THE NATIONAL Education Union (NEU) has announced that its members in England will take two further days of strike action this term – on Wednesday 5th July and Friday 7th July.
Announcing the new strike days on Saturday, NEU Joint General Secretaries Kevin Courtney and Dr Mary Bousted said: ‘Time and again the NEU, alongside its sister unions, have called for the Education Secretary (Gillian Keegan) to get around the negotiation table to settle this dispute for a fully-funded teacher pay increase.
‘Time and again our calls have fallen on stony ground.
‘The Education Secretary refused to re-enter negotiation on the grounds that she and her Department were waiting for the publication of the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB’s) recommendation on pay.
‘This week she has written to us saying: “I can confirm that I have received the STRB report and its recommendations. I am aware of speculation published in the Sunday Times, and reported elsewhere in the media, on what these recommendations are. I am sure you will understand that the government will not comment on this speculation whilst it considers its response to the report.”
‘This sentence causes us to worry that the government is contemplating not implementing the report or not funding it properly.
‘Gillian Keegan also says that she will publish the report in her own good time, which by her Department’s recent record will be at least another month.
‘This causes huge uncertainty for schools and is hugely disrespectful to headteachers. None are able to properly plan for next year.’
Bousted went on to predict yesterday that during the next academic year some schools will face such extreme staff shortages that they will have to start sending children home.
She said: ‘Schools are having to cut basic and essential provision. We’re seeing schools cutting the offer they make to pupils, narrowing the curriculum.
‘We’ve now got one of the highest class sizes in the developed world, on a par with Mexico, Brazil and Columbia.
‘Teacher vacancies have quadrupled since 2010, so we’re now seeing school leaders just finding maths and science subjects which are always difficult to fill. Now, English is a massive shortage subject and English is a gateway to other subjects because it focuses on reading and writing and literacy.
‘The government will fail to meet its teacher training target for secondary teachers by over 50% this year. It failed to meet it by nearly 50% last year and last year 40,000 teachers, that’s 9% of the profession, left the profession before retirement.
‘You can’t have that rate of leaving and have such poor recruitment figures and carry on having teachers in classrooms.
‘It has come to the point where some schools next year will have to send children home because they can’t put a teacher in front of the class.’
Along with other education unions the ASCL, NAHT and NASUWT, the NEU is currently re-balloting members as it is required to do under the Tory anti-union laws and they have said that they plan to hold ‘coordinated strike action’ in the autumn term if there is no settlement to the dispute.
