Teachers strike again over disruptive behaviour

Teachers have gone on strike again following claims school leaders are not taking poor pupil behaviour seriously.

Despite staff at Haydon Bridge High School in Northumberland going on strike in December over the issue, the union NASUWT said the problems had yet to be "effectively" addressed.

Teachers went on strike on Tuesday and are due to take industrial action for a further 11 days in March and April.

The school said it was "extremely disappointed" and it had been working with staff as wells unions NASUWT and NEU on the issues identified.

Strikes are planned until Thursday as well as on 31 March and 1-2 April.

This will be followed by action from 21-23 and 28-30 April.

NASUWT said the strikes would not affect Year 10, 11 and 13 classes.

NASUWT Northumberland executive member, Julie Parkin, said the union had been raising concerns about behaviour for 18 months.

She said due to ineffective responses from school leaders, there were too many occasions when teaching and learning were being disrupted.

"The longer school leaders at Haydon Bridge continue to ignore problems with pupil behaviour, the more stressed and anxious the teachers become," she said.

"It is imperative now that leaders and governors engage with NASUWT further to ensure that Haydon Bridge can be a consistently safe, calm and effective learning environment."

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, an NEU spokesperson criticised school leaders over their commitment to implementing a new behaviour policy.

"Our members want to see the school starting to succeed rather than fail," they said.

Northumberland County Council said it had worked on several actions to tackle poor behaviour.

It said improvement plans were under way and it had hoped the unions would pause their action to allow these improvements to become "embedded".

"We are committed to build on this base to rapidly address the remaining issues," it said.

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