobs that we love.”

“The director of education put out a letter to parents which stated that we’ve been whipped up into this by external agitators. But we approached the union with a document, maybe 12 pages long, of concerns from staff who’d come to the rep in a state of distress.

The government supplies money to the school to cover teachers when they’re ill. But the school budget is low and the pay rise was not funded. So the head is trying to save money.

Staff are enthusiastic and they still have goodwill. I’ve never been so lucky to work with staff like this. There are teachers who are managing to complete the tasks that management give them, but only at the expense of their entire personal lives. There are teachers who are working upwards of 60 hours a week, when we’re contracted and paid for 32 and a half.

In the summer term last year, the children in Year 5 were split for two weeks consecutively. There’s no excuse for that. You don’t know all the children’s needs, you have no plan for them. We had no lunchtime resources whatsoever last week.

Another issue is the leadership make the children and staff all stand in lines in the playground every morning, in all weathers, chanting a mantra instead of being able to run. And I worry about safeguarding, because we’ve got some vulnerable children. We’re losing that little bit of slightly more casual time that allowed important disclosures and one-to-one interventions to take place.

We’re lucky to have a really diverse demographic. We have children from families who are struggling financially. There’s a hotel down the road that’s used to house refugees, and last year kids from the hotel had such a good time in my class that when they were moved from the hotel they travelled upwards of an hour to keep coming to school to finish the year, which was lovely. The kids are excellent, we’re really lucky to have them and it’s great that the parents are just so supportive. The leadership team have no idea how lucky they are to have such an enthusiastic staff and student body.”