by a North London teacher
On Thursday 7 May, teachers and support staff in the National Education Union at Highgate Wood School in Haringey will begin a series of strikes.
The ballot achieved a 100% ‘yes’ vote for strike action against a package of cuts planned by school leadership to clear the school’s £1 million deficit.
This package breaks an agreement reached less than a year ago after a previous strike, in which teachers agreed to an increase in contact time and class sizes. The latest cuts will extend these measures even further and also reduce the GCSE and A-level subjects offered to students, along with a restructuring that will lead to compulsory redundancies.
The school leadership argues that these measures are needed to pay off the debt owed to Labour-led Haringey Council. We argue that councils and headteachers should not be a conveyor belt for austerity measures that make staff and students pay for a crisis they did not make. Escalating strike action is planned in the next weeks until half term.