The week Britain’s teaching unions went to war with the Government

It had all been going so well. Every week during lockdown, general secretaries of teacher unions had a virtual meeting with the Education Secretary, his ministers and officials. They discussed how to make sure vulnerable pupils were taking up their places at school, how best to educate children at home, and of course, the greatly anticipated question of when and how to reopen schools. An uneasy truce existed. This all came crashing down last Sunday night.

As families watched the Prime Minister’s televised announcement on how the UK will rebuild its economy, there were few surprises, including the reopening of schools which The

Sunday Telegraph exclusively reported would be from June 1.

But union chiefs were, they claim, nonetheless left baffled. “On Sunday night we were completely shocked by the announcement,” said Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU).

“None of the unions knew that the PM was going to say Reception, Year 1 and Year 6. None of us knew that was coming.” Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said: “We had been talking at meetings about the difficulties of social distancing and the like. And then what happens is we get an announcement on a Sunday that bears no resemblance to that.” This was the moment when the uneasy truce between the unions and the Government collapsed.

“It was always a concern that we had: were we talking to the people who were making the actual decisions?” Mr Courtney said. Their suspicions were confirmed on Wednesday by Osama Rahman, the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) chief scientific officer, who let slip that in fact the key decision had not been taken by his own department.

Under questioning from MPs on the science and technology select committee about the scientific evidence, he said that it was a “Cabinet decision”. His appearance at the hearing was swiftly followed up by a letter to the committee retracting his claims.

But it was now clear who was steering the ship. Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s closest adviser, previously spent four years at the DfE

as special adviser to Michael Gove who pushed through reforms and repeatedly clashed with the unions.

But this week has seen the first major clash since the Gove era. The NEU, has told its members not to “engage” with plans to reopen on June 1. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) has threatened local councils with legal action if teachers who refuse to work are penalised. The NAHT has told its members to ignore plans to open for all primary school pupils by the end of June, arguing that this is not “realistic”. Unions demanded to see the scientific evidence that informed the decision to reopen schools, and a meeting was hastily arranged from the general secretaries to be briefed by Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser. But the meeting, which took place on Friday, did little to alter the unions’ stance.

Emboldened by the backing of the British Medical Association, the NEU

said its views were “unchanged” and the NASUWT complained that it left it with “more questions than answers”. To scupper the Government’s plans to reopen schools, unions do not need to go on strike or ballot for industrial action. Under employment laws, they can refuse to work if they feel there is a “serious and imminent” threat to their health. The Children’s

Commissioner told them to stop “squabbling”. Lord Blunkett, a former Labour education secretary, accused unions of “working against the interests of children”.

Unless the unions back down, or enough teachers defy them and go back to work next month, this could turn out to be a major stumbling block on Britain’s path to recovery.

‘It was always a concern that we had: were we talking to the people who made the actual decisions?’