I AM utterly weary of the public’s outcry against teachers. In what other profession do workers not get paid for the work they do?

Considering that a good teacher does well over 50 hours work per week in order to plan outstanding lessons and mark books and coursework, their pay for only 30 hours of work is shameful.

Teachers’ pensions used to be the compensation for working many more hours per week than they are paid, but no more.

I am not sure Joe Public quite understands that teaching is often a 12-hour-a-day job, sometimes a 24 hour-a-day job, with teachers being paid for only six hours per day. Our pensions are now set to be cut significantly but we are still not going to receive pay for the work we do.

This is why teachers in are angry. This is why we will fight for our only compensation for not being fairly paid, and this is why we are walking out on the job we love today.

We are not simply there as childminders – we give your children the knowledge they need to become doctors, paramedics, researchers, bankers, policemen and yes, MPs. What thanks are we getting for that?

Ruth Moody, Acaster Lane, Bishopthorpe, York.

• WHY is Nick Seaton wheeled in whenever the subject of education crops up, and what is this Campaign For Real Education (The Press, June 28)?

Does he have any practical teaching experience? It should be the case that anyone who comments on education or dictates to teachers should have spent time in the classroom themselves, and that includes the Prime Minister and his Education Secretary.

Teaching is a very stressful profession which should qualify for earlier not later retirement. Teachers deserve a better deal than they have had in the past and full recognition of the importance of the job they do.

Jean Frost, Woodlands Grove, York.

• TODAY’S proposed strike action by public service workers was totally predictable and the total lack of foresight of Governments past and present is to blame.

Decades earlier I remember reading a report highlighting that all our hard-earned pension money was redirected into the public purse – such folly as we can now see. It’s easy for governments to blame hard-working people for problems which their own policies had created. We pay taxes and then hidden taxes such as petrol. Why are savers punished for simply saving and loan sharks applauded for conning money from the vulnerable?

The banks should have been firmly regulated. Why not help the savers with tax breaks and ban sharp business practice? We had lived in a money-for-nothing culture which had the blessing of governments.

We have reaped the whirlwind and the only way out of this mess is to have clear positive direction which this Coalition Government lacks.

Phil Shepherdson, Chantry Close, Woodthorpe, York.

• LIKE most people who have spent their working lives providing a service to the public, I am sick of reading about the wonderful pay and golden handshakes and pensions supposedly available in the public sector.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For more than 20 years, the public sector has been subjected to an onslaught of attacks – not only due to the bankers’ inefficiencies but from a series of government actions, ranging from privatisation through to never-ending “efficiency reviews”.

Privatisation has seen staff forced to accept inferior conditions of service, while the principle of giving the public a service was replaced by providing shareholders with a profit.

Often these private companies went bankrupt and staff not only lost their livelihood but also their redundancy and pension entitlements. Six years ago, the worm started to turn and the Civil Service unions took the Government to the European Courts over their latest attack on an existing condition of employment.

The government lost the case and it was ruled that you could not take away the earned rights of staff. Instead of learning from that, the present Government launched another attack on the entire public sector and not surprisingly that proved the final straw.

Liz Edge, Parkside Close, York.