The announcement comes after union leaders claimed that Education Secretary Gillian Keegan “squandered an opportunity” to avoid a strike.
The National Education Union (NEU) has scheduled seven days of strike action in England and Wales, the first of which will take place on February 1st, coinciding with walkouts by university staff, train drivers, and 100,000 civil servants.
The NEU has stated that a strike could affect over 23,000 schools.
Following last-ditch talks with Ms Keegan on Monday afternoon, the NEU’s joint general secretaries, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, said: “Gillian Keegan has squandered an opportunity to avoid strike action on Wednesday.
The government has been unwilling to address the root causes of strike action.
Real-terms pay cuts and cuts in pay relativities are leading to a recruitment and retention crisis with which the Education Secretary so far seems incapable of getting a grip.
Teachers in England, according to Mr Courtney, have a more “excessive workload” than teachers in other countries.
Teachers here work about the same amount of time in classrooms with children, but they do far more work outside the classroom,” he said outside the Department of Education after a meeting with its Ms Keegan.
Teaching has always required long hours, but long hours preparing exciting lessons for your class are not the same as long hours preparing evidence for a bureaucratic system that does not trust you.
Our members report that this is how they feel, that much of the work they’ve been assigned isn’t about teaching better lessons or engaging children, but about… the system as a whole not trusting them.
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