Strike action by teachers is “undermining” recovery efforts following the pandemic, the Education Secretary has warned.
Gillian Keegan said she could not think of “a worse time” for children to be kept “willingly” out of school as a result of teacher walkouts.
Her comments came as teacher members of the National Education Union (NEU) in England staged another strike in a long-running dispute over pay.
Many schools were either fully closed or restricted access to certain groups of pupils, while end-of-year activities were set to be disrupted this week.
It is the seventh day individual schools in England have faced walkouts by NEU members since February, and another strike is planned for Friday.
Daniel Kebede, the incoming leader of the NEU, warned that the Government will face a general strike in education if it fails to end the pay dispute.
But speaking to town hall chiefs on Wednesday afternoon, Ms Keegan said she thought she did “pretty well” at securing money from the Treasury for a pay offer made to teachers in March.
The Government offered teachers a £1,000 one-off payment for the current school year (2022/23) and an average 4.5% rise for staff next year after intensive talks with the education unions.
But all four education unions involved in the dispute rejected the offer, and the decision on teachers’ pay in England for next year has been passed to the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB).
Speaking at the Local Government Association (LGA) conference in Bournemouth on the day that teachers were on strike, Ms Keegan said: “This disruption is undermining the stability we have been working so hard to recover after the pandemic.
“Let me be clear we should not be having these strikes in general, but certainly not now.
“Children have been through so much in the pandemic and I can’t think of a worse time to be willingly keeping them out of school.”
At the LGA’s conference, where teachers demonstrated outside the event, Laura Wright, deputy leader of Exeter City Council and a former teacher, asked Ms Keegan when she last sat down with unions to discuss teachers’ pay.
The Education Secretary said: “I think I’ve done pretty well actually in terms of getting money from the Treasury, but all of it has not stopped a single strike so it’s very disappointing.
“I’m hoping that we can be in a different place let’s say soon but it is very disappointing.”
In May, the Sunday Times reported the STRB has recommended a 6.5% pay rise for teachers, but the Government is yet to formally publish the pay review body’s recommendation.
The NEU – alongside the NASUWT teaching union, the NAHT school leaders’ union and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) – are currently balloting their members in England to take action in the autumn.
Picket lines were mounted outside schools and sixth form colleges across England on Wednesday, and a number of rallies took place.
Striking teachers marched in Westminster in central London before taking part in a rally in Parliament Square. They booed as they passed the Department for Education (DfE) offices.
Addressing thousands at the rally in London, Mr Kebede, NEU general secretary-elect, said: “If this Government doesn’t deliver there will be a general strike in education. Get ready now.
“It’s not going to be easy, and it will get harder, but we will win because we have justice on our side.”
Members of the NEU went on strike across England on February 1, March 15 and 16, April 27 and May 2.
Regional walkouts by NEU members also took place between February 28 and March 2, where any individual school took one day of strike action across the three-day period.
During the most recent national strike action on May 2, Department for Education (DfE) data suggests that 50% of state schools in England were open but restricting attendance and 5% were fully closed.
