Hundreds of thousands of children missed school yesterday as parents turned their backs on David Cameron’s plea to volunteer as classroom helpers to beat the teachers’ strike.
Almost 13,000 schools were disrupted by the biggest walkout by teachers since in 1987, when a strike over pay was faced down by Margaret Thatcher.
Head teachers largely ignored the Prime Minister’s call to enrol parents to help keep schools open, citing their lack of training and experience, difficulties over criminal record checks and guaranteeing pupils’ safety.
A total of 7,690 schools closed altogether with a further 5,234 having to send some pupils home because of the strike, the Department for Education said. Another 6,131 stayed fully open. Officials were unable to gain information on another 4,320.
Analysis by The Times suggested that among the worst-hit areas were Bolton, Greater Manchester, where 82 per cent of maintained schools sent home some or all of their pupils, and Cumbria, where 71 per cent of schools were affected.
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Least disrupted areas included Kent, where 34 per cent of schools were partially or fully closed and Worcestershire and Surrey, where 46 per cent of schools sent children home.
Surrey County Council, which includes the constituency of Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, advised its head teachers that using volunteers was “best avoided” for fear of creating tensions in schools. “Schools need to balance their statutory duty to provide education [through achieving as normal a working day as possible for pupils] with the need to engender goodwill amongst remaining staff, particularly bearing in mind that they may be supportive of the industrial action even if they are not a direct party to it,” the council advised.
At Hounslow Town Primary School in West London, there was no sign of a mums’ army offering to help after half the teachers joined the strike “Even if you were a sympathetic parent the practicalities of it wouldn’t have worked out,” said Chris Hill, the head teacher. The need for Criminal Records Bureau checks and problems with protecting pupil confidentiality prevented the idea taking hold.
Among parents dropping off their children at Sutton Manor Community Primary School in St Helens, Merseyside, half of whose teachers joined the strike, it was a similar story. Parents were more concerned with makeshift childcare arrangements than spending the day in a classroom.
On the MumsNet website, the most popular discussion this week has been on rejecting the invitation to parents to stand in for teachers. More than 350 parents signed a petition started yesterday in support of the teachers’ action.
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Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of another website, Netmums, said she had not heard of any parents who had heeded the call to volunteer. “I know that schools have said, ‘No thank you, we’re not going to have parents to help’,” she said.
Mr Gove said that people were “rallying around” head teachers but cited no evidence. “The fact that there are a significant number of schools that are open and functioning properly suggests to me that the communities are rallying round those head teachers,” he said during a visit to a primary school in South London.
There was an ugly mood, although little trouble, among teachers who joined a protest march for public sector workers in Westminster, mirroring similar marches in Exeter, Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sheffield.
“This is the last straw,” Sheila Higgins, 59, a teacher at St Margaret’s School in Plumstead, southeast London, said. “I’d like Michael Gove to come and spend a week doing my job. Spend all Sunday evening planning lessons, then teach classes where four or more children have special behavioural problems but there’s no one to help, and then stay until 9pm for a parents’ evening. When he does that he can come and tell me about cutting my pension.”
Banners proclaiming schools’ names wound their way through London in a stream of colour as an estimated 20,000 marched in the capital. Strikers blew whistles and chanted while members of Black Bloc, an anarchist group, played We Are F***ing Angry by The King Blues through a loudspeaker.
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The Metropolitan Police, whose officers clashed with a group of younger protesters, made 37 arrests. One 15-year-old, who gave his name only as Ray, said he had been stopped three times for “wearing black”. “Some of us kids don’t know what you mean when you say ‘pension’,” he said. “But they know this Government is bad news.”
Sarah Byrne, a teacher at a secondary in Hackney, East London, said: “We are marching because the Government want us to work for longer on less pay. We’ve already had a few teachers off our staff for stress — it’s a very physical job. I just object to the whole idea that we can’t pay for public pensions when we can bail out the bankers and pay for wars. We teachers, we’re already under-resourced. What would I call my job? Firefighting.”
Time out
300,000 Teachers walked out, as well as ...
100,000 civil servants
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4,000 Borders Agency staff
24% of driving test examiners
95% of Met Police
999 staff
22 Coastguard workers (out of 1,133)
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20,000 Joined marches in London
18 Jobcentres closed
4 unions involved in yesterday’s strike action: the NUT, ATL, PCS and UCU
Source: Times research