Itchen College teachers to go on strike for three days

Fair pay and funding will be fought for by staff at Itchen College for three days.

The planned protests on November 28 and December 3 and 4 come after the National Education Union (NEU) won a resounding 97 per cent vote in favour of strike action by its members.

Teachers at Itchen College will be joined by colleagues at Barton Peveril College and Peter Symons College, along with 30 others across the country.

These teachers face cuts to their pay and funding in comparison to maintained schools, the union said.

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Nick Childs, senior regional officer at NEU, said: “No teacher strikes lightly.

“NEU members at sixth form colleges are dedicated to their students and the community they serve.

“The union has made every effort to resolve this dispute, and we call upon the Secretary of State to rectify this injustice where non-academised sixth form colleges and their teachers are treated unfairly in comparison with colleges in maintained schools and academised colleges.

“The colleges in the southeast taking action are seven of 40 sixth form colleges who have been disadvantaged. Our region deserves better.

“They are determined to fight for fair pay and fair funding and will stand firm until their colleges receive the funding they so richly deserve.”

The strike follows “the anomaly that funding for the teacher pay award of 5.5 per cent has not been given to sixth form colleges".

According to the union, this means that colleges who have seen their funding cut in real terms year after year, will either be unable to fund the same pay rise as other teachers or face unacceptable cuts to their budgets.

Despite efforts by the NEU to resolve the dispute through seeking assurances from the Secretary of State for Education that sixth form colleges could utilise the additional funding allocated to the sector in the budget for staff pay, no such clarification has been received.