A striking Bristol teacher has told Bristol Live that despite the perception of teaching as a secure profession, they are struggling financially partly because rent in the city is “astronomical”. The staff member at St Brendan’s Sixth Form College, where staff went on strike last week in a dispute with the government over pay, said that despite being mid-career and having a partner who works full-time, they are unable to get a mortgage.
The staff member is keen to dispel the myth that teachers are all financially comfortable with disposable income. They said: “A lot of people have this false perception that teachers are all financially stable. I’m in a very unstable position, and it's important that the government know that not all teachers are in really stable homes with low mortgage payments and loads of extra money.
“That’s not the reality, it can be really difficult to make ends meet, and the current situation [with high inflation] is making that so much harder, especially in Bristol.
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“It’s mad that a mortgage for me as a full-time teacher with a partner who works full time is completely unaffordable, even more so than the huge rent we’re paying, and I can’t give myself fully to my job when that’s going on.
“There’s no difference whether you’re a teacher in the south or elsewhere, you get the same pay, yet the cost of living is so much higher. There is a London weighting, but Bristol is a more significantly expensive area to live in than other areas in the UK, and it’s more difficult to find a more affordable solution just to find a way to live in Bristol. Rents are unaffordable, and it becomes difficult to get out of that situation. To be honest, it’s difficult just to be in it at the moment; over the past year, it's become really tough.
"The rise in bills has been the final nail in the coffin. There’s just not much left at the end of the month once you've paid your rent and your bills, which is ridiculous because all I do is work. It’s always been hard [financially] to go and do nice things or have nice holidays. I saw my main way out of this situation as buying a place, but now that’s impossible too.
"The other day, my energy supplier took over three times what they normally take for gas and electric with no warning, and then you're left with hundreds of pounds less every month for a home that I’m never even in because I work so much. And it does make you think maybe I should be doing else that’s a bit more secure, but I really enjoy my job, and it should be a career where I’m able to fund a relatively modest lifestyle."
Last week some staff at St Brendan's in Brislington who are members of the National Education Union joined teachers at nearly 90 other colleges across the country in walking out over demands for an above-inflation pay increase funded by the government rather than school budgets.
The government's current offer, which was rejected, is five per cent and would be financed by schools, increasing to eight per cent for certain staff members, including early career teachers, but the NEU insists that even that figure is far too low after a decade of below inflation pay increases have left teachers 20% worse off than they were in 2011.
Asked if they think that their school’s budget could cope with any kind of pay increase, let alone one that matches the current rate of inflation, the teacher from St Brendan’s replied, “It absolutely couldn’t. We’re so stretched as it is.
“We were told a couple of years ago about the state of the college budgets, and we’re really lucky to have a great finance manager who managed to make things a bit more stable. But it’s really tough, and I know that they wouldn’t be able to manage it; they’ve been open in saying that pay rise can’t come from the college. Also, I wouldn’t want it to come from the college if that meant that the student experience was negatively affected. It needs to come from the government.
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"The college is not to blame for this; I love where I work, I love my job, I love the people I work with, and I’m really lucky to work where I do, and I think the work they do for young people in the area and what they offer is amazing."
The teacher told Bristol Live that they consciously choose to pursue a career teaching in further education, as it gives them the chance to have a positive influence on young adults. They said, ”I quite like working with that age group because you’ve really got a load of people that come in as children, and then they mature over those two years and come out as adults. It’s a really important time, and you feel like you're really shaping; you see proper personalities come out.”
"If students decide to specialise in your subject, then that’s a really lovely thing, and you’ve really got a chance to make quite a big impact.
"To be honest, which is funny, looking back, I also saw it as a really secure career. I enjoy it, but at the same time, it seemed a stable option. It is still stable, you still have a monthly income and paid holidays, but it’s become far more difficult than it used to be, especially if you have other responsibilities.
"It's been creeping up over time, but the last few years, since just before Covid really, it’s been really hard. Every department is quite stretched, and I think that’s something you see across state education; everybody is doing the job of 2-3 people and has a huge workload.
The staff member explained that for many teachers, the inherent stress in the job is being amplified by squeezed school budgets that mean they have to take on additional tasks. Meanwhile, personal financial pressures are requiring many teachers to take on extra work during their free time and holidays, leading to record levels of teachers leaving the profession.
The teacher said, "It frustrates me when people say teachers get a lot of time off. So many people work during that time to make their lives easier when they do go back, it’s only really the summer holidays that are a little bit longer, and I and so many other teachers I know take on work like tutoring or examining during that time.
"Burnout is so easy; when you do get a two-week holiday, it takes a week to recover and then a week more to plan for the next half-term of teaching"
According to Education Support, a helpline for teachers, over half of all teaching staff in the UK have actively sought to change or leave their current jobs in the past year, citing workload as the main factor.
Discussing the challenges of teaching, the staff member from St Brendan's said, "There’s a lot of accountability, more so than in other careers; what you're teaching, why you’re teaching it, and why at that particular time, it's all part of the job. There’s a lot of data.
"There are lots of other careers where people don’t get checked up on as much as teachers, so it's a high-stress environment which leads to all the burnout and stress and the reason why everyone does so much extra work when they go home.
"Ever since I started, there have been people at all experience levels that have left the profession. It’s not just young teachers; teachers who have been teaching a long time have seen a lot of change in the profession, and if you have other things going on in your life, like childcare, that just causes massive pressure because there’s this expectation [of the profession] that you’re doing so much work outside of your normal hours.
"Often people say to me, ‘do you get overtime when you leave two hours late every day and go in an hour early’? Well, no, of course not, that’s just part of it, and the pay doesn’t reflect that. But the college just isn’t able to give us any more."
According to the teacher from St Brendan's, the individual strain on staff members is having a detrimental effect on students. They said, "It can be quite hard to recruit, and I've seen across schools roles that have to keep being readvertised, especially after Covid.
"It’s become less appealing, especially if there is a different job where you can work from home 100% of the time and be paid more and not have to work longer hours. Because of stress and burnout, it's also increasingly hard to find cover.
"Then students have stability, and that’s so important if they’re only with you for one and a half years for an A-level or Level 3 qualification, and they've got two or three teachers and then some supply or agency teaching in that time, it’s really not very stable."
The teacher told Bristol Live that while they voted in favour of strike action, the prospect of losing out on some of their salary (between £50 and £70) as a result of walking out played on their mind. “It’s not a great month to be losing a day's pay," they said, "But that is much less than we’re effectively losing over the course of the year, and if this pay rise is approved at the government level, that will make a really huge difference.
The teacher from St Brendan's said, "If next time it’s on a wider scale, that will be really positive. I think a strike across schools at all levels would be the best way to make a huge impact; although that would affect other things if everybody walked out at the same time, I think it’s necessary to make people listen."
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