A Roomful of Elephants

We will have the Finnish model. We will have the French model. We will have no more teachers who don't have 2:1 degrees. We will have a whiskey drink, a lager drink and no coherent, research based education system but a motley assemblage of rags and patches. As we always have had.


First the Finnish system: in an 80% Lutheran society with National Service and no pronounced areas of wealth or poverty, where education is highly respected, it is hard to imagine an educational system is under the same stresses as ours is. So much for that.

Now onto the question of sick leave for teachers, which has occupied my mind a great deal since I started my career as Supply. Now, I do not advocate a system where the sick are not cared for. I am a tad too wet for that. But it does seem to me that for employers to bear the costs of sick pay makes sense only when the sickness is directly related to work.


Teachers are exposed to a bizarrely high amount of bugs, germs and virus-opportunities; children trail through the overheated buildings like so many vest-refusing disease farms and they leave their smudges and smells all over. Since starting to work in schools I wash my hands like an OCD sufferer and make no secret of the fact. It doesn't entirely work; you can count on two minor ailments - coughs, colds, sinus infections, upthrowing events - per half term. The vast majority of these you will - happily or unhappily - work through, treating them as a conditional hazard. Not all your colleagues will, however. And who is to say they are wrong, for these little things are directly caused by the type of job you do, so surely your employer should pay for your sick leave.

But it must cost the school about £150 per day, per member of staff, which at five days a year, for fifty staff, adds up to £37,500 per annum. Schools never have any money. No English department can ever afford new sets of books - probably £200 a pop - and although this is also due to their tottering about spending money on the most bizarre things and jollies for the Heads of Departments, the high cost of paying people to do nothing must take a bow.

Which brings us to the long-term sick. It is not somebody's fault if they are long-term sick, and certainly not paying them will make them sicker, not better, and is thus counter-productive. But equally, it is not the fault of the employer, and the it makes no sense for the employer - any employer, in fact - to pay somebody not to do anything. (This has been my line about the welfare state for some time now, but I notice nobody I would speak to agrees with me.) If the sick are to be cared for, surely the state and their families should do it. Seems unfair? Stick unfair up your arse. There are loads of jobs that don't have any sick pay. I think I've had about twelve days' paid sick in my life, and most full time employed teachers are well enough paid to absorb some loss of pay. Why should they be paid to be sick any more than any other sick or disabled person is? They aren't working any more than any other sick or disabled person is.

And if you didn't pay anything at all, think of the money you would save and the motivation you'd give people with a little cold who could perfectly well go in. I was off sick this week with the migraine my doctor says is stress-related. I took the hit as far as money goes because I felt so vile I didn't give a shit. But I don't have to feel bad about stealing money from other taxpayers and the kids whose parents hope schools will educate their children.