On 7 May, teachers and support staff in the National Education Union (NEU) at Highgate Wood School in Haringey, north London, began a series of strikes against a package of cuts planned by the school leadership. We publish a letter to the headteacher in support of the strike, signed by 20 students.
Dear Mr Cozier,
We, as current students and alumni of Highgate Wood School (HWS), are deeply concerned by the proposals laid out in your draft plans for the school budget. It is upsetting that teachers must resort to strike action, with limited opportunity for negotiation being presented to them.
We stand with our teachers, support staff, and the NEU and call for:
- No further increases to class sizes
- No reduction in curriculum offer, including protecting the arts
- No compulsory redundancies, including for teaching and support staff
- No increases to workload or contact time
We are proud that HWS has nurtured talent in the arts, with our alumni making active contributions to creative industries. We believe that arts and humanities subjects are the keystone of a rich and fulfilling education experience. In a world where students are worried about their future prospects, narrowing our educational opportunities would be incredibly damaging. Students should be able to leave school with a breadth of knowledge and skills which can only be possible by protecting arts funding.
A student’s academic performance is contingent on their teachers’ ability to plan their lessons and feedback with as much care as possible. Because of this, we believe in preserving teachers’ PPA (planning, preparation and assessment) time. There is no doubt that our teachers care about our progress, but stretching them this thin won’t help us at all.
Secondary school is already an emotionally and academically challenging time, and so by creating larger teaching groups, it is virtually impossible for teachers to guide students, give detailed feedback and use more time to explain difficult concepts. We appreciate that our teachers are guided by these procedures, but with unsustainably large classes, teachers won’t be able to give the attentive care to every student that they otherwise would in a more manageable teaching group.
Despite the increase in class sizes after last year’s negotiations, subject teachers stepped up and took on a 17% increase in workload for no extra pay. The teaching support staff have been the silent heroes offering a helping hand and supporting those who need it most. Without them, this arrangement wouldn’t have been possible in the first place. Therefore, it is only right that we take a stand against forced redundancies of support staff.
Our teachers are the beating heart of the HWS community, and we expect that at the very least they are afforded the appropriate levels of non-contact time, as limited as it is in the first place.
We urge the school to engage with our teachers’ concerns. Students have noticed that the issues highlighted by the HWS NEU last year have re-emerged in this year’s disputes, but in a much uglier form. We can no longer accept this as the norm, and call for you to lay out a strategy of how you intend to cooperate with the union and the measures you are taking to minimise any harm to teachers’ wellbeing and student outcomes.
We would be grateful for your urgent acknowledgement and response to this letter.
See ‘Haringey school strike against cuts’ for more