Support staff should now do routine admin

The National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers say heads must find money to implement the accord. It specifies that teachers should not routinely perform administrative tasks. But head teachers said "several hundred" schools could not afford the support staff to make this happen.

Entitlement

The biggest teachers' union - the National Union of Teachers (NUT) - was alone among the main education associations in not signing the agreement with the government.

Its main concern is that classroom assistants who are not qualified teachers may be used in a "cheap labour" way to take classes.

But even though it opposed the deal, the NUT takes the view that the government has changed the conditions of teachers in England and Wales and its members are entitled to benefit from that.

Its general secretary, Doug McAvoy, said on Wednesday that any industrial action would be to ensure that teachers no longer had to do tasks such as data processing, collecting money or chasing up absent pupils.

The agreement also says staff have to have a reasonable "work-life balance".

Mr McAvoy said another potential problem would be his members' workload increasing because they were asked to mark or prepare lessons carried out by unqualified staff, or because colleagues were made redundant and not replaced - a feature of this year's budget crisis in many schools.

Such action would be organised locally, he said, and strikes were a "remote" possibility.

'Hypocrisy'

"The government promised teachers a reduced workload. They promised parents ever-improving provision of education.

"At the moment there must be serious doubts that either group will be satisfied with what the government, with the other teacher organisations, is doing."

The leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said: "I think it is hypocrisy of the worst order for people who refused to sign the agreement to threaten industrial action when head teachers are accused of refusing to implement the very agreement that the NUT has been attacking morning, noon and night for the last nine months.

"Threatening industrial action might seem very macho in the eyes of their members but it doesn't make any contribution whatsoever to solving the problems of those schools which will be struggling for genuine reasons.

"There isn't a single head in this country who doesn't want to reduce the workload of their staff but at the end of the day we have to get round the table in order to help those schools that are in real difficulty."

A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said its plans for the increased use of teaching assistants were about giving pupils more individual support.

"Striking will achieve nothing other than the disruption of education for children.

"We are working with all the unions representing the vast majority of teachers and support staff over the next few months and are determined to ensure that the first phase of the reforms are delivered by the school team working together."