Managing Industrial Action in Your School or Academy–
NUT Advice for Head Teachers
As head teacher, you will be responsible for managing the impact of strike action taken by NUT members on your school or academy, including the health and safety implications. It is essential that you have clear procedures in place, reflecting the advice issued by your employer – in most cases this will be the local authority, governing body or academy sponsor. If you have not yet received any guidance from your employer, you should contact the relevant Human Resources/Personnel department as a matter of urgency.
Risk assessment
As head teacher, you will need to assess the potential impact of a strike on your school. The NUT will send the employer of teachers at your school information about the number and category of union members who are being called on to take action at least seven days in advance. We will also send a copy of this to head teachers which you can use to inform your risk assessment.We send notice to employers of strike action on each occasion. The NUT is not required to provide the names of individual members to the employer and individual members are not required to provide any information.
You should bear in mind the possibility that other staff may join the NUT before a day of strike action and take part in the action or may refuse to cross a picket line on the day of the action.
Your risk assessment should address a range of issues such as:
•Whether the school could ensure sufficient supervision at break and
lunchtimes.
•The likely impact the strike will have on the health and safety of pupils and staff;
•Whether the school would be able to offer a full or partial curriculum;
•Whether the school would be able to offer full staffing cover for all or some classes, given that you should not ask colleagues to undertake the work of those on strike.
When considering these matters, you should bear in mind that you will not be able to ask staff who are not involved in the strike to undertake work beyond their normal job description. In addition, the guaranteed PPA time of teachers at your school forms part of the legal conditions of employment and cannot be used for cover.
Making a decision
As head teacher, you have the responsibility, in consultation with the chair of governors, for deciding what will happen in your school on the day of a strike. You could decide, for instance, to:
•Close the school to pupils;
•Open for part of the day only; or
•Keep the school open as normal;
•Ask only some groups of pupils to attend school.
However much your local authority or governors may want you to keep the school open, the NUT believes that the safety of pupils and remaining staff should be the key factor in making your decision. Health and safety legislation is not suspended during industrial action and the employer will continue to be required to meet their statutory obligations. You will need to weigh such considerations against the loss of a day’s education for the pupils.
Communication
You will need a clear communication strategy if you are to manage strike action in your school effectively. This should include clear lines of communication with your staff, trade union representatives, employer and/or governing body, pupils and parents and enable information to be disseminated at all stages of the dispute.
Parents’ Evenings
If you have a parents’ evening or similar event scheduled to take place on a strike day the NUT would advise that you change the date as soon as possible, explaining to parents the reasons for this. If you decide that the event will still go ahead, you should be aware that NUT members have been advised not to attend.
Ofsted and Estyn Inspections
The NUT will write to Ofsted and Estyn to request that no inspections take place on a strike day and that notice of an inspection is also not given on a strike day. Should an inspection still go ahead on a strike day, NUT advice to members is to take action. We would not expect this to adversely affect any inspection report. If your school is scheduled to be inspected on a strike day, you should alert the lead inspector as soon as possible, especially if it is likely that the school could be closed to children.
Public Examinations
The NUT does not wish to disturb pupils’ examinations. Timetables for strike action are drawn up with the intention of avoiding any risk of doing so. Our advice to NUT members is that they should co-operate with the exams calendar in the event of any clash.
What do I need to do about NUT members who go on strike?
You should record the names of all those who were absent on the day because they were participating in strike action. Your employer will probably ask for this list of names so that an appropriate deduction can be made from their salary. It is important that the list is accurate and does not include teachers who were absent due to illness or for any other “approved” reason.
Where strike action is taken for a complete day, the employer is only entitled tomake a deduction of pay no more than 1/365th of annual salary (Section 3, “Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales”, otherwise known as “The Burgundy Book”). Deductions should not be presented as a penalty for taking industrial action.
What about teachers and other staff who are not on strike?
You should not seek to direct other staff (teachers or support staff) to undertake the work of colleagues taking strike action. This can be very damaging to ongoing staff management relations and can lead to conflict with the unions not currently taking action.
It is unlawful for agencies to supply teachers to replace those undertaking official industrial action if the agency is aware of the action, so the NUT would strongly advise that you do not employ supply teachers to substitute for striking teachers (Regulation 7, “Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations 2003).
Depending on local circumstances, you may decide that there would not be sufficient teachers available to staff your school on the day of the strike. Unless instructed otherwise by your employer, you have the discretion to instruct teachers who are not participating in the industrial action to work at home.
I am not an NUT member but would like to support NUT strike action – what can I do?
Unless you join the NUT, you will not be able to legally participate in NUT strike action. However sympathetic you may be to the strike, as head teacher you must be careful not to be seen to be encouraging or directing staff to breach their contracts of employment by striking, otherwise your employer would be able to take action against you.
However, you can make clear that you understand the reasons for the action and that you support their right to take the action that the NUT has balloted for. You are under no obligation to seek to dissuade NUT members from taking action. Again, this can lead to poor ongoing staff management relations. The NUT advises that you should undertake only your normal contracted duties on the day of the strike, subject to the outcomes of your impact assessment.
I am an NUT head teacher member and would like to support NUT strike action – what can I do?
As a member of the NUT participating in a lawful industrial action, you would have the same legal protection as other members of the Union. Therefore, we hope that all NUT head teacher members will feel able to take part in NUT strike action. You should inform your employer that you will be on strike on the day and will therefore be unavailable for work.
You should work normally in the days before the action, including carrying out the risk assessment referred to above. Please also note the advice above regarding encouragement of other teachers employed at your school to participate in the industrial action.
National Union of Teachers
May 2014