TEACHERS have staged a second one-day strike over plans to close their school – and threatened further action could follow.
Striking teachers from Belmont School, in Durham City, packed the benches of Consett Civic Centre for a meeting of Durham County Council’s cabinet, angrily putting their case to councillors.
Afterwards, Simon Kennedy, regional organiser for the National Association of Schoolmasters’ Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said: “I’m really disappointed we’re once again on strike. We don’t want to be on strike.”
But Mr Kennedy said further walk-outs were “inevitable, unless the council changes its mind”.
The union is fighting the council’s £75m plan to close six secondary schools – two in each of Durham, Consett and Stanley – and replace them with one new-build academy in each town.
The academies would be co-sponsored by the council and an educational body – a Durham University-led consortium in the case of Durham and Consett, and New College Durham in Stanley.
NASUWT says the scheme represents the privatisation of education.
Mr Kennedy and others put a series of questions to the council’s cabinet yesterday, over alleged Government pressure for the scheme, possible sites for the proposed Durham academy and potential opening dates. The council was also accused of ignoring a public consultation on the issue.
David Williams, the council’s corporate director for children and young people’s services, said: “The academies will bring tens of millions of pounds of additional resources, and far earlier than would be the case if we waited for Building Schools for the Future (another school rebuilding scheme).”
Councillor Claire Vasey, cabinet member for children and young people’s services, said: “We’ve considered the responses to the consultation and that’s what we promised to do. We need a strategic overview of education right across County Durham.
“As far as reorganisation and the timing, it’s all down to resource. We have an opportunity now.”
Outside the meeting, Mr Kennedy said: “We will continue to be involved in industrial action until they stop the academy in Durham.”
NASUWT teachers held an earlier one-day strike last month. Meanwhile, talks are continuing which could lead to teachers at affected schools in Consett and Stanley being balloted on strike action.
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