REGULAR readers of my New Blackmore Vale column will know of the importance I place on education. The skills and learning our young people gain from the school experience provides them with the foundation stones of life. Education is the key to open all doors.
With three school aged children I see week after week the huge input teachers make in the development of my daughters. Parents across North Dorset will see the same.
During Covid-19 our schools stayed open – a fact often lost in the media but one I was always at pains to be thankful for. They stayed open to educate the children of key workers as well as vulnerable children. They also provided online engagement for children at home. They have vested huge time since Covid-19 to help children catch up.
Why did they do this? I believe they did so because they, more than anyone else, understood and understand the importance of education. I hear and see this in every school I visit.
So, for the reasons above I deplore the fact that teachers have voted for strike action. I hope it can be averted.
When I was at school – a State school in South Wales should you be interested on the edge of a very large council house estate – we had strike action. I remember how it affected adversely those who could least afford the hit. Indeed, so irritated was I by the strike, that I ended up, as an A-level student, teaching some history classes to the younger pupils. I believed, and believe, that no child of school age should miss out.
There are, of course, additional harms to these threatened strikes. Kids, desperately catching up post-Lockdowns will be disproportionately hit. Working parents, during a time of acute financial and cost of living concerns, will be forced to take time off work to care for their children. In so doing many will forego income as not every job can be undertaken from home and the computer.
So, the strike will hit children hard in education and wider learning terms as well as impacting negatively on parents’ wage packets. Both impacts taking place at precisely the worst time.
There will also be knock-on effects for the delivery of public services – doctors’ receptionists, care workers, health visitors, public transport workers etc having to take time off, and in so doing, causing disruption to a huge number of people’s lives. Businesses tell me one of their big headaches is recruitment, so staff taking time off to look after their children, will also impact the economy of North Dorset.
You may be interested to know that most of the above, while also being my sentiments, are the thoughts of a number of teachers who have told me how they feel about the strikes. I share their sense of unease of the disproportionate impact this threatened strike action will have upon those who can least sustain or accommodate it. I would urge the teachers’ unions to think again. Our children – and their families – really do deserve better.
