School leaders are stuck in the middle as strike action looms

We used to use the word ‘unprecedented’ a lot during the Covid crisis – until the unfamiliar became dispiritingly familiar.

And here we are again with a situation that will be unprecedented for many school leaders – a national teacher strike on Wednesday, with further dates regionally and nationally in late February and March.

As so often, the situation isn’t straightforward. The strike action involves members of the National Education Union, not other unions (at this stage), and school leaders find themselves having to take a crash course in the esoteric complexities of industrial relations law.