School workers battle a divisive management

School workers strike outside Wanstead High School

A battle is unfolding at Wanstead High School in east London. School workers are on strike over wellbeing, excessive work hours and monitoring and unpaid breaks for teaching assistants (TAs).

NEU union members mounted 35-strong picket line on Tuesday, the first of three days of walkouts.

One striker told Socialist Worker that “teachers and support staff have had enough”. “We have had a year of negotiations that haven’t got anywhere. We want a resolution and an improvement to working conditions,” they said.

“We aren’t asking for the earth. We are asking for basic contracts to be honoured and respected.”

A teacher spoke about excessive workload, saying, “We are over 90 hours over our intended directed time budget”.

“We have flagged that up and it hasn’t changed,” they said. Another teacher argued that it “isn’t just about the extra workload, but also about having an environment conducive to good education”.

There is a “frustration that workers aren’t being listened to”, one striker said. Another pointed out that “management hasn’t honoured what they previously said they would do for reducing TA workload”.

Currently, there is a twenty month delay to a TA workload review. And there’s an obsessive monitoring of workers at the school, with management currently “going well beyond” the “standard practice of monitoring”.

An NEU member at the picket thought that the headteacher is “playing a PR game to influence parents to stand against the strike”. “Fear is being played upon. They send out huge newsletters each week and that has forged a relationship,” they said.

A school worker argued that the headteacher has mobilised “divisive rhetoric”. She added that workers “have the same interests” as parents, but management’s “communication with parents has been deliberately inflammatory”.

This led to a group of parents holding a counter-protest against the strike on Tuesday. Strikers engaged with the parents to talk about how management has forced them to strike.

Workers also report a bullying management style, where bosses have shouted at workers and spoken down to them in front of students.

One teaching assistant reported that management has also “introduced duties that meant we aren’t getting proper breaks”. “It is our minimum right to have our break and not work. The real concern for us is that we aren’t being heard. We raised this months ago and now here we are.”

She added, “We should also be getting paid for the ten minute break in the morning.”

Another striker argued that the headteacher is “the one person responsible for this strike”. “You can’t run a school pretending it is okay because you send nice fancy letters to parents.

“We deserve to be valued and respected as a staff body, and this is about listening to the staff body.”