Tamworth teachers to strike over school plan
Teachers are to strike at four Staffordshire schools tomorrow in protest at plans to turn one of them into a privately-run academy.
Members of the two main teaching unions, the NASUWT and the National Union of Teachers, are holding a joint one-day stoppage at the Tamworth high schools.
The unions are protesting at plans to turn Woodhouse Business and Enterprise College, Tamworth, into an academy, as well as all sixth-form provision in the town being centralised in a new post-16 centre.
The NASUWT claims the plans could result in the loss of more than 70 teaching jobs, threaten teachers’ pay and working conditions and seriously weakening sixth-form provision in the area.
Strike action will hit Woodhouse as well as Belgrave High School, The Rawlett School and Wilnecote High School.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said teachers, head teachers, parents and the community were all opposed to the plans but their representations to Staffordshire County Council had “fallen on deaf ears.
“The proposals will rip the heart out of sixth-form provision and hand what’s left over to a private sponsor, Landau Forte.”
