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Daily View: How widely will the teachers' strike be felt?

Clare Spencer | 10:04 UK time, Monday, 27 June 2011

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Primary school teacher with children

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Commentators look at the possible effects of Thursday's planned teaching strike over pensions.

Newly qualified teacher that she is going on strike because she thinks the pension reforms will put people off going into teaching:

"Teaching is an amazing job. You put a lot into it and you work incredibly long hours. In the past two years, during my training and this year, I've worked harder than I've ever worked before. There is a lot of emotional stress. I think teachers feel undervalued already compared to other professions. But because we had an OK pension that sort of compensated for all that, you could think that your future was going to be secure. Take that away, coupled with the increasing workload and the pay, then I don't think people will want to go into the profession."

that if Education Secretary Michael Gove continues to annoy teachers the consequences will be seen in British students' ranking lower internationally:

"If ministers don't keep good people teaching, all the fiddling with school constitutions and exam systems in the world will make no difference. And we will continue to languish in international tables. And the economic consequences will be dire - for everyone's pensions, for everyone's future.
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"So I'd like to see good new housing specifically for teachers and promises of a pension review upwards as soon as the economy improves. If there's money in the private sector for investment in academies, why can't private firms be encouraged to subsidise their best employees to go and teach for five or 10 years? Just now, with this week's strike looming, ministers are on a collision course with teachers. That is disastrous. They - not ministers, not journalists, not bankers, not lawyers - are the key to a better future."

Meanwhile, that the UK has already got to the pointÌýthe GuardianÌýwarns about and the willingness to strike coincides with teaching not being a vocation any longer:

"The awful fact is that the guts were ripped out of teaching long ago. From the Seventies onwards, state education stopped being about the transmission of knowledge. Ludicrous ideological fads inimical to education took over instead.
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"Educationalists decided children should learn not from teachers but from their own experience. Any kind of structured teaching was regarded as an assault upon a child's autonomy and a threat to his or her self-esteem.Teachers accordingly took a back seat as mere 'facilitators' of a child's voyage of discovery."

what the long-term effects of the teachers' strike will be on students like her stepson:

"The prospect of freedom from lessons means Johnny is now an ardent union supporter: like the Jesuits, Dave Prentis and Co must be calculating that if they get them young, they are theirs for life. But having spent my formative years in an era when humble citizens quailed under the unions' whip hand, I suspect that the lesson drawn may be different."

theÌýrecent NHS and sentencing reform U-turns will influence how the government will react to the public sector demands about pensions:

"After the U-turns of recent weeks, a whiff of weakness has attached itself to Cameron's government. The demise of Edward Heath is proof that the history of union success is a story of the exploitation of political weakness. Cameron is determined not to look weak."

Labour MP the challenge for the union is winning over public opinion:

"The real problem remains however as to how exactly the arguments can be got across to the public when the media, and particularly the tabloids, are determined not to give a fair hearing to potential strikers, will certainly not provide a full or detailed explanation of the isssues, but rather will seize the opportunity to demonise the unions (and indirectly the Labour Party too) as wreckers or worse."

But the winning over public opinion is not the point of a strike:

"When it comes to strikes, public support matters - but not in the way that Tory tabloids present it...ÌýÌýThe point of a strike, as opposed to an advertising campaign to sway opinion, is that it hits the system where it hurts.
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"It shows who produces the wealth, provides the services and does the work that keeps the system going."

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