7/18/2008 8:54:00 AM
TES 18 July
One third are disrupted as 220,000 support staff stage two-day walkout over pay
Special schools bore the brunt of a two-day strike by two support staff unions this week, with around a third affected by the action. A survey by The TES suggested that around 350 special schools – out of a total 1,200 in England and Wales – planned to close completely and 50 more anticipated partial closure during the action on Wednesday and Thursday. The Unison and Unite unions expected 620,000 local government workers, including 220,000 teaching assistants, dinner ladies, caretakers and other school support staff, to support the strike over pay.
The disruption in special schools came as no surprise to many: theycan have a ratio of up to three support staff and one teacher per child. Theo Skerritt, a teaching assistant at Richard Cloudesley School in Islington, London, joined a picket on Wednesday. “I do everything from feeding the pupils one-to-one at lunchtime, to delivering aspects of the curriculum,” he said. “It doesn’t take many of the staff to strike for the school to have to close.”
Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said support staff working with special needs children in mainstream classes would have their loyalties torn between the union and the children. “Most staff in this situation will have a real tension between the needs of the child and the strike action,” he said. The TES survey indicated that, in addition to the 400 special schools, a further 2,320 primaries and 420 secondaries were closed or partially closed – far fewer than during April’s National Union of Teachers strike, which affected 9,500 schools in total. But as The TES went to press, Unison said around 40 per cent of schools, pre-schools and children’s centres were closed, with severe disruption in conurbations outside London, such as Leeds, Manchester and the North East. In Gateshead, 88 out of 89 schools were thought to be closed, and around two-thirds were shut in Cardiff. But in other areas, such as Cambridgeshire and Wokingham, it was business as usual. Unison claimed that special schools were not “disproportionately affected”. TES
General
E-mail a friend |
del.icio.us| Bookmark|
Permalink |
Comments
(0) |
Post RSS