Teachers threaten strike over crackdown on failing schools

TEACHERS are threatening to strike in protest at Gordon Brown's crackdown on failing schools.

Almost 43,000 children attend London secondary schools on the Government's hit list for poor GCSE results.

The schools face being taken over, turned into privately-sponsored academies or even closed under the National Challenge initiative, which aims to eradicate such failure by 2011.

But members of the NASUWT teaching union are calling for a campaign of industrial action to force ministers to abandon the "appalling" policy. More than 70 per cent of pupils at 43 London schools on the hit list failed to achieve at least five C grades, including maths and English last year.

A motion to be debated at the NASUWT's annual conference in Bournemouth calls for "industrial action, including strike action" in schools and local authorities where teachers are affected by the crackdown.

The motion condemns the initiative and its "appalling threats of school closures and privatisation" as "unfit for purpose". "Many thousands of hard-working teachers in the National Challenge schools are subject to excessive monitoring and harassment and are becoming fearful of losing their jobs," the motion claims.

The initiative was announced by Mr Brown soon after he took over as Prime Minister in 2007. This year Schools Secretary Ed Balls insisted there would be no softening of the Government's approach.

Speaking as the most recent table of failing schools was released in January, he said: "The one thing we won't tolerate is excuses. That attitude is failing pupils and letting communities down. If there is no local change, we will require local change." Three of the failing schools in London were academies which had been open for at least five years when pupils sat their GCSEs last summer. Mr Balls hinted that privately-run academies would also face takeover if they fail in their mission to improve results.

The strike threat comes as the union debates separate calls for industrial action over teachers' workloads.

Ministers promised to allow teachers half a day out of the classroom every week for planning lessons and marking pupils' work.

But the NASUWT claims teachers are being denied their entitlements and routinely carry out mundane administrative tasks such as supervising children during lunch breaks and putting up classroom displays.

Teaching assistants and other support staff should be used for such work, the union believes.

Delegates will call for "all available means, up to and including strike action" to be deployed in schools which fail to honour the national agreement between unions and ministers on cutting teachers' workloads.

Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, said: "Some schools still don't grasp the fact that these contractual changes are not perks.

"They are designed to enable teachers and headteachers to work more effectively and to focus on teaching. It is not just the teachers, but the children and young people who are losing out. Time is running out for those who continue to flout the law."