Dozens of teachers from across North Yorkshire converged on Harrogate today for a rally.

The National Education Union, Britain’s largest teachers’ union, is holding strikes today and on Tuesday as part of its latest wave of industrial action.

The NEU has organised rallies across North Yorkshire on previous strike days but today’s was the first in Harrogate. Teachers from as far as Scarborough took part.

Those taking part near the war memorial told the Stray Ferret their main reason for striking was the “crisis” in education, which had left many schools struggling to get any applicants for some teaching posts.

Today’s strike comes after alll four teaching unions turned the latest government offer of a one-off payment of £1,000 and a 4.3% pay rise, as well as an increase in the starting salary for teachers in England to £30,000 a year by September.

Gary McVeigh-Kaye, the North Yorkshire branch secretary of the NEU who organised today’s rally, described the government offer as “an insult”.

The Department for Education described it as a “fair and reasonable offer”.

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The National Education Union is to hold a rally in Harrogate on Thursday as part of a day of national strike action.

Teachers are due to strike on Thursday this week and Tuesday next week as part of their ongoing pay dispute with the government.

The action has been called after 98% of NEU members rejected the government’s latest pay offer.

Thursday’s rally by Britain’s largest teachers union will be held at Cambridge Crescent between 11am and noon and will include guest speakers from unions and the education sector.

Gary McVeigh-Kaye (pictured above), North Yorkshire branch secretary for the NEU, said:

“The government’s recent offer was an insult and in no way represented a serious negotiated settlement.

“Offering our members a 4.3% pay increase, whilst inflation is still over 10%, does not even begin to address the real terms pay cut of 24% most teachers have experienced under 13 years of Tory government.

“To add insult to injury, this pay increase was expected to be taken from already stretched school budgets.”

Mr McVeigh said the NEU had attracted 60,000 new members since its January strike ballot and called on the government to engage in “serious negotiations”.

Picket lines have been formed outside many schools in the Harrogate district on strike days.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has urged teachers to “get back to the classroom” and said a  4.5 per cent average pay rise would see the starting salary for a new teacher rise to £30,000.

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Thousands of teachers are in Harrogate this week for the National Education Union‘s annual conference.

Delegates poured into Harrogate Convention Centre this morning for the four-day event, which began with news that teachers had rejected the latest government pay offer and were preparing for more strikes on April 27 and May 2.

Visitors were greeted by dozens of activists outside the convention centre handing out leaflets and distributing copies of left-wing publications such as Morning Star and Socialist Worker.

The week will see numerous fringe events take place in Harrogate as well as at the conference centre and nearby hotels.

Delegates arrive this morning

The NEU is the largest teachers’ union with 32,000 members from 1,700 schools.

Its latest pay ballot was rejected by 98% of teacher members in England on a turnout of 66%.

Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU, issued a joint statement to delegates in Harrogate:

“This resounding rejection of the government’s offer should leave Education Secretary Gillian Keegan in no doubt that she will need to come back to the negotiating table with a much better proposal.

“These strikes are more than three weeks away; Gillian Keegan can avoid them.

“No teacher wants to be on strike. Nor can they accept this offer that does nothing to address the decades of below inflation pay increases making them the worst paid teachers in the UK.”

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Rail workers and teachers will be on strike in the Harrogate district today as part of the latest wave of industrial action.

More than 400,000 workers in various sectors took part in strikes yesterday in the biggest day of industrial action since unrest began last year.

They included the first of two planned teachers’ strikes by members of the National Education Union. Picket lines are expected to form outside schools in the district again today.

Today also sees RMT members at 14 train operators, including Northern, stage the first of four planned 24-hour strikes. The next one is due on Saturday.

Northern, whose services include those passing through Harrogate and Knaresborough, will run an amended strike timetable on the affected days, with a 12-hour operation on selected routes from 7am to 7pm.

Northern’s guide to services in the days ahead.

Tricia Williams, chief operating officer at Northern, urged customers to check before they travel.

Ms Williams said:

“We’re expecting the skeleton services we can run to be very busy – so customers should plan ahead and check before they travel.

“Given the reduced timetable only runs until 7pm, I’m very keen to stress that people should check their ‘last train home’ on those dates – so that customers don’t find themselves stranded at the wrong end of the line as a result of this action by the RMT.”

Junior doctors staged a picket line on Wetherby Road near Harrogate District Hospital on Monday as part of a 72-hour strike that finished yesterday.

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Teachers in the Harrogate district will go on strike today — and firefighters could be next.

The district has seen a wave of industrial action in recent weeks involving rail, postal, nursing and ambulance workers.

Members of the National Education Union, Britain’s largest teaching union, are on strike today in a move that will affect many local schools. Today will also see no Northern train services operate on the Harrogate and Knaresborough line.

Gary McVeigh-Kaye, branch secretary of the NEU North Yorkshire, said picket lines were being organised at Grove Road Community Primary School in Harrogate and King James’s School in Knaresborough.

There is also the prospect of Harrogate district firefighters walking out after the results of a strike ballot this week revealed 88% of Fire Brigades Union members voted yes on a 73% turnout.

The FBU has given the government and employers until February 9 to come forward with an improved pay offer to avert what would be the first nationwide fire strike since 2003.

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Harrogate is the only fire station crewed 24 hours in the Harrogate district and is likely to be affected by any action.

Harrogate Fire Station on Skipton Road

It is not known to what extent other local fire stations would be involved. Ripon is crewed from 8am to 6pm each day and on call outside these hours. There are 24-hour on call stations at Boroughbridge, Knaresborough, Masham and Summerbridge plus a volunteer station at Lofthouse.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said:

“This is an absolute last resort for our members. The responsibility for any disruption to services lies squarely with fire service employers and government ministers.

Teachers in state schools in the Harrogate district will strike tomorrow.

It means that schools will either close for the day or see classrooms disrupted if they decide to remain open.

The National Education Union, which is the largest teaching union in the country, is behind the industrial action that will affect schools in England and Wales.

Ninety percent of its 120,000 members voted to strike in a ballot.

It’s the latest strike to hit the UK this winter that has also seen nurses, rail workers, postal staff and paramedics join picket lines.

Why are teachers striking?

Most state school teachers in England and Wales had a 5% pay rise rise in 2022. But with inflation at over 10%, the NEU says this has resulted in a real-term pay cut for teachers.

The union also says teachers have lost 23% in real-terms pay since 2010, which it described as an “unsustainable situation”.

It believes low pay has led to thousands of teachers leaving the profession, including a third of those who have recently qualified.

Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU, said:

“The government must know there is going to have to be a correction on teacher pay. They must realise that school support staff need a pay rise.

“If they do not, then the consequences are clear for parents and children. The lack of dedicated maths teachers, for example, means that 1 in 8 pupils are having work set and assessed by people who are not qualified in the teaching of maths. Anyone who values education should support us in this dispute because that is what we are standing up for.”

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How will classrooms be affected?

A final decision on whether a school stays open is up the headteacher, although government guidance says they should take “all reasonable steps” to ensure they do not close.

Teachers are not required to tell the school if they intend to strike but headteachers can ask them in advance to help preparations.

For schools that remain open, other teachers may be asked to cover the classes of those taking industrial action. Classes may also be combined.

The government says if a school possible it should, where possible, provide online learning for children.

What does the government say and will the dispute be resolved?

If the union doesn’t reach an agreement over pay with the government, there are three more days of industrial action planned at schools in Yorkshire on the following dates:

Tuesday February 28
Wednesday March 15
Thursday March 16

But like similar disputes with health and rail unions, the government is so far holding firm against calls to increase teachers’ pay.

The secretary of state for education, Gillian Keegan, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend she was “disappointed” that this week’s strike was going ahead but she wanted to continue “constructive discussions” on pay.

Ms Keegan says the government has provided an extra £2bn in school funding, which she believes meets union demands.

There are reports in the media that Ms Keegan will meet with union bosses today in an attempt to avert Wednesday’s strikes.

If the talks are unsuccessful, we will be seeing the highly unusual sight of picket lines outside schools in North Yorkshire this week.

A Harrogate headteacher has said he is torn between his head and heart over this week’s teacher strike.

Children in years seven to 10 and year 12 at Harrogate Grammar School will study remotely from home on Wednesday when the first of four days of planned industrial action take place.

Pupils in years 11 and 13 will attend school as usual and have lessons if teachers are not striking.

Speaking on the BBC News channel today, headteacher Neil Renton said half of the school’s 115 staff belonged to the National Education Union, whose members had balloted in favour of the strikes.

Mr Renton said that as head he was keen to ensure the school stayed open but at the same time he could see the issues teachers faced and he therefore had conflicting emotions between his head and heart.

He said “there are just not enough teachers out there” and added one recent vacancy for an English teacher at the 2,000-pupil school attracted just one application.

Mr Renton, who said the union he belonged to would not be on strike this week, said too many teachers were leaving the profession. He added:

“If this continues and we are not able to work with government and ministers to create an education for the future I would, as an educator, want to take steps to make sure we make a much brighter education for our children.”

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Nurses and ambulance workers in the Harrogate district are set to strike on the same day in just over two weeks’ time.

Picket lines could be organised within yards of each other on Lancaster Park Road in Harrogate, where the hospital and the ambulance station are both located.

Unless strikes are averted, the Royal College of Nursing plans to carry out two days of industrial action on February 6 and 7.

Unite has scheduled another ambulance strike in Harrogate on February 6.

Ambulance workers striking in Harrogate this year.

There is also the prospect of schools being affected on February 1, when members of the National Education Union plan to strike before staging further walk-outs in February and March. A union official has predicted some schools will have to close.

Sandy Lay, a nurse at Harrogate District Hospital and a Liberal Democrat councillor representing Otley and Yeadon on Leeds City Council, told a full council meeting on Wednesday the government rather than striking nurses were harming patients.

But he added arrangement for patient care were often better on strike days than non-strike days because minimum service levels were in place,

He said:

“We want minimum service levels and minimum staff levels, but it has to be every day, not just on strike days.”

Hospital: ‘regrettable some services have been affected’

Asked what impact this week’s strikes had had on the hospital, and whether it would amend its plans for future strikes, a spokesman for Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust said:

“Comprehensive plans are in place to maintain the safety of patients requiring our services during the Royal College of Nursing’s industrial action.

“We are committed to providing the best possible levels of healthcare in any eventuality, and as ever, during the industrial action our focus has been on maintaining the safety of our patients.

“Whilst it is regrettable that some of our services have been affected by industrial action, we have ensured that essential services have remained available. Whilst we have been operating at reduced staffing levels in a number of areas such as inpatient wards, we worked with the RCN to ensure that we had sufficient nursing staff working to maintain patient safety.

“During the industrial action we have rescheduled appointments where it has been necessary. We have worked with the RCN to ensure that our services have remained safe.

“While pay is a matter for government and the trade unions, we greatly value our staff and respect those who have chosen to take part in industrial action. We want to see a resolution as soon as possible to ensure we can continue to focus on delivering high quality patient care to all those who need it.”

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