Teachers urged to look into Tax Matters

With schools across the country getting ready for the new school year, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is urging teachers to log onto its new, free online resource for teachers – Tax Matters.

Specifically designed for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE), Business Studies and Citizenship teachers of pupils aged 11-19, the Tax Matters resource contains three new teaching modules, to help secondary school pupils gain an understanding of how tax is raised, what the main taxes are, and what they ultimately pay for.

The three modules – which cover Income Tax, National Insurance, and Tax and Society –use fun, interactive features such as videos, quizzes and games, as well as key facts and figures, to help teachers bring the subject to life in the classroom.

There are also accompanying, ready-made lesson plans for each module available online, for both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 pupils – all packed with ideas for using Tax Matters with students.

All of the materials are available free by visiting www.taxmatters.hmrc.gov.uk. You can also find them on the Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg) website at www.pfeg.org/teaching_resources/resources/tax_matters.html, where they have been awarded the pfeg quality mark.

HMRC’s Caroline Smith said:

“By the end of the modules, students will be well equipped to understand what tax is all about. They’ll be clear why we pay tax in the first place, and what it means for them on a practical level, such as why it’s important to keep hold of their National Insurance number and how to understand their tax code.

“Tax Matters was developed with the help of teachers, and so reflects what they need on the ground. It’s interactive, fun and free to download, so we’d urge anyone teaching financial education this year to give it a try.”

Teachers need the power to keep order

Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb has added to warnings about the Government's plans to give teenagers a direct right of appeal against exclusion.

"This Labour Government has weakened teachers’ powers to keep order in the classroom", he said.

"Nothing undermines the authority of a headteacher more than an appeals panel returning an excluded pupil back to the same school – even in cases where knives have been involved".

Gibb pledged to give head teachers more freedom to discipline violent and disruptive pupils, and to "make sure teachers have the powers they need to nip problems with behaviour in the bud before they spiral out of control."

A quarter of History teachers are not specialists

New figures have revealed there is a huge shortage in the number of specialist History teachers in state schools.

In total, there are less than 12,000 specialist Historians – which amounts to just 76% of the History workforce.

By contrast, there are over 18,000 specialist PE teachers, or 83% of the PE workforce.

This revelation follows on from the discovery that only one third of students sat History GCSE in 2008.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, said, "It is vital we act to end the decline and fall of history in our schools. Giving every child the opportunity to learn our island story is crucial to improving education.”

He stressed, "Heads need to be given more power over their budgets to get the history specialists our children need. And we need to ensure the resources to attract the very best teachers are concentrated in the poorest areas."

Gibb attacks Labour for making it harder for teachers to keep order

Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb has attacked Labour for making it harder to expel disruptive pupils after new figures showed a huge increase in children being repeatedly suspended.

Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that at least 867 pupils were suspended from school more than ten times last year.

The number of children repeatedly suspended has therefore nearly trebled in four years, after 310 children were suspended more than ten times in 2003/04.

Nick Gibb warned, “Suspending a child from school over and over again does them no good at all. If a child has been seriously disruptive or violent they should be properly removed so they can get the specialist help they need to return to mainstream education.”

And he stressed, “Teachers want these pupils out of their classroom so other children can learn, but the Government’s restrictions on expulsion have caused this phenomenon of endless suspension.”

Teachers? Solidarity Brothers & Sisters.

I am going to come out on this issue from the start. I am in favour of giving the teachers of the NUT what they want. They are striking today because they find themselves in a position where they cannot afford to live and probably particularly in London. At a starting salary of £20k they are expected to work and live in often extreme conditions for long hours. Now if you look back to my article about poor Leona Lewis who was complaining that she was struggling to survive in London and get a decent home for around the £500k mark, I think it puts things into context.


For a teacher to afford a property, one would need to borrow 25 times that salary in order to find somewhere nice to live; not likely either now or a year ago when the banks were falling over themselves to lend money. So realistically what could a teacher afford? Well based on maybe three and a half times their salary they could afford a property worth c.£66k with a 10% deposit. Now the last time I looked in the paper, in 1996 this was possible, however today for a teacher to buy a property on his/her own, is an impossibility.


The fact is, these striking teachers are not asking for wage hikes allowing them to afford properties worth anywhere near £500k or even really a quarter of that. They are asking for their pay rise to be in line with inflation. What is wrong with that? Do these people not perform a valuable service on societies behalf? Do our children and did not we ourselves (or some of us anyway) give teachers a hard time at school every day and at every opportunity? Their student loans are linked to inflation and I don't understand why their salary cannot be too. I don't understand what anyone would have against someone being paid enough to justify going to work and doing the job they have chosen to do.


I get the impression that as long as you are paid from the public purse, you are expected to work for peanuts. The same can be said about nurses and the armed forces, who have all been utterly exploited and taken for granted for years if not centuries. I think that this is an awful indictment on our society that our public servants are expected to survive on the breadline only for the reason that they have a sense of civic duty which compels them to serve the rest of us and provide services that society cannot do without.


It makes my so angry to hear about the inconvenience that this strike has caused. I think that this is an utterly selfish point of view and amounts to nothing less than emotional blackmail. As far as I am aware, the purpose of a strike, as an action of last resort is in fact to cause disruption. I fail to see the personal inconvenience of having to look after the kids for an extra day. I personally cherish every day I have with my family so from my point of view that argument stinks. I understand that it causes businesses problems because they have to allow for absenteeism. Big deal! if the business hasn't been built to survive minor blips like this then it deserves to go bust because it is a bad business. I understand that it might affect some peoples money if they are forced to take time off work but again, if you haven't planned to deal with blips then I can offer no sympathy. Perhaps an insight into what it is like to have less money will demonstrate to those who do lose out what it is like to be a teacher.


The interesting thing about all of this however is the silence from Downing Street on the issue. The government and Prime Minister who sailed into power with cries of "Education, Education, Education" appear to be a bit quiet on the issue. Is it that they are still recovering from the battering they took in parliament yesterday and in the papers today? Are they sitting back, waiting to see what the popular opinion is on this issue before they commit to a course of action. They need to get it right because the local and mayoral elections are round the corner so I suppose I can understand their hesitation. I would've thought though as the name of the party suggests and the support, both financially and politically that they receive from the trade unions that they have no choice but to support the TUC. However as we've all come to expect from New Labour, they seem to be more worried about the City and economic effects of the strike than its social cause and effects. What really confuses me is why the opposition has failed to come out and take the high ground in Labour's reluctance to do so.