Well, there’s an offer on the table! National Health Service staff are set to receive a pay rise of at least 6.5 per cent, if all the unions agree the deal. The lowest paid, it’s suggested, might get as much as 29 per cent: and all because ministers have finally listened to some powerful messages - not just from those working in the NHS, but from a sense of public outrage that the country is underpaying and undervaluing those vital people.
The £4.2 billion the government has found may sound like riches: but while the austerity pay squeeze has continued, public sector workers have seen their take-home pay devalued by a lot more than 6.5 per cent. I’m no mathematician: but 29 per cent looks right for those left behind at the bottom of the salary heap.
I really hope it ends up a better deal for those working in the NHS. After all, any of us who have witnessed a friend’s or family member’s life being saved or materially improved by the medical services are fairly unanimous in our praise of those who work in them. Indeed, such endorsements tend to outweigh the also frequent moans about time spent in A&E, elderly relatives parked on trollies in corridors and the like. When the chips are down, when it’s really serious, the NHS delivers.
Two cheers for this decision then. But not three. What about workers in the rest of the public sector? Specifically, since this is Tes, what about teachers?
Education ‘isn’t a matter of life or death’
Trouble is, education doesn’t have the same pull. To be sure, strikes by teachers or teaching assistants - rare enough, since they’re a conscientious bunch - make life awkward for families. Parents of 14- or 16-year-olds are angered when their school cuts the choice of subjects because they can’t afford to run them: but other options remain. It’s an irritation, not a matter of life or death. The constant squeezing of school resources has a steadily depressing effect: but it never quite reaches crisis point (though many headteachers currently warn that soon we won’t have enough teachers to put in front of children.)
By contrast, the absence of doctors in A&E, lack of beds in hospitals, cancellations of urgent operations: these focus the mind. Most of the nation will fight tooth and nail to maintain the NHS. I’m not sure they’d go to the wall for education.
I don’t object to health workers being first in the queue, but I’m worried that there even is a queue. I suspect any Cabinet discussion of this new NHS cash has more to do with a government running scared of public opinion than any wider consideration or prioritisation of public services.
Our weakness, when arguing in favour of better teacher pay, better resourcing for schools, a protected place for the arts and all the other victims of the financial squeeze, is that now we see only early symptoms of what will become terrible damage further down the line. We who are working in schools know that it will be irreparable in the end: but for now there are only preliminary signs of decay, of a gradual withering - the earliest indications of what we must describe as the slowest of slow, yet inevitable, deaths.
The inspirational Malala Yousafzai said recently: “[Leaders] talk about eradicating extremism and ending poverty and then they ignore education.”
She’s right. In years to come, this country will rue the day it allowed something as central and vital to society’s functioning as the education of its young to decline. But by then it will be a different government, which will blame the last administration… and so the predictable, negative political cycle will continue.
Wow, that’s gloomy. Must be nearly the end of term. Cheer up! Nearly there…
Dr Bernard Trafford is a writer, educationalist and musician. He is a former headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and past chair of HMC. He is currently interim headteacher of the Purcell School in Hertfordshire. He tweets @bernardtrafford
To read more of his columns, view his back catalogue.
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