Closing Summary
Thanks for tuning into our live coverage of today’s strikes, the single biggest day of UK industrial action for more than a decade.
Up to half a million people participated in a coordinated strike today involving teachers, civil servants, border force staff and train drivers. Here’s a recap of the day:
One in eight schools and colleges in England and Wales were unaffected by today’s teachers’ strike, while 9% were closed entirely, according to a survey of head teachers carried out by the Association of School and College Leaders.
A majority of parents support strike action by teachers, despite the disruption it will cause them, according to a new poll by Parentkind, the membership organisation for parent-teacher associations. More than 1200 parents took part in the survey and over half (54%) said they supported strike action by National Education Union members, while only 36% opposed it.
At an NEU rally in Westminster, the RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, told thousands of striking teachers outside Downing Street “we are the working class, and we are back”. He added: “We are here, we are demanding change, we refuse to be bought, and we are going to win for our people on our terms.”
When asked what prime minister Rishi Sunak is doing to sort out the industrial action, his official spokesman said: “We want to have further talks with the unions. Some of those discussions have been constructive. We have to balance that against the need to be fair to all taxpayers, the majority of whom don’t work for the public sector.”
Civil servants covering for striking Border Force staff received just two days’ training before taking up their posts, the Guardian understands. Some NCA staff in Calais say they had little official training before being put to work at passport control
Union leaders have given the education secretary until the end of the month to ‘change her stance’. Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretaries of the NEU, said: “Today, we put the education secretary on notice. She has until our next strike day for England, 28 February, to change her stance.”
Thousands of students have joined striking university staff on picket lines across the country, the University and College Union (UCU) said. Jo Grady, UCU general secretary, said: “We have been overwhelmed by the support of thousands of students who have joined us on picket lines across the country.”
The former shadow chancellor has said public sector pay rises can be paid for by taxing capital gains at the same level as income. John McDonnell said: “We just need a fair taxation system. The issue at the moment is that we seem to have a Government that is redistributing wealth upwards.”
The TUC has not ruled out taking the government to court if the minimum service levels bill is passed into law. Trades Union Congress assistant general secretary Kate Bell said the legislation is “unnecessary, unfair and almost certainly illegal”.
The Welsh government education minister said the blame for the strikes lies with the UK government. As the government tries to resolve the dispute, Jeremy Miles said: “there are very real constraints on the Welsh government’s budget because of the frankly disgraceful position the UK government aren’t making enough funding available across the UK for public services.”
A deal that would bring an end to strikes is “further away than when we started” following months of failed negotiations with the government, said the Aslef general secretary, Mick Whelan. “This isn’t a new government – the same people have been in place for 12 years,” he told PA Media.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “I think Gillian Keegan [the education secretary] is hoping our strike is ineffective and people won’t do it again.” He added: “I think she’s wrong about that. There could be further action. She needs to do a deal so that that doesn’t happen.”
The National Education Union stands ready to negotiate once the education secretary “gets her act together and her story straight”, said union chief Mary Bousted. “Unfortunately about 85% of schools will be impacted for a strike that didn’t need to happen if the government had been prepared to negotiate,” she said.
Heathrow airport said it was operating as normal with minimal queuing in immigration halls despite the strike by border force workers. “Heathrow is fully operational, passengers are flowing through the border smoothly with Border Force and the military contingency providing a good level of service for arriving passengers,” a spokesperson for the airport said.
Paying public sector workers is a matter of “political priority”, said the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), Mark Serwotka. He said the government claimed it would cost £29bn to give every public sector worker what they’ve demanded; however, its calculations are near £10bn. “And £10bn in an economy like ours can easily be found,” said Serwotka.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan told Sky News “our objective this year is to get rid of the problem, which is inflation.” Keegan told Times Radio she was “disappointed” that a strike by teachers in England and Wales are going ahead and said the industrial action was unnecessary as discussions with the unions were continuing.
Here’s a look at upcoming industrial action:
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Strikers unite across England: ‘Our disputes may be separate but we have one aim’
In what was billed as the biggest day of industrial action in a decade, workers from teachers to train drivers, civil servants to university staff went on strike on Wednesday.
Guardian reporters spoke to groups of workers on picket lines and at demonstrations in Bristol, Birmingham and London.
Read more here:
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At a rally in Glasgow nearing lunchtime, the deputy general secretary of the Scottish TUC Dave Moxham said the British people were “seeing through” the UK government’s reasons for the bill.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, he said the mood was “resolute, confident but also angry because it’s a really bad choice to say to people during a period when - through desperation in many cases - they’re taking in action that someone’s going to take that right away.”
This bill goes way beyond other countries quoted by the government, it fundamentally removes the right of strike from some workers and it gives employers or even the business secretary the choice of who they decide should lose that fundamental right to strike. It’s not necessary in terms of safety, it’s highly unnecessary in terms of people’s liberty and it’s something we’ll continue to oppose.
Moxham said there was a “completely different atmosphere” in terms of how the Scottish government approached industrial action, amidst ongoing public sector pay disputes across the country that have most recently seen teachers on strike across 16 days of rolling strikes.
“We’re much closer to them in terms of our shared understanding of trade union democracy.”
Staff working at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh and the Scottish government have also walked out today and the Scottish Greens and Scottish Labour will not be participating in any parliamentary business on Wednesday.
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Just one in eight schools and colleges in England and Wales have been unaffected by today’s teachers’ strike, while 9% were closed entirely, according to a survey of head teachers carried out by the Association of School and College Leaders.
The survey was carried out this morning by the union and found that 13% of schools that responded were fully open as normal or had no teachers on strike.
Geoff Barton, the ASCL’s general secretary, said:
The overwhelming feeling among school and college leaders and teachers today will be one of sadness that we have reached a point at which strike action has been taken as a last resort against a government that will not listen.
“This has clearly been a difficult day for everyone concerned, but the stark truth is that the erosion of teacher pay and conditions over the past decade, and resulting teacher shortages, mean every day in education is a difficult one.
“We implore the government to avert further industrial action by improving pay and conditions and addressing the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.”
Of 948 head teachers and principals in England and Wales, mostly in secondary schools, 97% (920) reported that teachers were on strike. In 35% (330) more than half of teachers took part in the industrial action.
Of the 920 schools and sixth-form colleges where teachers were on strike:
11% (97) were fully open with all students on-site
80% (738) were partially open with some students on-site
9% (85) were completely shut with no students on site.
Those that were partially open or completely shut took a range of measures to support students, depending on how the circumstances of the strike affected their setting.
Of these 823 respondents:
86% (709) provided work for students to do at home
81% (668) had on-site provisions for vulnerable students
35% (284) made phone calls to vulnerable students who were not on-site
38% (315) had on-site provisions for children of critical workers
60% (496) had on-site provisions for exam year groups
17% (136) had on-site provisions for students eligible for free school meals, with others providing measures such as packed lunches and vouchers
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More than 100,000 teachers took to the streets, demanding a pay rise above inflation, funded by the government, rather than from existing school budgets.
The value of teachers’ salaries has fallen significantly in recent years, contributing to a recruitment crisis in schools. Further strikes are expected from the public sector as pressure mounts on the government to increase salaries.
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A majority of parents support strike action by teachers, despite the disruption it will cause them, according to a new poll by Parentkind, the membership organisation for parent-teacher associations.
More than 1200 parents took part in the survey and over half (54%) said they supported strike action by National Education Union members, while only 36% opposed it, and almost two thirds (63%) agreed teachers should receive a pay settlement in line with current inflation.
Parentkind’s CEO, Jason Elsom, said:
With strike action taking place today across England and Wales, parents will be managing with a varied picture of partial or total school closures. What our polling has shown however, is that despite the inconvenience caused by industrial action, the majority of parents clearly support the action being taken by teachers.
“Nobody wants schools to be closed and nobody wants children to lose days of learning, and so it’s in this vein that parents across the country want the government and the teaching unions to work together to achieve a fair and lasting settlement to the question of teacher pay. Only then can disruption to children’s education be kept to a minimum.”
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Speaking at an NEU rally in Westminster, the RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, told thousands of striking teachers outside Downing Street “we are the working class, and we are back”.
Lynch said, according to PA news:
Welcome to Westminster, the house of fools and the house of the corrupt … Last year, Grant Shapps, remember him? He’s still around. Lurking around all of these buildings here, running the Government, telling Rishi Sunak what to do, trying to ban the working class.
“He was telling the media that the railway workers have got no friends, that we would be back at work, and how dare we ask for a pay rise when teachers can’t afford to live when nurses are more deserving cases, when public-sector workers can’t get a pay deal.
“Our message then, as it is today, is every worker needs a pay rise, every worker needs a square deal.
And our message is sod this, we demand, and we are united. We will not be divided on the basis of who we work for. We will not be divided on the basis of our belief, or the colour of our skin, or the part of the country we are from. We are the working-class, and we are back. We are here, we are demanding change, we refuse to be bought, and we are going to win for our people on our terms.”
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When asked what Rishi Sunak is doing to sort out the industrial action, his official spokesperson told PA news:
We want to have further talks with the unions. Some of those discussions have been constructive. We have to balance that against the need to be fair to all taxpayers, the majority of whom don’t work for the public sector.
“As we’ve seen from the IMF just this week, inflation is one of the biggest risks to people’s pay packets and the government will continue to take responsible action to ensure public sector workers are paid fairly but that it’s also affordable for the taxpayer.”
When asked about the apparent unwillingness of the prime minister or chancellor to meet with union leaders, the official said:
I wouldn’t agree with that statement. I think it is true that obviously we need to consider it in the round.
“But equally, we think the fair thing to do is to have an independent body that considers things like inflation, and other input factors like retention and recruitment in coming to a judgment. That’s what’s happened this time round, that’s what we think should happen for the current pay review period we’re in.”
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Border Force strike: cover staff report getting just two days’ training
Exclusive: Some NCA staff in Calais say they had little official training before being put to work at passport control
Civil servants covering for striking Border Force staff received just two days’ training before taking up their posts, the Guardian understands.
During the first set of strikes in December, members of the armed services and staff from Whitehall received between five and seven days of training before being asked to check on crimes such as carrying a false passport, drug smuggling, people trafficking and modern slavery.
Border Force guards are usually given three weeks of training as a minimum before they interact with the public. After the three weeks, they are given a mentor to work alongside for up to a month to ensure they can work solo on a passport desk.
But some National Crime Agency (NCA) staff who are working in Calais received just two days of official training before being put to work at passport control.
One informed source said: “Staff from NCA have been brought in to cover strikers in Calais. Two days of training and a quick familiarisation visit on Tuesday and then protecting the borders on Wednesday.”
Read more here:
Union leaders give education secretary until end of month to 'change her stance'
The education secretary must “step up with concrete and meaningful proposals” on teachers’ pay to prevent further strikes, union leaders have said.
Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretaries of the NEU, said, PA news reports: “This is no cause for celebration, but an indication of the level of anger among our members.
It is a huge statement from a determined membership who smashed through the Government’s thresholds that were only ever designed to prevent strike action happening at all. Today, we put the education secretary on notice. She has until our next strike day for England, 28 February, to change her stance.
The National Education Union (NEU) has estimated around 85% of schools in England and Wales have been affected by teacher strikes.
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Hundreds gathered in Birmingham this afternoon for one of many national strike action rallies being held around the country.
The crowd was largely made up of members of the NEU, PCS and UCU, representing teachers, civil servants and university staff respectively, but there were also some NHS workers and Amazon staff from the Coventry factory which went on strike last week in a UK first.
A large crowd was led in a chorus of ‘I’d rather be a picket than a scab’, a throwback to the 1980s miners’ strikes before speakers took to the stage.
Large crowd gathered in Birmingham city centre for a national strike action rally - members from @NEUnion @pcs_union @ucu and more pic.twitter.com/Ah9GlMtvyC
— Jessica Murray (@JournoJess_) February 1, 2023
One teacher and NEU rep said she came from a family of teachers - her grandfather and mother were teachers, while her son, uncle and two cousins are all in the profession.
“In my family, we take the privilege of teaching very seriously,” she said. “I have never been on strike before, until today. If I do not protest today, I will be failing the children I am teaching tomorrow.
“I speak for every child being taught by a non-specialist teacher because teaching is underfunded. I speak for every child who cannot have a teaching assistant because teaching is underfunded.
“As parents and children cannot strike to protest about this. I have to start working and protest for them.”
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Hundreds gathered in Birmingham this afternoon for one of many national strike action rallies being held around the country.
The crowd was largely made up of members of the NEU, PCS and UCU, representing teachers, civil servants and university staff respectively, but there were also some NHS workers and Amazon staff from the Coventry factory which went on strike last week in a UK first.
A large crowd was led in a chorus of “I’d rather be a picket than a scab”, a throwback to the 1980s miners strikes, before speakers took to the stage.
Large crowd gathered in Birmingham city centre for a national strike action rally - members from @NEUnion @pcs_union @ucu and more pic.twitter.com/Ah9GlMtvyC
— Jessica Murray (@JournoJess_) February 1, 2023
One teacher and NEU rep said she came from a family of teachers - her grandfather and mother were teachers, while her son, uncle and two cousins are all in the profession.
“In my family, we take the privilege of teaching very seriously,” she said. “I have never been on strike before, until today. If I do not protest today, I will be failing the children I am teaching tomorrow.
“I speak for every child being taught by a non-specialist teacher, because teaching is underfunded. I speak for every child who cannot have a teaching assistant, because teaching is underfunded.
“As parents and children cannot strike to protest about this. I have to start working and protest for them.”
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Rail passengers across Britain face more disruption on Wednesday, with no trains at all running on most routes in England as train drivers start the first of two days of strikes this week.
The seventh day of national action in the past year by the Aslef union will affect 14 operating companies, with all but four of them suspending services entirely.
Passengers have been asked to check before attempting to travel, with just a skeleton service on Greater Anglia, LNER and GWR. South Western Railway, where only depot drivers are striking, hopes to run a full service.
Read more here:
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Thousands of striking workers, including civil servants, university lecturers, teachers and train drivers marched through Bristol calling for better pay and working conditions.
Led by drummers and accompanied by many children whose schools have been forced to close, a large, noisy crowd gathered on College Green in the city before processing through the city centre, generally receiving a warm welcome from passers-by.
Union members marching through Bristol pic.twitter.com/iYMqlmxm9B
— steven morris (@stevenmorris20) February 1, 2023
Jon Voake, a drama teacher at Downend school in south Gloucestershire, said: “It’s partly about pay, which has been reduced by 11% over the last 10 years. But it’s also about how our workload’s going up. We’re all working with bigger groups. Children’s education is going to suffer and enough is enough.”
Voake was there with his department’s mascot, an ogre called Fred made for a school production but now taken out on strikes. “He gets out more than we’d like,” said Voake.
“This is the fifth time I’ve been out in 20 years. It was good when the Labour government was in last. That was a time we felt a bit of money was going into schools. Since then the buildings, the equipment have deteriorated and there’s not enough money to replace them. We’ve had lots of support on the picket line. One guy bought us 12 doughnuts.
Jon Voake, a drama teacher from south Gloucestershire, one of many hundreds of teachers joining the union rally in Bristol. pic.twitter.com/0rayDsGiHn
— steven morris (@stevenmorris20) February 1, 2023
Liz Franco, a civil servant and a member of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “We’re way behind in terms of our wages. I’ve been conflicted about going on strike but we need to show we are serious about this and something needs to be done. We’re looking to the government for more planned approach for everybody, creating a much fairer landscape.”
She said workers from Defra, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency were all attending the rally and march. “There’s a variety of jobs and people of all ages. Feelings are strong.”
Liz Franco, a civil servant and a member of the Public and Commercial Services Union, taking part in the rally in Bristol. pic.twitter.com/CZxlR73955
— steven morris (@stevenmorris20) February 1, 2023
Actors Gerard Cooke and Kim Hicks were carrying an equity banner through the streets.
Cooke said:
We’re here in solidarity with unions that are striking today. The cost of living crisis has hit everybody. Lots of our members were living a very precarious existence before the pandemic. Covid made it worse and there has been insufficient government support for those who fell through the cracks.
Hicks added:
The only way any message is going to get through is if we continue to be seen. We’re up against a situation where you’re pressured by a sense of inertia – why try any more, the government is refusing to talk, to listen. You have to say we’re not going away; we’re going to make ourselves continually heard and felt.
Actors Gerard Cooke and Kim Hicks, who joined a union rally in Bristol pic.twitter.com/2WkO8pSEiB
— steven morris (@stevenmorris20) February 1, 2023
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PA reports that workers on the picket lines have spoken about why they have decided to join the largest strike in a decade:
Ellie Clarke, 31-year-old, who spoke as a union representative at the PCS picket line outside the cabinet office, said: “It is really, really hard. I am terrified every day. I am always worried I am one crisis away from homelessness.
“I am just one pay cheque away from being homeless. We shouldn’t be in this situation … we are working for the government. We are just living in poverty. There is absolutely no chance we could go to the theatre or even just have some dinner with friends.”
Sydney Heighington, 33, who teaches at a school in east London, told PA no teacher “actually wants to strike”.
Giving his reasons for joining the strike, he said: “I’ve been a teacher for over a decade, I’m an assistant headteacher now. There are so many reasons, and it goes beyond pay. The reality is, I don’t think you’ll find a teacher that actually wants to strike.
“This is our last resort, this is something that has taken a long time for us to gather the strength to do because we don’t ever want to take anything away from the children, because they are the most important thing to us – that’s why we do what we do.”
James Hibbard, the head of year 10 and a geography and food technology teacher at Myton school, Warwick, said he was striking because he felt getting proper funding was “a real struggle”.
Speaking from the picket line outside the school, he told PA: “For my role as head of year, we’re always looking for funding to allow students to meet their full potential and it just doesn’t seem to be available at the moment. We’re struggling to get them the funding that they need really.
“Trying to get students with special educational needs, trying to get them education, health and care (EHC) plans, everything is being cut, funding just isn’t available.”
He added: “I think we’ll be back on the 28th. I’d like to think it will show to people there’s a little bit of disruption. That’s going to help people realise the struggle that we’re in but don’t necessarily think the government will listen to that straight away.
“But I think they need to start thinking about the way funding streams work and how we can get a fully funded education system.”
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Thousands of students have joined striking university staff on picket lines across the country, the University and College Union (UCU) has said.
Universities across the UK have been hit, with lectures and seminars cancelled, as 70,000 staff have started a series of strikes.
Jo Grady, the UCU general secretary, told PA:
University staff have turned out in massive numbers on picket lines today. Their anger over falling pay, insecure employment and pension cuts is impossible to ignore.
Grady added: “We have been overwhelmed by the support of thousands of students who have joined us on picket lines across the country. They recognise that vice-chancellors are wrecking the sector and are determined to stand with us and fix it.”
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Summary
Welcome to those joining our live coverage of today’s strikes, the single biggest day of UK industrial action for more than a decade.
With up to half a million people participating in a coordinated strike today involving teachers, civil servants, border force staff and train drivers, here’s where things stand:
Thousands of students have joined striking university staff on picket lines across the country, the University and College Union (UCU) said. Jo Grady, UCU general secretary, said: “We have been overwhelmed by the support of thousands of students who have joined us on picket lines across the country.”
The former shadow chancellor has said public sector pay rises can be paid for by taxing capital gains at the same level as income. John McDonnell said: “We just need a fair taxation system. The issue at the moment is that we seem to have a Government that is redistributing wealth upwards.”
The TUC has not ruled out taking the government to court if the minimum service levels bill is passed into law. Trades Union Congress assistant general secretary Kate Bell said the legislation is “unnecessary, unfair and almost certainly illegal”.
The Welsh government education minister said the blame for the strikes lies with the UK government. As the government tries to resolve the dispute, Jeremy Miles said: “there are very real constraints on the Welsh government’s budget because of the frankly disgraceful position the UK government aren’t making enough funding available across the UK for public services.”
A deal that would bring an end to strikes is “further away than when we started” following months of failed negotiations with the government, said the Aslef general secretary, Mick Whelan. “This isn’t a new government – the same people have been in place for 12 years,” he told PA Media.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “I think Gillian Keegan [the education secretary] is hoping our strike is ineffective and people won’t do it again.” He added: “I think she’s wrong about that. There could be further action. She needs to do a deal so that that doesn’t happen.”
The National Education Union stands ready to negotiate once the education secretary “gets her act together and her story straight”, said union chief Mary Bousted. “Unfortunately about 85% of schools will be impacted for a strike that didn’t need to happen if the government had been prepared to negotiate,” she said.
Heathrow airport said it was operating as normal with minimal queuing in immigration halls despite the strike by border force workers. “Heathrow is fully operational, passengers are flowing through the border smoothly with Border Force and the military contingency providing a good level of service for arriving passengers,” a spokesperson for the airport said.
Paying public sector workers is a matter of “political priority”, said the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), Mark Serwotka. He said the government claimed it would cost £29bn to give every public sector worker what they’ve demanded; however, its calculations are near £10bn. “And £10bn in an economy like ours can easily be found,” said Serwotka.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan told Sky News “our objective this year is to get rid of the problem, which is inflation.” Keegan told Times Radio she was “disappointed” that a strike by teachers in England and Wales are going ahead and said the industrial action was unnecessary as discussions with the unions were continuing.
Here’s a look at who is striking today:
Transport – Aslef and RMT train drivers are striking, causing disruption on services across the country
Higher education – University staff across 120 universities who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) launch 18 days of strike action across February and March
Education – Teachers belonging to both the National Education Union (NEU) are striking across England and Wales; and in Scotland, teachers who are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) in Clackmannanshire and Aberdeen continue strike action
Civil Service – More than 100,000 civil servants are striking across 124 government departments
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The former shadow chancellor has said public sector pay rises can be paid for by taxing capital gains at the same level as income.
John McDonnell told the PA news agency:
We just need a fair taxation system. The issue at the moment is that we seem to have a government that is redistributing wealth upwards. For example, if capital gains tax was at the same level as income tax, we would be able to afford a decent pay rise.
McDonnell added: “£17bn it would raise, TUC figures but also assessed independently as well.”
When asked whether the minimum service levels bill would ever be implemented, he said: “I can’t see it. It has had an adverse effect, people are even more determined now, it has provoked even more strikes to happen … My view is that Labour MPs should be on picket lines.”
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The Universities and Colleges Employers Association has been quick to claim this morning that strikes by University and College Union staff at UK universities has caused only “low and isolated levels of disruption to students’ studies”.
“Unlike today’s schools’ strikes, all higher education institutions are open and operational with only isolated lectures impacted,” the UCEA said in a statement.
The UCU’s social media displayed a large number of picket lines and rallies around the country taking place this morning, including a large rally of UCU members in Brighton.
Brighton march gathering. A sea of strikers! #ucuRISING @ucu @BrightonUCU pic.twitter.com/B8Rug0FsoS
— markabel (@markabel24) February 1, 2023
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Over at the University of Birmingham campus, staff were striking for the first of 10 planned strike days in February.
The UCU is calling on universities to improve their 4-5% pay offer and, as part of a longer-running dispute, revoke pensions cuts which will see a reduced retirement income for staff.
Staff from @BirminghamUCU striking outside the University of Birmingham this morning pic.twitter.com/oFNQsyEEvZ
— Jessica Murray (@JournoJess_) February 1, 2023
“People are exhausted and fed up, enough is enough with the huge rises and cost of living. You can see it, everybody is out. Nurses are out, the train drivers are out, the railway staff are out, the postal workers are out,” said Anke Buttner, secretary of the University of Birmingham UCU.
“It’s hugely encouraging to see that you’re not the only one shouting into the void. There’s a lot of us.”
Harjinder Kaur-Aujla, president of the UCU branch, added: “It feels like the whole population is being gaslit. It’s like the government are saying there isn’t a problem. But then how can all these unions be saying there is a problem?”
Both said staff had been particularly frustrated their demands had been branded as “woke” during negotiations.
“When trying to raise basic issues is being referred to as woke, I think we’re missing a lack of basic empathy,” said Buttner.
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Losing our art teacher was the final straw: I knew I had to strike for the sake of my students
As a teacher, I quickly learned the value of respect. If your class knows you have their best interests at heart, then nine times out of 10, the children will work hard for you. But if they think you don’t care about them, then you risk classroom rebellion.
The government is learning this lesson too. Today, striking teachers like me in England and Wales will shut thousands of schools. Officially, it’s a pay dispute – but it’s much more than that. Teachers feel downtrodden, demoralised and disrespected. Workload is through the roof and pay through the floor. Pressure has never been higher and morale never lower. It’s tearing apart our education system, at the cost of children’s futures. Teachers are on strike because the government does not respect us or our profession.
At my primary school, I’ve had a front-row seat to conditions getting worse and worse over the past few years. The moment that convinced me to go on strike was when my school lost its specialist art teacher, and was unable to recruit another. Activities such as art, music and sport are the highlight of the week for a lot of pupils, but they’re the first to go when resources are short. It was yet another sign that this government is willing to leave pupils with the bare minimum.
Read more here:
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Outside Bishop Thomas Grant school in Streatham, south London, dozens of teachers joined the picket line, protesting against what they say are untenable conditions within the education sector for both workers and students.
Amid chants of “teachers say fair pay”, Diane Wilkinson, a languages teacher at Bishop Thomas Grant and the school’s NEU rep, said she and her colleagues were striking as a “last resort”.
“The government haven’t been listening to us, and because like much of the public sector we have experienced a real terms pay cut in the last 10 years which has been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis.”
“A knock-on effect of that is that we don’t have enough teachers coming into the profession. So we’re striking for the future of education”.
Wilkinson has experienced the effects first-hand of the lack of government funding in the sector, most notably regarding recruitment. “It’s very difficult to find teachers for various subjects, and here we have people teaching exam subjects which they are not qualified to teach,” she says. “It’s only going to get worse”.
Lucy MacDonald, who has been an English teacher at Bishop Thomas Grant, said that the lack of financial investment within the education sector can be visibly seen on a day-to-day basis.
“For English, we have to rely on very old books which are used throughout the years which are falling apart and have to be taped together,” MacDonald said. “We simply don’t have the money to replace them”.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, showed her support for the strikers on the picket line, saying the teachers were striking for the “future of education”.
“They’re not just striking because [some teachers] are living within in work poverty, they’re striking because they want a better service for the children they teach. But they can’t do that at the moment under the current conditions,” Ribeiro-Addy said.
She added: “Under the Tories, public sector pay has stagnated, and living conditions have gotten worse. We need to invest more in our teachers.”
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Outside the Gambling Commission office in Birmingham, one of a number of civil servant picket lines dotted throughout the city, strikers said they had received a positive response from the public.
“It’s always nerve wracking putting your fight in front of the people, which is what we’re doing, but it’s just been positive,” said the PCS union rep Justin Price. “If we were paid a decent, honest wage, we wouldn’t have to turn to charities to get through the cost of living crisis that, in my opinion, has been exacerbated by the Tories.”
Around the corner, outside a West Midlands government office hub, another union rep said overall morale in the civil service was particularly low.
“For many years now civil servants have faced declining living standards, less job security and poorer pensions. Despite the fact inflation is clearly high at the moment, we received only an average 3% pay increase, so that’s a 7-8% real-terms cut,” he said.
Like many on the picket lines, he agreed the national day of strike action, across multiple unions and sectors, had strengthened resolve among workers.
“I think this is an important moment,” he said. “History will show us but maybe one day, looking back, 2023 will be seen as the year where people decided that we could have a better country, and we could have a better life.”
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The TUC has not ruled out taking government to court if minimum service levels bill passes into law
Speaking on a civil servants picket line outside HM Treasury, the Trades Union Congress assistant general secretary Kate Bell told PA the legislation “unnecessary, unfair and almost certainly illegal”.
Bell added:
We think it is notable that even Jacob Rees-Mogg, who would not normally describe himself as a friend of trade unions, was criticising this bill pretty heavily as being a pretty shoddy piece of legislation.
“We will take every measure we can to defend the right to strike and we are looking very carefully at how we will be able to, if this bill does go through, tackle it legally,” said Bell.
That right to strike … is embedded into UK law … it is very clear that we do have those rights protected and we will be doing everything we can to defend them.”
Bell visited the Treasury on Wednesday to hand in the TUC’s budget submissions, which she said would give public sector workers a fully funded pay rise and provide a longer-term plan to grow the economy.
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Staff at the Student Loans Company, which administers tuition fee and maintenance loans to tertiary students across the UK, have also gone on strike today, as part of the strike action by members of the PCS civil servants union.
“We have taken steps to ensure continuity of service for our customers,” a spokesperson for the SLC said.
PCS members at the Office for Students, the higher education regulator for England, are also on strike, as are staff at the Department for Education and at Ofsted, the schools inspectorate for England. Ofsted has said it will not conduct scheduled inspections of schools during strike days.
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Staff members with secure contracts at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) are holding handwritten placards detailing the experiences of colleagues with insecure employment.
“I taught with flu and a fever because we had no sick pay,” said one. “The possibility of having stable housing or retirement is a pipe dream,” said another.
Other messages said uncertainty over getting a new contract or a permanent job damaged mental health and quality of life. “For meetings I had to leave at 4am and stay in a hostel because hotels were too expensive,” said one.
Staff with secure contracts are holding signs depicting the experiences of their precariously employed colleagues at #QUB and at universities UK-wide. #ucuRISING #LoveQUB pic.twitter.com/7fvLQ3dyTD
— UCU at Queen's (@ucuatqub) February 1, 2023
The picket - on a cold, wet Wednesday in Northern Ireland – is part of the UK-wide action by the University and College Union (UCU). Some staff at Ulster University also went on strike.
Members of the Unite union at Queen’s marched in solidarity. “It may be damp but our resolve and fire for change is roaring!” the union tweeted.
Traffic levels in cities across Britain plummeted on Wednesday morning as up to half a million workers went on strike.
The location technology company TomTom said the level of road congestion in London at 8am was 68%, down from 82% a week earlier, reports PA news.
Other cities that saw a drop in traffic over the same period include:
Birmingham (from 77% to 63%)
Bristol (from 79% to 54%)
Glasgow (from 73% to 65%)
Liverpool (from 67% to 41%)
Manchester (from 100% to 78%)
Sheffield (from 64% to 50%).
The figures represent the proportion of additional time required for journeys compared with free-flow conditions.
The TomTom traffic expert Andy Marchant said:
As half a million workers go on strike across the UK today, shutting down rail lines and schools, TomTom data has shown that congestion during this morning’s rush hour has fallen significantly from its usual levels.
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Teachers deserve better, but this strike is not just about pay
Year 10 pupil Milly Bell and headteacher Elisabeth Broers are united in support of teachers going on strike this week
After three years of disrupted education, in the form of home learning, bubbles and incessant mask-wearing, the thing my classmates and I wanted this year was normality. I’m in year 10 – I have never had a “normal” year at secondary school, with schools being closed halfway through the academic year in 2020.
We’ve all watched helplessly as our country has emerged from Covid into an economic crisis, clinging to the fact that our education at least had been returned, and that it could only get better. I find it, as many of my peers do, utterly appalling and disgraceful, not that the teachers themselves are striking, but that they feel they need to (Teachers in England at ‘end of their tether’ says union chief, 29 January).
Teaching is a noble and brilliant vocation – teachers quite literally mould and nurture the very fabric of our future societies, and yet they have been catastrophically let down by the government. The pay cuts they have received in real terms are shocking, and, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t strike sooner.
Milly Bell
London
Read more here:
The government needs to “dial down the invective” in how it speaks about striking teachers, the general secretary of the NEU has said.
Speaking outside Bishop Thomas Grant school in Streatham, south London, Mary Bousted told the PA news agency:
I think that the government really would do well to dial down the invective and the rhetoric and remember that in the end we have got to come to a resolution of this dispute.
Bousted added:
And, in the end, remember that they’ve got an election coming up really quite soon and there are half a million teachers who, at the moment, don’t think much of them or what they are doing.
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Welsh government education minister says the blame for the strikes lies with the UK government
Speaking with BBC Radio Wales, Jeremy Miles said the Welsh government has held a “number of constructive” meetings with unions and local education authorities already, with further meetings this week “in an effort to resolve the dispute”.
Miles said the Welsh government had made an offer to the teaching unions of a one-off payment in this financial year, as well as a commitment to discuss workloads, adding:
We don’t want to see schools closed so we are doing absolutely everything we can to resolve the dispute.
Miles added:
There are very real constraints on the Welsh government’s budget because of the frankly disgraceful position the UK government aren’t making enough funding available across the UK for public services.
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A civil servant has explained how she is “one pay cheque away from homelessness” following a decade of real-terms cuts to civil service wages.
Cabinet office civil servant Ellie Clarke, 31, told PA:
It is really, really hard. I am terrified every day. I am always worried I am one crisis away from homelessness. I am just one pay cheque away from being homeless. We shouldn’t be in this situation … we are working for the government.
She added: “We are just living in poverty. There is absolutely no chance we could go to the theatre or even just have some dinner with friends.”
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Summary
Welcome to those joining our live coverage of today’s strikes, the single biggest day of UK industrial action for more than a decade.
With up to half a million people participating in a coordinated strike today involving teachers, civil servants, border force staff and train drivers, here’s where things stand:
A deal that would bring an end to strikes is “further away than when we started” following months of failed negotiations with the government, said the Aslef general secretary, Mick Whelan. “This isn’t a new government – the same people have been in place for 12 years,” he told PA Media.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “I think Gillian Keegan [the education secretary] is hoping our strike is ineffective and people won’t do it again.” He added: “I think she’s wrong about that. There could be further action. She needs to do a deal so that that doesn’t happen.”
The National Education Union stands ready to negotiate once the education secretary “gets her act together and her story straight”, said union chief Mary Bousted. “Unfortunately about 85% of schools will be impacted for a strike that didn’t need to happen if the government had been prepared to negotiate,” she said.
Heathrow airport said it was operating as normal with minimal queuing in immigration halls despite the strike by border force workers. “Heathrow is fully operational, passengers are flowing through the border smoothly with Border Force and the military contingency providing a good level of service for arriving passengers,” a spokesperson for the airport said.
Paying public sector workers is a matter of “political priority”, said the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), Mark Serwotka. He said the government claimed it would cost £29bn to give every public sector worker what they’ve demanded; however, its calculations are near £10bn. “And £10bn in an economy like ours can easily be found,” said Serwotka.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan told Sky News “our objective this year is to get rid of the problem, which is inflation.” Keegan told Times Radio she was “disappointed” that a strike by teachers in England and Wales are going ahead and said the industrial action was unnecessary as discussions with the unions were continuing.
Here’s a look at who is striking today:
Transport – Aslef and RMT train drivers are striking, causing disruption on services across the country
Higher education – University staff across 120 universities who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) launch 18 days of strike action across February and March
Education – Teachers belonging to both the National Education Union (NEU) are striking across England and Wales; and in Scotland, teachers who are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) in Clackmannanshire and Aberdeen continue strike action
Civil Service – More than 100,000 civil servants are striking across 124 government departments
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My classrooms are cold and our teachers keep leaving – as a pupil, I’m supporting the teachers’ strike
I think a lot of people think my generation don’t care about politics or aren’t interested. They underestimate how perceptive we are. We’re part of the world too. We sit in classrooms. We know that schools don’t have proper funding and that our teachers aren’t properly paid for the hard work they do.
Teachers should have better working conditions. They are teaching the next generation to move academically through the world, and they deserve to live and work comfortably.
My school feels different at the moment. Maybe it’s a result of my having moved into year 9, a step closer to GCSEs, or maybe it’s something that other young people are experiencing.
It’s been a lot colder in my classrooms, because the central heating is turned on less frequently due to bills going up. Leaks have appeared in some of our classroom ceilings. Students take good care of the school, but we can’t do repairs. There also seem to be fewer classroom materials. Maybe this is what happens when you go up a year, or maybe they cost too much?
Read more here:
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A deal that would bring an end to strikes is “further away than when we started” following months of failed negotiations with the government, says the Aslef general secretary, Mick Whelan.
Whelan told PA:
This isn’t a new government – the same people have been in place for 12 years. They’ve had 12 years to look at the needs of the economy, the needs of workers, and they’ve either got to adjust what they are doing, or they are going to go into recession.
Whelan added: “I think we’re further away than when we started.
I think the bad faith non-offer that was put out to the press, not run through negotiation teams, and that threatened us with compulsory redundancies, has exacerbated an already difficult situation.
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Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, speaking from a teachers’ picket line in Warwick, said:
I think Gillian Keegan [the education secretary] is hoping our strike is ineffective and people won’t do it again.
“I think she’s wrong about that,” Courtney told PA News. “There could be further action. She needs to do a deal so that that doesn’t happen.
“Since we’ve reached the threshold, 40,000 more people have joined the union as well. So it does show there’s a huge strength of feeling within the profession, that the Government must act and put things right,” said Courtney.
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‘It’s about the future’: parents on the school strikes in England and Wales
‘My parents-in-law are looking after our kids’
“We’ve had an email from my children’s (ages three and six) school today to say they will be closing on Wednesday. We are very privileged in that my wife’s parents don’t live too far away, and have agreed to look after them. I would have been prepared to take a day off if not – I can’t really work with them at home.
“In my experience teachers are some of the most dedicated, caring and hard-working of public sector workers. They consistently go above and beyond and have been rewarded with many years of poor pay, poor conditions and increased workloads as well as the risky and highly stressful situation they were placed in as a result of the pandemic. It’s shameful that the government have placed them in situation where they are forcing teachers to strike.”
Matthew Rodriguez, 43, social worker in London
‘I’m more than happy to lose work to support the teachers’
“I have two children, a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. My youngest is having lessons as normal, but my eldest will be off school all day. I’m having to miss a full day of work, which I’m more than happy to do to support the teachers. I had the choice between taking it as holiday or losing a day’s wages – I decided to lose a day and save my holiday for family time instead.
“Teachers are underpaid, unappreciated, and don’t have the support or tools they need. In 2020, we were calling them heroes for working through Covid. They have been constantly underfunded while private schools get tax relief and cuts. I have friends who are teachers, they do their prep and planning from home, marking from home outside their hours, they tell me they can’t slow down for the ones that need help and can’t speed up for the ones that are achieving. They shape the future for our children and they are being let down.”
Benny, 35, cybersecurity apprentice in Newcastle
Read more here:
The National Education Union stands ready to negotiate once the education secretary “gets her act together and her story straight”, says union’s chief.
Speaking with Sky News, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said:
Unfortunately about 85% of schools will be impacted for a strike that didn’t need to happen if the government had been prepared to negotiate.
When asked of education secretary Gillian Keegan’s remarks that there is no more money to meet pay rise demands, Bousted asked if that is the case, then what are the government recommending for next year?
In a video posted on Twitter directed at parents ahead of teacher strikes today, Keegan said she is listening to teachers and has met with unions for discussions many times. “We’re working on a range of issues including pay, workload, flexible working, behaviour and much more,” she said.
“I’d really like to know where Gillian Keegan is,” Bousted told Sky News, adding that the Welsh government is negotiating, however, the English government has yet to follow suit.
Bousted said:
This just isn’t good enough. It isn’t good enough for parents, it isn’t good enough for children, it isn’t good enough for my members. We stand ready to negotiate with the secretary of state once she gets her act together and her story straight.
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Majority of schools will remain open, says education secretary
The “majority” of schools in England and Wales will remain open, the education secretary has claimed, as more than 100,000 teachers join the picket line for the first time in six years.
Gillian Keegan said some schools may open with restrictions, while others are open to everyone, but expressed her disappointment that any are closing at all.
Teaching staff are taking part in a day of coordinated strikes involving up to half a million civil servants, Border Force staff and train drivers.
The UK’s biggest teaching union, the NEU has predicted that 85% of schools will be affected, with one survey suggesting that up to one in seven schools will be closed to all pupils, rising to a quarter in London.
When asked on Wednesday how many schools would stay open, Keegan struggled to estimate how many pupils would not have their education disrupted.
Read more here:
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Heathrow airport said it was operating as normal with minimal queuing in immigration halls despite the strike by Border Force workers.
A spokesperson for the airport told PA Media:
Heathrow is fully operational, passengers are flowing through the border smoothly with Border Force and the military contingency providing a good level of service for arriving passengers. We are working to support Border Force’s plans to continue the smooth operation of the airport during this period of industrial action.”
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Paying public sector workers is a matter of “political priority”, says the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).
Speaking with Sky News, general secretary Mark Serwotka said the union has tried for months to engage the government in discussions for wage increases as more than 40,000 civil servants are using food banks.
Serwotka said:
But the government seems happy to give its own workforce far less even than everyone else has been offered, and rejected, and they’re going on strike over, so this is necessary I’m afraid.
When asked where the money will come from, Serwotka said: “It’s a matter of political priority.” The general secretary said the government claimed it would cost £29bn to give every public sector worker what they’ve demanded; however, its calculations are near £10bn.
“And £10bn in an economy like ours can easily be found,” added Serwotka, comparing the amount with the previous Liz Truss government plans to borrow £200bn for tax cuts.
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Today's strikes, in numbers
The scale of the strikes
475,000 Approximate number of workers expected to go on strike on Wednesday – the single biggest day of industrial action for more than a decade. 200,000 teachers – Sally Weale has a useful explainer on school closures here - and 100,000 civil servants including border force workers will be joined by university lecturers, security guards and train drivers when they strike today. While the disruption is significant, it appears to be some way short of a “de facto general strike”, as the government has claimed.
467,000 The estimated total number of working days lost to strike action by 197,000 workers in November, according to the Office for National Statistics – the most recent set of full-month statistics available.
1m Union estimate of the number of working days lost in December, the worst single-month disruption since 1989.
£1.7bn Lower estimate of the total direct and indirect cost of strikes to UK GDP over eight months to January this year, according to analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. That amounts to about 0.1% of the UK’s expected GDP over the same period, with the value of the whole UK economy standing at about £2.5tn.
The impact of real pay cuts
33% The increase in real wages – the value of wages after inflation is factored in – across all workers between 1970 and 2007, according to the Resolution Foundation.
4.3% The real-terms drop in public-sector pay between 2009 and 2022, according to Guardian analysis of ONS data last July.
3% The decline in real wages in 2022, the biggest drop since 1977, according to the Trades Union Congress. Public-sector pay is the worst affected, with the average key worker £180 a month worse off than a year earlier. In the three months to November, private-sector wage growth stood at 7.2% before inflation was taken into account, against 3.3% in the public sector. This was against a headline inflation rate in January of 10.7%, amounting to a real-terms cut for both groups.
Public opinion on strikes
34% The proportion of the public who said unions play a negative role in society in November, against 26% in the same YouGov poll in June. In November, 35% said they played a positive role, against 32% in June, with the number who said they did not know or that unions were neither positive nor negative declining.
28% The proportion saying unions played a negative role in the same poll conducted this month – a 6% drop. Meanwhile, the proportion who said they played a positive role has risen by two points to 34%.
65% The proportion of the public who said they either strongly or “somewhat” support striking nurses in the January poll. Ambulance workers, firefighters, teachers and postal workers all enjoy a majority of public support once “don’t knows” are excluded. Strikes by driving examiners, baggage handlers, Transport for London workers and university staff are less popular. YouGov says that the answers correlate strongly with the extent to which respondents say they believe each group contributes to society, but do not appear to be linked to the perceived level of disruption caused.
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The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress of UK hopes the government will take strikes seriously and “listen to the voices of working people”.
Speaking on Sky News, Paul Nowak, added:
I would hope that any employer would have the good grace and the sense to listen to the staff when the staff tell them that there’s a problem, and there clearly is a problem.
Earlier on the program this morning, education secretary Gillian Keegan said “our objective this year is to get rid of the problem, which is inflation.”
Speaking with Times Radio, Keegan said she was “disappointed” that a strike by teachers in England and Wales is going ahead.
Keegan said the industrial action was unnecessary as discussions with the unions were continuing.
I am disappointed that it has come to this, that the unions have made this decision. It is not a last resort. We are still in discussions. Obviously there is a lot of strike action today but this strike did not need to go ahead.
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Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of today’s strikes involving up to half a million people – the single biggest day of UK industrial action for more than a decade.
The coordinated series of strikes involve teachers, civil servants, Border Force staff and train drivers. Unions said negotiations on ending strikes were “going backwards” and the government has warned people to brace for “significant disruption”.
Here’s a look at who is striking today:
Transport – Aslef and RMT train drivers are striking, causing disruption on services across the country
Higher education – University staff across 120 universities who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) launch 18 days of strike action across February and March
Education – Teachers belonging to both the National Education Union (NEU) are striking across England and Wales; and in Scotland, teachers who are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) in Clackmannanshire and Aberdeen continue strike action
Civil Service – More than 100,000 civil servants are striking across 124 government departments
