WATCH: Cut teacher workload or face industrial action, ministers warned
WATCH: Cut teacher workload or face industrial action, ministers warned
Mary Bousted says teacher talent is being wasted on ‘industrial scale’ and tells the education secretary that the NEU will only continue ‘asking nicely’ for him to reduce workload for so long
The government has been “put on notice” that it will face industrial action unless it acts to cut teacher workload.
Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that the country was wasting teacher talent on an “industrial scale” because of the retention and recruitment crisis.
She told the education secretary, Damian Hinds, that the NEU was “asking nicely” for him to reduce workload, but “we will only ask for so long”.
Addressing the conference of the ATL section of the NEU, Dr Bousted said: “I see teachers, far too many teachers, deciding that enough is enough. They cannot cope, anymore, with the stress and exhaustion that affects teachers as a matter of routine.
“In England, we waste, on an industrial scale, the talent, commitment and potential of our teachers.”
She added: “I put the government on notice, now. It must trust its teachers and support them so that teachers can support their pupils and prepare them for life and work in the 21st century.”
She said that if Mr Hinds failed to heed the NEU’s demands on workload, it could face industrial action.
“Damian Hinds would do well to listen to our demands,” she said. “Because, at the moment, we are asking nicely. But we will only ask for so long. If we don’t get the answers we need, we will consult our members, whose pent-up discontent will not be held in much longer.
“If the government won’t take action on workload, the National Education Union will consult its members to do just that.”
Dr Bousted also called on the government to take action on Ofsted. She branded it as “not fit for purpose”, “an agency which, more than any other, has acted to exhaust teachers and school leaders and drive them from the profession”. “An agency,” she continued, “which has done more than any other to decimate teacher supply and to threaten educational standards in England”.
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