At 11am today 1st February 2023 striking school teachers from the National Education Union (NEU) along with parents, children and supporters met outside Wokingham Town Hall in a high spirited demonstration. My Wokingham interviewed Mark Bennett a NEU Representative from Holt School and Elizabeth Harris a year 7 head teacher also from Holt School Wokingham Berkshire
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxjGoGI-5YI[/embedyt]
I spoke to Mark Bennett and asked why he was demonstrating
“It’s because we have seen our pay and conditions erode over the last 10 to 15 years and we want to draw the public’s attention to that and we want an improvement in our salaries and we want properly funded schools.
When asked how this has impacted upon the schools in Wokingham Mark explained
“Well, steadily we’ve seen sort of classroom assistance disappear. People who help us in the classroom, we’ve seen when we try to recruit, we’re recruiting from a smaller number of people
When asked how he felt support had been from both the public and parents he saidI
“I feel we get a lot of support certainly when we’ve been picketing outside our school a lot of support, a lot of honks from the passing cars and so on. So yes I feel we are well supported and this is not easy if parents are having to take time off work to look after their children because we’re on strike, we understand that, it’s not easy but we feel that despite that they are supporting us”
We then spoke to Elizabeth Harris who is head of Year 7 at Holt School in Wokingham she said
I just think it’s really really important that people understand that the pay rise that has been talked about in many interviews actually are unfunded pay rise. So as the government asking schools to find the money from their budgets stretched already in order to give teachers the pay rise and unfortunately that’s just the government passing the buck onto schools and making school leaders the bad guys. In the vast majority of cases that’s absolutely not the case at all. What we want is a funded pay rise and we want properly funded schools and it’s really really important that all of our children in whatever school they’re in get the opportunities that proper funding brings to them.
The demonstration had a positive atmosphere with drivers hooting support and children and parents with placards with NEU representatives calling upon the government to “Pay Up”
The demonstrators intended to join other teachers demonstrating at other locations including one at Reading
