At least a million British children at 8,000 schools were to miss lessons yesterday as teachers went on strike over pay across England and Wales.
Staff and teaching assistants were drafted in to take the place of striking colleagues after school authorities failed to avert widespread school closures. A third of schools planned to turn some pupils away and one in six were to close entirely.
More than 100,000 civil servants — from driving test supervisors to coastguards — and 30,000 college lecturers are also walking out in the biggest strike over pay since Labour came to power.
Ministers, opposition members of parliament and other teaching unions all accused the National Union of Teachers (NUT) of jeopardizing children’s education and teachers’ reputations. The action was expected to cost the economy millions of pounds in lost working days as some parents are forced to take time off.
A survey of every local education authority conducted jointly by the Local Government Association and the Guardian newspaper revealed that in 102 of the 188 authorities in England and Wales, 2,086 schools were definitely to close, with 2,229 reporting partial closures. Only one of the 102 authorities reported that no schools would close. If the pattern was repeated in all authorities, up to 8,000 schools would be affected — nearly a third across England and Wales.
Large rural authorities with lots of small primary schools were most vulnerable.
Secondaries were able to prevent more closures by sending home older children and focusing their non-striking members of staff on keeping younger children in schools to minimize the impact on children and their parents.
Members of the NUT, which is Europe’s largest teaching union, were protesting about a 2.45 percent pay deal that they said would leave teachers worse off because of the rising cost of living.
Schools will face teacher shortages unless wages, particularly for the youngest teachers struggling to get on the housing ladder, are made competitive with other graduate professions, the union says.
Jim Knight, the schools minister, said on Wednesday night: “I share parents’ frustrations. People are bewildered by this action. The average salary is now £34,000 and has gone up by 19 percent in real terms in the past 10 years.”
“It is a real concern that the rising reputation of teachers will be damaged by this action. The public find it difficult to understand why teachers are doing this. We’re pretty sure the majority of schools will be unaffected tomorrow. But it is very frustrating that some teachers are taking this industrial action,” he said.
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