Support staff at Cathedral Schools Trust, which runs 12 schools across Bristol and North Somerset, are on strike at the moment. This action is causing serious chaos across the schools. The two-day walkout that kicked off Wednesday. It’s a result of a long-standing battle over withheld yearly cost-of-living adjustments that have left workers feeling disrespected and taken for granted.
Teaching staff, including teaching assistants, are striking against an increase in salary long delayed, five months to be exact, of which staff has been denied payment. In the meantime, it’s millions of employees who are feeling the pinch. For some, that has meant losing several thousand pounds in the last five years alone. The pay dispute was not resolved until April, which continues to leave a sense of grievance among the workforce.
Sheila Caffrey of the National Education Union expressed the sentiments of the striking workers. They expect their employers to make them feel “valued”. She pointed to the emotional impact this crisis is having on teachers who pour their hearts into helping students.
Steve Brice, a teaching assistant at St Werburgh’s Primary School in Bristol, highlighted his personal loss due to the delayed pay rises. In his own case, he stated that due to the historic dispute, he had lost out on an average of £500 a year.
“We didn’t want to be striking at all, but the response we were getting from the CEO and the trust was just making this seem inevitable,” – Steve Brice
Throughout the dispute, the National Education Union has been on the frontlines, standing up for the teachers who have been on strike. Caffrey said that the sense among staff that they are underappreciated is systemic and runs deep.
A spokesperson from Cathedral Schools Trust said they were disappointed the strike had come to this. They didn’t think it needed to be there, since the pay issue had already been handled. The spokesperson stated, “We are therefore disappointed that strike action, which was balloted before these agreements were finalised, has still been called.” And they all stressed the commitment to lift each other up as warriors. Simultaneously, they committed that school budgets would remain whole to continue providing an excellent education to students.
“Our members are extremely upset. They feel that they give everything every day to those children and young people that they support and to feel that they don’t get that back from their employer is really hard-hitting and like a slap in the face,” – Sheila Caffrey from the National Education Union
The ugly reality of pandemic support reallocation This deplorable claim underscores a larger and chronic issue around equitable pay and acknowledgment of education support professionals.
