TEACHERS are due to abandon their industrial action over staff shortages to enter talks with the Government and local authorities.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) announced yesterday that it had attained "sufficient clarification" of offers of overtime pay and an independent evaluation of teachers' workload.

But the move comes as teachers are threatening separate industrial action over a move to demand a 35-hour working week.

Teachers are outraged that they face working more than 50 hours a week while their counterparts in Scotland have negotiated a maximum 35-hour week and 21 per cent pay increase over three years.

It has also prompted fears that teachers from the North will leave England, where there is a crisis in teacher shortages, and head for Scotland.

Hans Ruyssenaars, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) national executive member for Cleveland, said recent research had established that teachers were working 54 to 58-hour weeks.

"If you combine that with an unattractive salary structure compared with other graduate professions, it's no wonder there's a teacher shortage," he said.

"They have no trouble getting teachers in Scotland. Unfortunately, a number of them are coming from Northern England."

Yesterday, it emerged that talks between the Government and local authorities on the staff shortages issue would look at pay and conditions.

Schools in Middlesbrough are among those taking part in the action, which relates to "cover-to-contract", in which teachers are refusing to cover for absences of three days or more.

The campaign has been organised by the NUT and the NASUWT.

Doug McAvoy, NUT general secretary, said: "These negotiations provide an opportunity to agree improvements which, through the involvement of the Government, can go forward to the teachers' review body this autumn."

NUT bosses will meet at the union's annual conference in Cardiff on Thursday to recommend the action be suspended.

But members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers are still expected to back the motion for a 35-hour working week at their annual conference in Torquay this week, with teaching unions following suit.

Teachers are also demanding maximum class contact time of 22.5 hours a week and a simpler salary structure.