Latest news with #schoolteachers
Russia Today
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Ukrainian teachers told to pretend they can't speak Russian
Ukraine's education ombudsman has advised schoolteachers to act as if they only understand Ukrainian when speaking with students. Kiev mandates the use of Ukrainian in most aspects of public life, despite a significant portion of the population speaking Russian as their native tongue. In an interview on Monday, Nadezhda Lishchik said her office had received complaints from school administrators about students who refused to speak Ukrainian during breaks. While teachers are required to speak Ukrainian at all times, students are allowed to use any language outside of the classroom. 'My advice was: 'You are not obliged to know a foreign language, unless you teach one, like English or German. You have full right to say you don't understand and insist on being addressed in the same language you use during classes.' You can influence students in a gentle way,' Lishchik said. The Ukrainization of public life has been a major policy focus for the government since the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014. Ukrainian law mandates the use of the state language in media, commerce and education. There are limited exemptions for some ethnic minorities, including Hungarians and Crimean Tatars, but not for the largest minority group, ethnic Russians. Despite the measures, research indicates that Russian remains widely used. A 2024 online content analysis reported by the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper found that while nearly 80% of Ukrainian posts on Facebook last year were in the state language, only 47% of TikTok clips were – a drop from 55% in 2023. Facebook's user base in Ukraine tends to be older, while TikTok is more popular with younger people. Kiev's difficulty encouraging children to use Ukrainian was also acknowledged last year by then-language ombudsman Taras Kremen, who lamented that just 39% of schoolchildren spoke Ukrainian at home, with even fewer using it among friends. Russian officials have accused Kiev of discriminating against ethnic Russians as part of what they call radical nationalist policies. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the Ukrainization campaign as a 'legislative extermination' of Russian culture.
The Independent
22-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Partially funded teacher pay rise may lead to cuts to school provision
A partially funded pay rise for teachers in England could result in 'further cuts' to education provision for pupils, unions have warned. The Government has accepted the recommendations of the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) to increase the salaries of school teachers and school leaders in England by 4% from September. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said schools will receive an additional £615 million of funding this financial year to help cover most of the costs of increased pay awards for staff. But she said schools will have to find around 1% of the pay awards themselves 'through improved productivity and smarter spending'. Ms Phillipson added: 'I believe schools have a responsibility, like the rest of the public sector, to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible.' The National Education Union (NEU), the largest education union in the country, has threatened to 'register a dispute' with the Government unless it fully funds the pay rise for teachers. On the partially funded pay offer for teachers, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: 'In many schools this will mean cuts in service provision to children and young people, job losses, and additional workloads for an already overstretched profession.' He said: 'Unless the Government commit to fully funding the pay rise then it is likely that the NEU will register a dispute with the Government on the issue of funding, and campaign to ensure every parent understands the impact of a cut in the money available to schools, and that every politician understands this too.' Last month, both teaching unions – the NEU and the NASUWT – threatened to take strike action if schools did not get extra funding to pay for salary increases for teachers. It came after the Department for Education (DfE) previously suggested in its written evidence to the STRB in December that a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be 'appropriate'. Pepe Di'Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the funding allocated to partially cover the cost of the teacher pay award 'represents a further cut to school budgets'. He said: 'If the Government really thinks it will be possible to bridge this funding gap through 'improved productivity and smarter spending', then it is mistaken. 'Schools have already spent many years cutting costs to the bone and beyond. 'The most likely outcome is that there will be further cuts to educational provision.' In April, the NEU said it would launch a formal ballot on strike action if the Government's pay award for teachers was 'unacceptable'. It came after a majority of NEU teacher members in England who took part in a preliminary ballot said they would be willing to take strike action to secure a fully funded, significantly higher pay award. Last month, the NASUWT teaching union also said it would ballot its members for industrial action if the Government offered a pay award that was 'not fully funded'. Matt Wrack, acting general secretary of the NASUWT, said the union will be 'carefully considering' the implications of the Government's announcement on teachers' pay. He said: 'We need to see long-term investment in education and there is a substantial risk that many schools will be placed in severe financial difficulty this year and next if any financial shortfall they experience is not addressed with extra funding.' In a written statement, Ms Phillipson said the 4% pay rise means school teachers 'will see an increase in their pay of almost 10% since this government took power and over 22% over the last four years.' On Thursday, the Education Secretary also announced that the Government will invest an additional £160m this financial year to support colleges. In July last year, the Labour Government offered teachers and school leaders in England a fully funded 5.5% pay award for 2024/25. NEU members staged eight days of strike action in schools in England in 2023 in a pay dispute. In July 2023, the Government agreed to implement the STRB's recommendation of a 6.5% increase for teachers in England, and coordinated strike action by four unions was called off.
