A summer of chaos kicks off for thousands of school pupils today as they face yet another day of walkouts by their teachers.
It is one of five days of walkouts to be launched by the National Education Union (NEU) this summer as the row with the government over pay continues.
They will cause misery to thousands of parents who face taking the day off work while their children are at home.
And the move will likely plunge GCSE and A-Level students into further turmoil – many of whom have already spent days studying from home because of strikes launched earlier this year.
Last night Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, warned the disruption will get worse.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, warned the disruption will get worse
Ms Bousted said: ‘At the moment, headteachers are keeping schools open. If they go on strike, the schools will close.
‘What is highly disruptive will become extremely disruptive. It is only going to be worse.
‘We’ve had no response from Gillian Keegan since the negotiations finished.
‘We wrote to her two weeks ago saying we want to get around the table. We didn’t get a response. It’s a wall of silence from the Department for Education and Gillian Keegan.’
Teachers will also walk out on May 2. This month NEU members voted in support of a three-day strike from late June to early July.
Last week, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said it will hold a formal ballot for national strike action in England for the first time in its history.
If successful, coordinated strike action between teachers and heads could lead to the biggest series of strikes on record, it has been predicted.
A Department for Education spokesman (DfE) said: ‘Any strike action is hugely damaging. We have made a fair and reasonable pay offer to teachers recognising their hard work and commitment.
‘Thanks to the further £2 billion pounds we are investing in our schools, next year, school funding will be at its highest level in history.’
After a period of intensive talks with education unions, the Government offered teachers a £1,000 one-off payment for the current school year and an average 4.5 per cent rise for staff next year.
‘We’ve had no response from Gillian Keegan since the negotiations finished,’ Ms Bousted said
The deal also included Ofsted reforms which would have given heads ‘greater clarity’ on when to expect their next inspection.
But the offer was labelled ‘insulting’ by the NEU, while the unions ASCL, NASUWT and NAHT also rejected the deal.
The NEU is also preparing for strikes in the autumn if it secures a mandate from members for six more months of industrial action.
Elsewhere, hundreds of teachers and civil servants walked out in what trade unions described as the biggest industrial action in Northern Ireland in more than a decade.
Most schools in the region were closed yesterday as as all five teaching unions, including heads from the NAHT, took part.
Striking members of the National Education Union (NEU) South East Region at a rally in Chichester, West Sussex, in a long-running dispute over pay (pictured last month)
It comes as the Government announced yesterday that schools that are not rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted will be eligible for additional funding.
The DfE will relax the rule which says specialist funding for falling pupil numbers should only be for schools judged good or outstanding at their last Ofsted inspection.
The requirement will be removed in recognition of falling pupil numbers in areas of the country.
Among other changes to the National Funding Formula (NFF) to be introduced from 2024-25, councils will be set expectations around the minimum funding they must provide to support schools seeing large increases in pupil numbers.
Schools with more than one site will also receive funding on a consistent national basis to help with extra costs they face due to the need to duplicate services, such as caretaking across multiple sites, the DfE said.
