Teachers’ national action over a number of issues, including workload, continues, with the industrial action escalating to strikes in a number of schools.
Teachers at Stratford Academy, where management has imposed a 15% pay cut on workers taking part in action, struck for three days from 13 November, with more strikes on the way. A parents’ group has been formed to support the teachers and demand that school management withdraws the pay cut.
At Bishop Challoner school in East London, teachers have voted overwhelmingly to strike against victimisation of National Union of Teachers reps, under threat after they led a successful campaign to stop the headteacher imposing “mock Ofsted” inspections on staff. Strikes may also be on the way at Deptford Green school in Lewisham, Mount Carmel in Islington, and Thomas Tallis in Greenwich. Teachers at Connaught School in Leytonstone are also planning more strikes against the conversion of their school to an Academy, with walkouts planned for 27 and 28 November.
Many of the leading reps and activists from these schools will come together on Saturday 8 December in Leicester for the national conference of the Local Associations Network, a rank-and-file caucus within the NUT the aims to organise workplace activists independently of the union leadership, to force the union to act and to attempt to organise action independently when it won’t.
For more information, see the LAN website.
