Teachers could strike over sixth-form cuts

NUT threatens industrial action if jobs are lost due to £200m funding shortfall

Spending cuts which could rob up to 50,000 teenagers of sixth-form and college places this autumn will create a "lost generation", teachers warned yesterday.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers' conference in Cardiff also said they would strike if teachers were threatened with losing their jobs. The union unanimously backed a motion calling for a ballot on industrial action if teachers were to face redundancy over the funding shortfall.

Teachers said that the estimated £200m cut would leave young people on the streets without jobs instead of at school or college. Ken Cridland, a physics teacher from Lancashire, said his school would be missing out on funding for between 30 and 40 sixth-form places this autumn. This was on top of losing 12 teaching jobs last year.

"There is something our members need to see from us and that is a commitment to defend our jobs," he said.

"It would be really good to remind those who are in power what they will be faced with if they plan any more cuts to solve their economic crisis."

Yesterday's motion warned that young people would become "part of another 'lost generation' like the school leavers of the 1980s".

Moving the motion, Martin Allen, from Ealing, west London, said: "This is going to ration opportunities.

"If you're going to do the Pre-U [an exam used in some private schools as a more traditional alternative to A-levels] at Eton or Harrow it is not going to affect you – life is going to go on. If you're a working class kid going to do a vocational course at a further education college, it is going to affect you."

Jane Bassett, a teacher from London, added: "It is an absolute disgrace that a Labour government has now turned round to the young people we've been teaching and said 'you don't count any more, you're on the scrap heap and we're not going to fund your education.'"

She likened the cuts to the decline of the mining industry and manufacturing jobs in the 1980s, adding: "We cannot afford to let another generation be lost, another generation to be left on their own to sink or swim."

In her address to the conference, Christine Blower, the NUT's acting general secretary, added: "The gap between the rich and those in poverty in our society has widened and, as that gap widens, so does the attainment gap. Even at a time of economic uncertainty the pledges to those in poverty at home and globally must be kept." One headteacher, Rob Bevan, of Southend High School for Boys, has already warned that some subjects, such as French, German and music, might have to be dropped at A-level.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has acknowledged the funding dilemma, blaming increasing numbers of young people wanting to stay on at school or college because of the recession. He has dropped hints that Chancellor Alistair Darling will find extra money for sixth form funding in his Budget next week. A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said a teachers strike would be "counter-productive and disrupt students' learning".

Teachers' leaders have warned that the funding crisis threatens three key government objectives: raising the education leaving age to 18; getting half of young people into higher education; and encouraging more pupils to study its flagship diplomas.