Angry teachers plot class war

Trouble is brewing in classrooms as teachers rebel against their workload, tests, and the amount of money the Government is putting into education. On the eve of the Easter conference season, Richard Garner asks: is teacher militancy growing?

Tomorrow is the start of the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers, the biggest teaching union which this year is being boycotted by Education Secretary Charles Clarke. Relations between the NUT and the Government are at an all-time low – worse even that they were during the strike-torn Thatcher years. So, expect the sparks to fly.

This year's NUT conference in Harrogate could signal the start of a new period of teacher militancy. There are straws in the wind suggesting that teachers could be taking strike action as early as next term.

There will be angry speeches criticising government ministers, the key stage tests for seven, 11 and 14-year-olds and about the funding crisis which is hitting schools this year. There will also be fiery talk against the idea of classroom assistants taking classes in place of trained teachers.

Charles Clarke has declined an invitation to attend the conference because of the union refusal to sign an agreement allowing classroom assistants to take over lessons. That could well exacerbate the sense of powerlessness that teachers feel. Certainly it could bring together the Left and the "Broadly Speaking" group which used to be called the Broad Left and which controls power on the NUT's executive.

The Left and the Centre Left are now in general agreement on three important issues. On teacher workload, there is not much difference between Doug McAvoy, the Centre Left general secretary, and the Left, according to Bernard Regan, a founder member of the Left-wing Socialist Teachers Alliance. "He (Doug) is prepared to reimpose action on workload," says Regan. This action – essentially a work-to-rule – began two years ago and led to the setting up of the government-backed review of teachers' workload. It involved boycotting administrative tasks and out of hours activities, including catch-up lessons for pupils outside normal lesson time.

The NUT is expected to restart this action if it transpires there are not enough resources to make it work. It will mean a ban on the 25 tasks which ministers have agreed should not normally be done by teachers but by administrative staff from this September. It will also mean teachers walking out of the classroom for the equivalent of half a day a week if the Government doesn't give all teachers 10 per cent of their working time for marking and preparation.

Doug McAvoy has also warned that teachers will not help classroom assistants prepare lessons, mark any work or deal with discipline problems arising from lessons they take if it adds to teachers' workload.

On the second issue of national curriculum tests for 7, 11 and 14-year-olds, there has been some disagreement between the Left and the ruling group in the run-up to the conference. The executive voted not to ballot on a boycott this year. A survey of members had shown a large majority in favour of a boycott but this depended on support from the other two TUC-affiliated unions, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which was not forthcoming.

Doug McAvoy is now bracing himself for cries of a "sell-out" from the floor at the NUT conference. Both sides agree that the most likely result will be a boycott next year and the executive is not opposing that.

"Up until a couple of meetings ago, the executive would have been prepared – with some anxiety – to have gone for a boycott of key stage one tests this year," says Doug McAvoy. Opposition to tests for seven-year-olds has been stronger since Welsh schools abandoned them.

"But there was a recognition that – if you had a primary school with key stage one and two tests (for 11-year-olds), you couldn't boycott one and not the other," he says. "You couldn't explain to a parent why their seven-year-old's test was being boycotted but their 11-year-old's wasn't."

Because of all this, the boycott was dropped for this year, defeated by just four votes at the executive meeting. But it is very definitely on the agenda for next year. So, expect action on this issue in 2004, if not before.

During the executive debate there was a passionate speech by one of the Left members in favour of a boycott. "She outlined all the educational reasons why we shouldn't be doing the tests," says McAvoy. "It was very persuasive and I would almost have been persuaded to vote for it. If she speaks at conference, she'll carry the floor with her."

The union's strategy is to campaign with parents and governors to try to persuade the Government to drop the tests. If that fails, it will ballot its members on a boycott in advance of next year's tests.

The third issue which unites the Left and the Centre-Left is funding. Even union leaders have been surprised at the number of schools talking about teacher redundancies this year as they struggle to cope with salary increases, increased pension contributions and national insurance. An emergency motion will be tabled calling for local strike action to prevent redundancies.

It would be wrong to characterise all this as evidence of the union moving further to the Left. What it is, however, is evidence of a hardening in opposition to government policies and a realisation that industrial action will be needed to make a stand.

The Left, which is made of up two main groupings – the Socialist Teachers' Alliance and the Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union – has never controlled the union's executive. The nearest it has come was a couple of years ago when there was a 22 to 20 split (with one of the 22 prone to independent tendencies, thus sometimes causing a tie). At present, Broadly Speaking has around a four-vote majority.

To explain the differences between the two main Left groupings (and the ultra-Left Socialist Workers' Party, which appears on the conference floor but has no members on the executive) is to court comparison with Monty Python's Life of Brian where the Judea People's Front and the People's Front of Judea more often than not clashed with each other as they attempted to oppose the Romans. According to one insider, the STA has a broader political perspective than the CFDU which has an action-based approach to education issues.

This year's conference takes place against the backcloth of an impending election for a new general secretary. Doug McAvoy, who is approaching 65, is expected to retire in 2004.

John Illingworth, a former president of the union who is a primary school head in Nottingham and a CFDU member, has already thrown his hat into the ring as a Left candidate. The other two candidates are likely to be Steve Sinnott, the deputy general secretary, and John Bangs, its head of education who has been led the talks on reducing workload. Mr Bangs is the favourite because he is widely respected on both sides for the way he has handled his brief.

Could the upcoming election be the cause of the new-found militancy? Some observers say the centre always moves left at such moments but both sides point this time to a new mood of determination among the grass-roots.

According to Bernard Regan, the war with Iraq plays a part. "Teachers see that billions of pounds can be found for defence while teachers face redundancies," he says.

Doug McAvoy says that the union's membership has grown by seven per cent since it refused to sign the workload agreement. It is expected to declare it has reached 250,000 – a height not scaled since the heady days of the Sixties and Seventies – at the conference.

Whatever the reason, militancy is making a comeback. This time next year there is likely to have been action – regional over threatened teacher redundancies, possible work-to-rules over workload, and a ballot will have committed the union to boycotting national curriculum tests in 2004.

r.garner@independent.co.uk

NUT action: a brief history

1969: First (and only) national all-out strike in the union's history – a one-day stoppage in protest at the refusal to give teachers an interim pay award before annual pay talks were concluded.

1978: National withdrawal of goodwill in protest at the decision of Shirley Williams, the Education Secretary, to block progress on a commission of inquiry into teachers' pay. It involved banning lunchtime supervision and out-of-hours sports and drama clubs – voluntary activities to which many teachers never returned.

1984-87: A series of rolling three-day strikes all over the country. They started in protest at Mrs Thatcher's decision to remove the automatic right for teachers' pay negotiations to go to arbitration if sides failed to reach agreement. Arbitration became compulsory when the independent chairman of the Burnham pay negotiating committee ruled talks had irretrievably broken down. A pay and conditions deal was eventually imposed by the Government followed by an independent review body for the profession.

1993-94: A boycott of national curriculum tests in protest at increased workload (although many teachers also believed that the tests were educationally unsound). The first year saw a boycott by the three biggest teaching unions and led to a review of the curriculum by Sir Ron Dearing, Education's Mr Fixit. Only the NUT continued the boycott for a further year.