Education Diary: Fallout from the teachers' strike

* The fallout from the teachers' strike has produced a flurry of activity. The ATL says it has had a surge of membership enquiries. The NASUWT says it has, too, and that this always happens when another union takes a strong position. The NUT is boasting of its own surge. Membership at Royston High School in Barnsley is said to have swelled to include more than 80 per cent of staff. The NUT can even boast the scalp of Tony Mitchell, who was previously Royston's NASUWT rep for 20 years.

* The march last Thursday was a throwback to the golden age of union militancy in the 1980s, when pictures of teachers marching appeared regularly in the papers. Last week, 6,500 teachers descended on London. The result was that 4,000 of them were locked out of Central Hall Westminster due to overcrowding, and the NUT leadership had to engage in yet more nostalgia: megaphone diplomacy. Meanwhile, confusion reigned inside the hall, as Carlos Jasso, an Independent photographer, was mistaken for Jim Knight, the schools minister, by a senior NUT official. The general consensus is that dear old Carlos looks nothing like Mr Knight. We'll put that one down to strike-induced exhaustion. See if you can spot the difference from the two pictures above.

* Few would have thought that Michael Palin's comedic turn in A Fish Called Wanda has serious foundations. The ex-Python won a Bafta for his portrayal of stammering animal-lover Ken Pile, but it was based upon the painful experiences of his father, who suffered from stammering all his life. It was announced this week that the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children, which was established in 1993, is to be given £340,000 to raise awareness of the condition in schools across the country. The centre is a world leader in this field, and will use its expertise to deliver an information programme to all schools by 2010.

* We were saddened to hear of the death of Professor Brian Cox, the moving spirit behind the Black Papers, the first of which appeared in 1969 as an attack on "the excesses" of progressive education and the introduction of comprehensives. Cox was said to be traumatised by the publicity the Black Papers received and the way in which his ideas were appropriated by the right. But when he was brought in to advise Mrs Thatcher on the new national curriculum, he was revealed to be the liberal he had been all along.

* Congratulations to the now record-breaking Global Campaign for Education. More than 7.5 million children, adults, teachers and campaigners took part in the "World's Biggest Lesson" last Wednesday, shattering the world record for the largest simultaneous lesson in history (with return forms still to come in!). We reported from India a fortnight ago on the status of the Millennium Development Goals. This record-breaking lesson was organised by the Global Campaign for Education to raise awareness of the 72 million children who are missing out on education. All over the world, politicians and ministers went back to school and were taught the lesson by children before being asked what they planned to do to ensure everyone gets a quality education. Among those taking part was Shakira, the honorary chair of Global Action Week, who brought an air of glamour to the proceedings by taking part in a phonathon with Gordon Brown.