Teachers Strike

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on today’s teachers strike and its impact on children, parents and school communities.

Let me first declare my interest as a retired NUT member. Not only have we had the first junior doctors strike on this Government’s watch, but today we have failure in another public service, with a teachers strike. Sadly, this Government have relished attacking—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to disrupt the flow of the hon. Gentleman’s eloquence or the eloquence of his flow, but at this point all he needs to do is ask his urgent question. His more detailed supplementary will come after he has heard what the Minister has to say, in which I am sure he is extremely interested.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

There is absolutely no justification for this strike. The National Union of Teachers asked for talks, and we are having talks. Since May, the Department for Education has been engaged in a new programme of talks with the major teaching unions, including the NUT, focused on all the concerns raised during the strike. Even before then we were engaged in round-table discussions with the trade unions, and both the Secretary of State and I meet the trade union leaders regularly to discuss their concerns.

This strike is politically motivated and has nothing to do with raising standards in education. In the words of Deborah Lawson, the general secretary of the non-striking teacher union Voice, today’s strike is a

“futile and politically motivated gesture”.

Kevin Courtney, the acting general secretary of the NUT, made it clear in his letter to the Secretary of State on 28 June that the strike was about school funding and teacher pay and conditions, yet this year’s school budget is greater than in any previous year, at £40 billion—some £4 billion higher than 2011-12. At a time when other areas of public spending have been significantly reduced, the Government have shown our commitment to education by protecting school spending.

We want to work with the profession and with the teacher unions, and we have been doing that successfully in our joint endeavour to reduce unnecessary teacher workload. With 15,000 more teachers in the profession than in 2010, teaching remains one of the most popular and attractive professions in which to work. The industrial action by the NUT is pointless, but it is far from inconsequential. It disrupts children’s education, inconveniences parents, and damages the profession’s reputation in the eyes of the public, but our analysis shows that because of the dedication of the vast majority of teachers and headteachers, seven out of eight schools are refusing to close.

Our school workforce is and must remain a respected profession suitable for the 21st century, but this action is seeking to take the profession back in public perception to the tired and dated disputes of the 20th century. More importantly, this strike does not have a democratic mandate from a majority even of NUT members. It is based on a ballot for which the turnout was just 24.5%, representing less than 10% of the total teacher workforce.

Our ground-breaking education reforms are improving pupil outcomes, challenging low expectations and poor pupil behaviour in schools, and increasing the prestige of the teaching profession. This anachronistic and unnecessary strike is a march back into a past that nobody wants our schools to revisit.

[Nic Dakin]

Not only have we had the first junior doctors strike on this Government’s watch, but today we have failure in another public service with the teachers strike. Sadly, this Government have relished attacking education professionals, undermining them and describing them as “the blob”, instead of engaging with them and celebrating their role in driving up individual child and school performance. At a time when people have a right to look to Government for stability and security, a breakdown of trust among teachers and a strike of this nature is most unfortunate.

At the heart of this is concern felt by people on the frontline, be they teachers, head teachers or parents, about future school budgets. Everyone knows that despite the Secretary of State’s protestations, school budgets are going to fall in real terms, year on year, up to 2020. Head teachers know it, parents know it, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed it. The only person who is shoving her head in the sand in total denial is the Secretary of State. That failure of Government has resulted in what we are witnessing today—massive disruption, classes cancelled and pupils sent home.

The Chancellor has made it clear that he is tearing up his fiscal rules. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) asked yesterday, will the Government now commit to securing our children’s future by reversing the planned cut in funding and securing the necessary cash for our nation’s children? As I asked yesterday, will the Minister commit to publishing the Government’s response to the School Teachers Review Body by the end of this academic year so that head teachers can plan effectively?

It is clear that the Government have lost the plot. They have a problem with teachers—they cannot recruit or retain enough, and they have lost teachers’ confidence in large numbers. It is clear today that our children, who are our future, are paying the price of Tory education failure.

[Mr Gibb]

It is nice to hear from the shadow shadow Schools Minister on the fourth row of the Opposition Benches. The only people who are undermining the teaching profession are the leadership of the National Union of Teachers. I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is jumping on this dispute to make cheap political points, instead of joining the Government and condemning this unnecessary and pointless strike. Will he now say that he opposes this strike by the NUT, which is disrupting children’s education and inconveniencing parents?

Finally, just to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point about the School Teachers Review Body report, we will publish the report, together with our response and a draft revised school teachers pay and conditions document, as soon as we have completed our consideration of it.