Candidates Sir Keir Starmer and Tulip Siddiq with some of the teachers

Published: 2 April, 2015
by RICHARD OSLEY

FRAZZLED young teachers at Camden schools are commuting from as far away as Folkestone because their salaries do not allow them to obtain mortgages on homes in nearby neighbourhoods.

The red alert was raised at a summit set up to give local teachers the chance to raise concerns ahead of next month’s general election.

In a discussion held under Chatham House rules – the code where participants can talk freely under an agreement of anonymity – members of the National Union of Teachers told how staff at the borough’s schools were living under the double stress of finding somewhere affordable to live close to their work, and the pressure of regular Ofsted inspections.

They outlined their worries to Labour parliamentary candidates Sir Keir Starmer and Tulip Siddiq at a meeting in Gospel Oak Primary School on Thursday afternoon. Candidates from other parties had not responded to offers to talk about an NUT election manifesto, local union organisers said.

During the discussion, one teacher said: “We have seen high-quality colleagues in our schools who have felt they have no option but to leave because of the things they want to be able to do – like start a family.” 

Another added: “I do live in Camden but you are not able to save anything at all. I just about make ends meet.” At the discussion, another Camden teacher told the candidates: “We are seeing staff move past the M25 because they can’t get mortgages in Camden. There are no key workers’ homes. 

“We’ve got teachers commuting from Folkestone to St Pancras because it is cheaper than a mortgage in Camden.” The commute to the seafront town in Kent is 70 miles, each way. 

On the subject of Ofsted, the teachers want changes in a system which they say leaves them feeling they are always being inspected or having an inspection on the horizon.

“The inspections feel more threatening than supportive,” one of the teachers said. “You are being threatened with being forced to become an academy if you don’t pass, and often it can turn on quite flippant things. It should be supporting schools, not threatening them. Often people are up preparing until 10pm the night before.”

The NUT wants election candidates to endorse its “Stand Up For Education” manifesto, which includes the demand to allow schools to be run by local authorities, rather than being forced to be independently-run free schools.

Sir Keir said he could not endorse anything at this stage of the campaign because “he didn’t want to promise something he could not deliver” and that “it always ends it tears”.

But he added: “We will try to influence our colleagues – on Ofsted. I would be seeking to talk about a different model so that we get an inspectorate that is supportive to schools.”

Ms Siddiq said it was unlikely that a Labour government would scrap Ofsted, but felt it could be reformed to give local authorities a role in inspections.

“Teachers have been demonised in the press and we need to change the perception,” she said. “We have to change the way they are perceived and the way they are written about in the press. I used to live with a teacher and I could see how hard they work.”