Children in England and Wales face a summer of disruption if industrial action being considered by the main classroom unions goes ahead.

The three big unions are under grassroots pressure to place a ceiling on class sizes which could lead to thousands of children being sent home.

The growing discontent among teachers over threatened redundancies and increased class sizes was expected to be underlined by yesterday’s announcement on pay, details of which came after The TES went to press.

As protests and threatened rebellions by governing bodies over budget cuts snowballed this week, it emerged that the Easter union conferences are set to be dominated by demands for action to limit the growth of class sizes.

Union leaders warned that the Government’s refusal to fund fully this year’s pay award could mean that teachers will refuse to take on extra work arising from job losses.

Teachers have already gone on strike over the cuts in Newcastle, where 96 schools closed for a day and strikes are planned next week in Oxfordshire and Leicestershire. The protests have been called because of planned job losses and widespread cuts in schools following the Government’s decision to restrict education authorities to 1.1 per cent rise in budgets in April.

Local authority leaders estimate that up to 10,000 teaching jobs will have to be cut to pay for an inflation-linked pay settlement.

Last month The TES published a leaked letter by Gillian Shephard, the Education Secretary, written during last autumn’s Cabinet negotiations on public spending, in which she claimed between 7,000 and 10,000 jobs would have to go unless more money was found to fund the award. Although she did obtain extra cash, LEAs are still facing a shortfall of Pounds 160 million.

Predictions of job losses came as the Government’s chief adviser on teacher supply, Geoffrey Parker, chairman of the Teacher Training Agency, warned of a likely shortage of secondary teachers. He claimed schools will face staff shortages in almost every secondary school subject if the economy continues to improve.

This week has seen governors threaten to resign en masse and set deficit budgets rather than sack teachers and implement cuts in their schools. Parents’ organisations have called for a radical review of the way education is funded. In a House of Commons debate this week David Blunkett, the Shadow Education Secretary, told Mrs Shephard that the battle was no longer just between the Government and local councils, but between the Government and parents and governors.

John Dunford, vice-president of the Secondary Heads Association and headteacher of Durham Johnston School, Durham, said he would not be able to educate children full-time to the age of 16 if he had to make further cuts next year.

Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoomasters Union of Women Teachers, predicted a grassroots rebellion from his members. He said: “We’re coming under intense pressure to take action over class sizes. We want to run in concert with governors who seem to be expressing the same worries.”

His national executive has agreed that a class-size report, which will seek to set a ceiling on numbers and look at supporting individual schools with industrial action, will be the centre piece for debate at conference.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has agreed to include a motion which takes a tough line against large classes. The motion calls for the executive to advise members not to take sole responsibility, for more than two consecutive days, of classes of more than 31 or more than 29 in mixed-aged classes. ATL members will also hear the results of a survey, based on 5,810 schools, which shows that as many as 5,440 experienced, and therefore expensive, teachers were shed last year when the pay award of 2.9 per cent was underfunded.

The NUT leadership, which recommends class sizes for primary and secondary schools of 26 children, will face several demands at its Blackpool conference for action to limit class sizes.