Why Sixth Form Staff Are Saying Enough Is Enough
Thousands of teachers at 77 sixth forms are out on strike today. After a 20% real-terms pay cut since 2010 and chronic underfunding, they're not only fighting for themselves – they're fighting for the future of our colleges.
NEU members outside Woodhouse Sixth Form College in Barnet on 30 November 2022. (@NEUnion / Twitter)
Sixth form colleges in England are a relatively recent phenomenon. The first was established in Luton, Bedfordshire, in 1966, and since then they have expanded across the country. Like other educational institutions, though, recent years have forced them to grapple with a range of challenges, with chronic underfunding and successive real terms pay cuts driving many educators to the brink. It’s in this context that thousands of teachers at 77 colleges are today out on strike.
Sean, a politics and criminology teacher at Luton Sixth Form College, says his profession has been criminally neglected over the years. ‘Since 2010, the government has treated it not as a profession worthy of admiration and autonomy, but with suspicion and derision. There’s been an intentional eroding.’
For Sean, sixth form colleges are becoming exam factories, with A-levels getting harder and less traditionally academic qualifications being undervalued. That mechanical turn runs counter to the reason he got into the job in the first place: to help and support young people. ‘The impact I have on working class young people is the reason I get up in the morning,’ he adds.
And it’s been worsened by the reduction of financial support available for those from low-income backgrounds. Until about five years ago, Duncan explains, students in post-16 colleges were able to access the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a means-tested fund. ‘The scrapping of EMA has had a real impact on a lot of our students who rely on that money.’
Duncan Blackie, a National Education Union rep who has taught Computer Science and IT for over thirty years at Longley Park Sixth Form College in Sheffield, also says further education has changed immensely in the decades that he’s been in teaching, primarily through years of successive budget cuts. ‘The course offer has diminished over the years. There used to be many options for young people such as languages and performing arts, which just aren’t available anymore,’ he explains.
While student choice has diminished, official teaching hours and workload have gone up over the years. Driven by Ofsted demands, Duncan describes the current expectation in terms of paperwork as ‘inexorable’. Class sizes have ballooned, too, and the quality of education, as a consequence, has decreased.
‘Every teacher knows that the more students you have in a lesson, the less productive the lesson is,’ explains Sean. ‘You’re lucky if even a handful of students are going at the pace you are as the teacher—some will be behind, and stuck on points you’ve covered and need support; others will understand immediately and be ready to move on.’ Private school sixth form classes, he notes, have an average of ten students. ‘You’d be hard-pressed in the sixth form I work at to find a single teacher who doesn’t have double that number in every class.’
Abysmal Pay
Sixth form college teachers and members of the NEU voted in favour of strike action after rejecting a pay offer from the Sixth Form Colleges Association which would have seen most teachers receive five percent—a massive pay cut in real-terms given soaring inflation. 88.6 percent backed striking, on a turnout of 63 percent—a roaring mandate for industrial action, and an indication of the strength of feeling on the issue. ‘We’re not asking for anything extra,’ says Duncan. ‘We’re simply asking for pay to be restored to what it was before.’
Sean reacted with disgust at the pay offer. Many in his line of work are already struggling with abysmal pay amid skyrocketing inflation and soaring energy bills. Sean walks to work every day rather than take the bus—public transport is a luxury he simply cannot afford. He’s made a conscious decision to cut down on costs, buying only the basics on his food shop and the cheapest versions of those items too.
‘Since I moved into my rented flat in August 2021, I’ve yet to put the heating on for the purpose of keeping warm. The only reason I’ve ever had it on was when I’ve woken up and the temperature is below zero, where it goes on for ten minutes to make sure the pipes don’t burst. This year, with the energy crisis, I’m even debating that rule,’ he tells Tribune.
And despite all these measures, there’s yet to be a month this academic year where Sean hasn’t run out of money early or been forced to borrow some from his friends and family. ‘I’m acutely aware people of my generation are incredibly unlikely to get on the housing ladder and will likely be renting for the rest of my life—so to negatively impact my credit rating by needing to buy essentials is a cause of great mental health strain.’
Sean’s situation is not unique. According to the NEU, college teachers have seen a 20 percent cut in real terms pay since 2010, leaving a teacher on Sean’s salary £10,000 worse off than they would have been if pay had risen with inflation. This relentless process, combined with growing workloads and results pressures, mean stress and burnout are taking the toll on staff, with recruitment and retention becoming more difficult. It’s hard to hire teachers in areas like sciences and modern languages, adds Duncan, because they get paid far better in other industries.
Chronic Underfunding
Describing his disappointment with the pay offer made to members, Duncan notes that for sixth form college teachers to be awarded inflation-matching pay awards, the funding for sixth form colleges also needs to go up. ‘The pay offer itself was unfunded,’ explains Sean. ‘Any college who went ahead with it would have to do so out of existing budgets at a time when they are already hit by the crisis of energy prices and higher bills.’ Duncan lays responsibility for the current predicament squarely at the feet of the government, which has allowed colleges to be woefully underfunded for years.
As Sean points out, this underfunding has had a catastrophic impact on the role sixth forms should be able to play beyond the exam factory—helping students ‘by developing them as people, not only as “assets” for the employment market.’ Budget cuts mean extracurricular programmes that support students in this way have had to be massively scaled back; today, the profession largely relies on the goodwill of teachers to provide, voluntarily and in their spare time, any activities which might help a working-class learner level the field with their more privileged, privately educated counterparts. The sixth form education he received in the early days of the Coalition, Sean notes, before Gove’s A-Level reforms, has become increasingly out of reach for working-class children, with damaging consequences for social mobility. Simply put, he says, ‘colleges are having to do more with less.’
That means this strike is a battle not just for teachers to be treated with the dignity they deserve, but for students in further education to have the very best experience possible, with all the benefits that brings for society in the long term. This is also true of the other workers fighting for their pay, conditions, and workplaces, as Duncan points out: as part of a movement comprising schoolteachers, nurses, paramedics, civil servants and more, workers are struggling not only for themselves but to defend the public sector as a whole.
‘The message that the RCN is pushing is absolutely correct, that nurses can’t continue the way things are because it will destroy the health service,’ Duncan explains. ‘Our message is the same. The present situation is destroying educational opportunities, and if it goes on, will come to threaten the very existence of some colleges. Teachers can’t go on like this.’