Some 30 picket lines are forming outside schools across Oxfordshire as thousands of teachers walk out over pay.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) are taking industrial action today (February 1).

Many classrooms will be closed throughout the day, with some year groups told to stay at home.

SEND teacher Leigh-Amanda Seedhouse, Oxfordshire NEU District Secretary and NEU Executive member, is on a picket line at Wood Green School in Witney and there is a large picket line at Cheney School in Oxford.

READ MORE: LIVE UPDATES - Updates as teachers strike in Oxfordshire

She said: "Our members want to be in schools teaching children and young people. Our members do not take strike action easily. They see it as a last resort.

"The fact that we have met the very high thresholds unjustly imposed by the government is because we are desperate and angry. The education system is falling down around us.

 

 

"We have constantly tried to tell the government that things are going very wrong but the government has ignored us – rather they are spending their time planning how they can make it more difficult for us to strike. 

"They want to talk about minimum service levels in our sectors, to restrict our ability to take strike action - well, I’d also like to talk about minimum service levels. 

"Because at the moment, many of us are working in a system that is increasingly unable to meet minimum service levels. 

"Class sizes are rising, children with SEND are unable to access the support they need or find a suitable school place, too many children are being educated by non-specialist teachers because of the crisis in recruitment and retention of our teachers.

"Children are learning in classrooms that are dangerous and unfit for purpose nut schools don’t have enough money for repairs.

"The government have missed its target for recruitment of new secondary school teachers by 41% this year and by 11% for primary school teachers. There has also been a fall of 23% in trainee teacher recruitment in 2022 compared with 2021.

"One in eight maths lessons is taught by a teacher not qualified in the subject yet the prime minister wants to extend compulsory mathematics lessons past 16. 

"One in four teachers leave the profession within two years of qualification; a third within five years, and nearly one third of the teachers who qualified in the last decade have quit."

She added: "The teachers who are striking are the ones who have stayed the course in the profession because of their commitment to young people.

"They are taking this step because they feel they must let the public know about their concern about the future of the profession.

"They are worried that they cannot provide the quality of education that children deserve.

"They do not believe that the government has a strategy to sort out the workforce crisis – a crisis which will only get worse if nothing is done to pay teachers properly for the essential work they do.

"We want to solve this dispute. We want the government to listen and negotiate with us directly."

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has said she had been surprised to learn that teachers were not required to say in advance if they would be taking part in the strike.

She said the legal position will remain “under review”.

“It was a surprise to some of us that was in fact the law. I did write to everybody urging them to be constructive, to let their heads know, and I am sure may teachers will have done that,” she told Times Radio.

“There are discussions around minimum service levels, minimum safety levels, around hospitals, around rail – education is part of that Bill as well.

“We are hoping not to use that, we are hoping to make sure we continue with constructive discussions and relationships, but these things will always stay under review.”