If teachers must strike, make ‘em pay

Parents who remove children from school during term time without permission can be dragged before a court, fined a maximum of £2,500 and could be sent to prison for three months.

at the lower end of the scale, the penalty is £60 per parent for every day their child is absent from the classroom, rising to £120 if the penalty isn’t paid within 21 days. More than 60,000 families have been fined by l ocal councils since the rules were introduced in september 2013.

new education secretary nicky Morgan has said she will relax the guidelines, following widespread protests. But parents will still be banned from taking their children on holiday during term time to cash in on cheaper air fares.

It does seem unfair to punish hard-pressed mums and dads who are only trying to save money. after all, a few days away from class isn’t going to cause too much damage to a child’s education. Kids off sick for a couple of weeks with chickenpox or some other ailment soon catch up.

the principle behind the rules is sound and well-intentioned, even if the penalties were applied with predictably excessive zeal — which, as I keep telling you, is what always, always happens when you give anyone in authority any extra powers.

It is essential that disruption to a child’s schooling i s kept to a minimum. Yet while parents in their tens of thousands are being fined, militant teachers are actually getting paid for closing schools in term time.

this week we learned the national Union of teachers is compensating its members in the London Borough of Haringey for staging a series of strikes which affected more than 3,000 pupils and their parents.

the walkouts were called when head teachers decided they were no longer prepared to carry on funding the salary of branch secretary Julie Davies, who describes herself as a ‘Psycho Killer’. Qu’est-ce que c’est? she is a full-time union official, who hasn’t taught in a classroom since 2000 yet continues to draw £45,900 a year as an english teacher. Over the past 14 years, she’s received half a million pounds, plus benefits.

Mrs Davies, 58, was suspended af t er heads accused her of ‘confrontation’ and fomenting a ‘climate of distrust’. One secondary school governor said she had done more damage to schools in Haringey than the Luftwaffe’s bombs during World War II.

so why should taxpayers should go on paying her wages to work exclusively for the nUt?

THIs costly and irrati onal practice was widespread in the public sector and nationalised industries when I was an industrial correspondent in the seventies and eighties and continues to this day, without any justification whatsoever.

Legions of full-time officials are paid not by their unions, but by the organisations they work for — the nHs, local councils, the civil service. Which, in turn, means the British taxpayer. Why should wealthy unions such as the nUt, with a guaranteed income from members paid out of the public purse, also expect taxpayers to f und the salaries of union reps?

the head teachers of Haringey are to be congratulated for deciding that enough is enough. the £500,000 paid to Psycho Killer Davies over the past few years could have been better spent in the classroom.

But the union has reacted by calling strikes at two schools and threatening further action at others in the borough, including those my daughter and son used to attend.

the knock- on effect has been widespread, not j ust on t he children’s education, but upon working and self-employed parents who have had to make emergency arrangements to look after kids sent home from school.

If the nUt really cared about education, rather than feathering its own nest and defending its entrenched privileges and restrictive practices, it would never take any action which hurt children.

Yesterday, ed Miliband was banging on about the ‘vested interests’ in the banks and energy companies. and he’s not wrong. But there are no greater ‘vested interests’ in Britain than the Left-wing education establishment — dubbed ‘the Blob’ by Michael Gove — and the neanderthal national Union of teachers, which stubbornly resists any reforms aimed at improving standards.

the nUt is to education what the national Union of Mineworkers was to the coal industry. But whereas Barmy arthur scargill only succeeded i n ruining his own members and hastening the demise of a dying industry, the nUt is punishing innocent schoolchildren.

Parents i n Haringey are now talking about suing the union for the money they have lost and the disruption caused by the selfish strikes over Psycho Killer.

Good luck to them. Parents can be fined heavily for taking kids out of the classroom, so why shouldn’t the nUt have to pay a financial penalty for closing entire schools?

If the nUt can afford to compensate striking teachers, then it should be forced to compensate parents, too.