Why looking at school car parks leaves me questioning teacher strikes: Sarah Todd

It’s always interesting to see some of the sectors of society who claim to be being crippled by the current cost of living crisis driving around in fancy modern motors.

In fact, a guilty pleasure is any trip with a route past the staff car park of a school or university. It’s almost an impossibility to spy any vehicle over five years old. These poor, hard-up educators all seem able to buy the latest models. Yes, the majority will be purchased with finance, but there usually has to be a substantial deposit and income to be able to sign on the dotted line of a repayment deal.

News that teachers will be striking again has fallen flat in our house. The Son is of the generation that got shipped off to do online learning rather than sit GCSE exams because of the pandemic. He got into university, the supposed premier league of further education, and can often count the number of lectures a week on one hand. There were exams after Christmas, but there are still no results. In the private sector such a poor timescale for giving feedback to clients just wouldn’t be acceptable.

As an aside, Cambridge University students have voted to push for a completely vegan menu. Our child isn’t at this elite institution, but if he was his mother would be expecting him to go on strike and cable-tie himself to the railings at having his food choices dictated.

Frustration with the jobsworth attitudes of teachers goes back a long way. When our offspring were younger, parents’ evenings used to drive this correspondent insane. At secondary school, five minute slots were given out to make sure those at the front of the class, inspiring the next generation, could get home at a decent hour. Woe betide anyone who dared suggest an appointment after 6pm or that putting in a longer stint on the odd occasion is the norm in the outside working world.

It makes this correspondent smile when strikers say they are considering leaving the chalkface to work elsewhere. Oh to be a fly-on-the-wall when the real world reveals itself. This is the real world that the parents of many schoolchildren occupy; struggling to keep old cars on the road.

There was a newly-qualified doctor on the television the other night; justifying the decision to go on strike. It wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. Is it not us taxpayers who will have financed his education and student loan? Is it not common courtesy to just get on with a first job for a few years before complaining; let alone striking?

At the beginning of any young person’s career it always used to be seen as the norm to put long shifts in; to get on with it. Work hard now chum and you might end up with a cushy job as a GP. By that time, the hours when poorly people can be squeezed in (with at least a fortnight’s notice) will doubtless have been reduced yet further.

It feels like an industrial action bandwagon is being jumped on at the moment. It does nobody any favours; detracting from the message of those who genuinely need to shine a light on their pay and working conditions. Sorry, like a roundabout, cars keep coming around. Carers who use their own vehicles to drive to home visits on the elderly or those with special needs have this writer’s every sympathy. Their costs will have gone up but yet this quiet army keep turning out.

Talking of food, this week’s whinging over the absence of tomatoes from our supermarket shelves inspired this shopper to go to the local outdoor market.

The fruit and veg stallholder, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late supermarket supremo Sir Ken Morrison, had everything on the shopping list, including the unexpected bonus of sweet tomatoes still on the vine.

He kept them under his trestle table while a run, well brisk walk, was made to the cash machine. There was something very satisfying about handing over a tenner and getting some change back for a bag bursting at the seams with fresh produce.

Needless to say, the stallholder - unlike the supermarket executives who are screwing down farmers and other producers by not paying fair prices - had a battered van.