During Covid, the country found out what it was to disrupt schooling — three years of missed lessons, home learning and mask-wearing have meant a generation has lost out on its formative education. Many parents were forced out of the workplace to look after their children — with a long-term impact on their own careers. Now teachers are causing further disruption by walking out of the classroom in protest over their pay. How can they do this to their pupils?
Or so runs much outraged comment about industrial action in the teaching sector that is to continue for seven days in February and March. But this is of course mostly posturing — I note there was no such anger when the extra Coronation bank holiday was announced. A few days off school — no pupil will face more than four days of strikes — is nothing to the rolling disaster going on in classrooms throughout Britain.
