The leaders of major education unions have accused the government of ignoring their calls to re-enter negotiations over teachers’ pay and conditions.
The NASUWT education union opened a ballot on Monday of around 150,000 school teachers and headteachers for strike action, and other unions have also recently opened ballots for thousands more.
NASUWT General Secretary Patrick Roach said he believed there is a “very real prospect” that 98 per cent of the teaching profession could vote in support of industrial action to take place in the autumn with “very serious consequences”, but that despite this risk, his union was being met with a “wall of silence” by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.
“We’ve tried to reach out on umpteen occasions, umpteen items of correspondence, there have been calls to her office, press releases urging the secretary of state to get in touch with us,” Roach told PoliticsHome.
