WALES: Day Off for Pupils As Teachers Strike

By CARL BUTLER

NEARLY 1,000 children were forced to take the day off school yesterday when teachers staged a one-day strike.

Around 45 members of the teaching union NASUWT at Denbigh High School walked out in a row over pay and other undisclosed issues. The union and school governors blame each other for the dispute.

Last year a new pay structure was introduced in schools in Wales, with teaching and learning responsibility payments (TLRs) replacing the previous system of management allowances.

Assistant General Secretary of the NASUWT, Roger Darke, joined teachers on the picket line outside the school yesterday.

He said: "This started because the school was not introducing those changes in a proper and open manner. That is how it started, but I’m afraid it has opened out over the last year to many other working practices in the school."

Governors say they made several compromises but the union introduced new issues at a late stage.

In a statement they said: "It is very disappointing that after all this effort the NASUWT have determined upon industrial action. The strike can only serve to affect young people’s education and to hold back the school from the progress it should be making."

But the union says: "The strike action follows failure of the Governing Body and Local Education Authority to respond positively to the attempts by the NASUWT tore solve a long-running dispute at the School."

Yesterday Mr Darke would not disclose the specific issues which are upsetting his members.

"I believe we can solve the matter of the teaching and learning responsibility payments but we need an open attitude from governors to solve working practices within the school.

"We don’t want to negotiate through the media. There are practices which need to be looked at and what we are saying to the governors is ‘join with us, we will co-operate with you’.

"We went into the last meeting with them and they had firm and fixed ideas and were not willing to talk, we wanted to move things on."

carlbutler@dailypost.co.uk

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