22,000 teachers sign up to union to join walkouts

Organisation attracts thousands of new members in single week after announcing action

TENS of thousands of teachers have joined the country’s biggest education union to maximise strike chaos.

The National Education Union (NEU) said it had gained 22,000 new members since announcing last week that it would strike on seven days over the next two months in England and Wales.

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said she was expecting more than 100,000 teachers to strike on Feb 1, the first day of industrial action, which is becoming a de facto general strike day as civil servants, train drivers and university staff are also taking industrial action.

“Lots of schools will close,” Dr Bousted said. “In areas where the NEU is the biggest union and has a really strong density, like London, there will be lots of schools closed.”

The NEU has about 300,000 members in England and Wales. Only 48 per cent of all members in England voted to strike over pay. However, the union narrowly passed the legal threshold for industrial action of a 50 per cent turnout, with 40 per cent of eligible members voting in favour of strikes. In Wales, 54 per cent of union members backed industrial action.

The NAHT school leaders’ union and the NASUWT teachers’ union failed to achieve the 50 per cent ballot turnout required by law for its members to go out on strike over pay in England.

However, the surge in NEU membership in the past week suggests that some of its members have switched unions so that they can join the strikes.

Some schools have warned that they are unsure whether they will stay open because teachers are not obliged to inform them if they plan to join strikes.

The Department for Education has advised head teachers to consider bringing in volunteers and supply teachers, adopting bigger class sizes and organising activity days run by external providers to help keep schools open.

However, many schools have told parents to prepare alternative childcare arrangements for some year groups.

Parents of pupils at Countesthorpe Academy in Leicestershire have been told it is “highly unlikely” the school will be open to “the vast majority of students due to the health and safety implications of having so few staff on site and not being able to direct other staff to take up the duties of striking staff.”

The head teacher said some staff not involved in industrial action may not be available for work “due to the strikes impacting on their families”.

Hamstel Junior School in Southendon-sea, Essex, has told parents that 11 classes will not be able to come to school on Feb 1 unless pupils are the children of key workers. The school said it had prioritised keeping the school open for Year 6 pupils because they are preparing for SATS.

Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, has written to the NEU to check whether it breached any rules when it announced the result of its ballot at 5pm on Monday. Her letter set out questions, including asking whether employers were informed a day after the public announcement.

However, the union dismissed her concerns, saying employers were informed at the same time as the public announcement, which they argued meant they were compliant with trade union legislation.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “It is only right that the department seeks to ensure that these obligations have been met as part of continued correspondence with the NEU over industrial action.

“Our goal remains to keep as many children in schools as possible, therefore ensuring schools are given as much notice as possible is vital.”