Entertainment
Teaching union to ballot members over pay offer
The largest education union in England is voting on whether to accept or reject the government’s pay offer of 2.8%.
If it is turned down, the union will debate at its conference in April whether to vote for industrial action, which could include strikes.
The National Education Union (NEU) called the government’s pay recommendation “extremely disappointing”.
A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson called it “an extraordinary decision” by the union.
NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said the current proposal of 2.8% “is not sufficient to even start to address the crisis in recruitment and retention”.
He added: “The suggestion that an unfunded pay award can be paid for by making ‘efficiencies’ is an insult to a profession who have already endured 14 years of austerity.
“No teacher or leader will be able to identify efficiencies without cutting staff or resources or both.”
The ballot will open on 1 March and run until mid-April.
Responding to the announcement, a No 10 spokesman said that “future pay awards must be fair to both taxpayers and workers”, and that 2.8% is above the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecast for the year.
“As schools and families continue doing everything they can to improve attendance, and after the millions of school days lost through both the pandemic and recent industrial action, union leaderships need to think long and hard about whose interests they are putting first”, the DfE added.
Members of the NEU went on strike for eight days in 2023, which resulted in serious disruption for students and some school closures.
The dispute ended when teaching unions accepted a 6.5% pay rise.
Teachers received a 5.5% pay rise last September in England, funded by an additional £1.2bn from the government.
However, the NEU is unhappy with next year’s recommendation.
The School Teachers’ Review Body, an independent group for teacher’s pay, will recommend a formal pay offer later this year.
The BBC understands that head teacher unions are likely to wait for this before making any decisions.
Sixth form college strikes
In a separate dispute, tens of thousands of students in sixth form colleges across England were disrupted by strike action on Thursday.
About 2,000 NEU members are taking part in a three day walkout over pay.
The September pay rise did not include teachers at sixth form colleges, which, says the DfE, are responsible for setting their own pay.
Additional reporting by Hayley Clarke.
Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day a wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.
It was the Tubbs fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbour woke her in the morning, and told her to grab her belongings and get out. When Ms Welch opened the door, ashes were falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.
Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.
It was the final push for Ms Welch. After advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.
“It was just the culmination of all of it,” the 42-year-old said. “There’s only so many times that I was going to go through every fall of worrying about what is going to set on fire, if I was going to lose a house.”
Ms Welch is one of several people who has left California in recent years because of the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.
Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.
Climate’s ‘whiplash’ linked to raging LA fires
California is naturally prone to fires, but scientists believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions conducive to longer fire seasons and larger burned areas in the western US.
Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, north-west of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region already reeling from destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation from the blazes.
The latest series of The Traitors is coming to an end, after weeks of wild accusations, wilder betrayals and Claudia Winkleman’s devious looks-to-camera.
Many of us like to think we could handle the pressures and skullduggery of being a traitor in the remote Scottish castle. But could you really make it to the end undetected?
Work through our scenarios – from sitting at the roundtable with Claudia to rowing across an icy loch – to find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a treacherous mastermind, or whether you are far too faithful for that.
Quiz compiled by: Steven McIntosh, Helen Bushby, Yasmin Rufo, Rosemary McCabe, Jonathan Holmes
Netflix musical Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscars nominations, with Wicked also among the top contenders.
Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, has 13 nominations in total – although one of its stars, Selena Gomez, missed out.
Wicked received 10 nominations – including nods for British actress Cynthia Erivo and her co-star Ariana Grande.
Three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, also has 10 nominations, while Demi Moore has the first Oscar nomination of her career
Even before the LA fires, Californians fled for ‘climate havens’
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