Arrogant unions are harming pupils again

IT IS becoming ever clearer just how devastating school closures during the pandemic were for a generation of children.

Despite being at minute risk from Covid, youngsters were collateral damage in the battle to tame the virus – their educations sacrificed, their life chances damaged.

And while insisting they had pupils’ best interests at heart, the teaching unions fought hardest to keep classrooms shut.

So it is appalling that as children still struggle to make up lost ground, the National Education Union is threatening to disrupt their learning again by striking.

This is the height of irresponsibility – and exposes its lack of commitment to pupils.

The motive is partly political. It wants to join the wave of industrial unrest to destabilise a Tory government it loathes.

And by refusing to condemn his union paymasters, Sir Keir Starmer also shows a shaming disregard for pupil welfare.

Of course, the children who won’t be hit by strikes are those at private schools, which Labour wants to undermine by stripping them of their charitable status.

But when state schools are held to ransom by the militants, is it any wonder parents make sacrifices to buy their children a better education?