Teach Your Children

Well done, Theresa May. At last. Utterly hopeless as PM, woefully out of her depth, she has redeemed herself, at least in part, by offering above inflation pay rises to millions of public servants, including teachers. Fair play, that woman, eh? Well no. As ever with this wretched woman, nothing is as it seems.

A few days after May makes her final speech as PM, denouncing her fellow politicians for being absolutists and never compromising on anything, the woman who was an absolutist and never compromised on anything seriously misleads the country. Teachers, especially, need a decent pay rise but May has done the dirty again.

Take my local local authority, the worst funded in the country. Schools are struggling as it is, as you might have noticed during the recent TV series about Marlwood and Castle Schools in and near Thornbury. This welcome pay rise is not being funded by the Treasury. It has been announced out of a clear blue sky at the very end of the summer term with budgets for the following year already settled. Where is the money going to come from?

I think you can work that bit out for yourself. It’s going to come from the already inadequate budgets that are already in place, budgets that have already been pared to the bone. That will affect children in school because there will have to be further cuts to teachers and equipment.

This just has to be cynical politicking on May’s part, perhaps in an attempt to be remembered as someone who believed in the ethic of public service and who properly rewarded those who carried it out, or merely a cynical ploy to hamstring her successor, Boris Johnson, who has already promised to boost spending in schools. (It is important to understand that Johnson’s is only a political promise so he doesn’t really mean it.)

Either way, it’s a clear illustration of why people hate politicians. You get the simple announcement but you aren’t told the tricky bit that there’s no more money.

The end of austerity was what May’s government promised. Lies, lies and more lies. There will be no end to austerity for those who have suffered from it since 2010. In her final days, Theresa May is trying to create an image of someone she isn’t.

There is no new money for teachers. There is no new money for schools. The reality is that the Tory cuts continue. Corbyn’s Labour, as ever, is miles off the pace and his education spokeswoman Angela Rayner hasn’t even commented on this latest Tory scam. That’s the state we are in. Our children are pawns in a cynical political game. What’s worse is that hardly anyone has noticed and I fear no-one seems to care.