Catherwood LibraryILR School

With a historic first strike in twenty years by London area teachers not a week past (see WIT for March 15, 2002), Britain’s three teachers’ unions have made it clear that they are ready to engage in nationwide strikes if the government does not agree to meaningful regulation of teacher workloads in the current round of contract negotiations. The country’s three teachers’ unions are showing a new militancy---and continuing to present the united front instrumental in achieving a review of the teachers’ contract last year---in their demand for limits on teaching hours, duties and total working hours. In addition to the possibility of industrial action and even a merger by the teachers’ unions, the government is also faced with the growing likelihood that headteachers and school governors will refuse to administer a new performance pay system which they claim is too severely under-funded to be implemented.