Teachers prepare for strike in protest over staffing cuts

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) is trying to stop plans to make 10 teaching staff redundant at St Catherine’s Catholic High School in Halifax. It claims the school is looking to make savings to balance its books before it becomes an academy.

However St Catherine’s head teacher Patricia Sheard said the cuts needed to happen because the school no longer had a sixth form and was now over-staffed for its budget.

The school is planning to convert to academy status in January next year by joining forces with the neighbouring Trinity Academy, a school run by a Church of England Diocese. If the academy moves get the go ahead then pupils who want a Catholic education will be given the opportunity to go to a school in Huddersfield.

St Catherine’s has said that some of the 10 teaching posts could be lost through redeployment or voluntary redundancy.

Calderdale’s NUT branch secretary Sue McMahon has blamed the financial management of the school for creating a situation where it was having to make job cuts.

The union is planning to hold a one-day strike on Wednesday next week after 100 per cent of its members at the school who voted in a ballot said they supported industrial action.

She said: “External examinations will not be disrupted. It is with great reluctance that our members take this course of action, but it has been made clear that this school wants to clear the deficit in order to become an academy, and has chosen to make teaching staff redundant and cut the number of teaching posts.

“The union remains willing to reach a negotiated settlement to the current dispute and, in the event of a resolution to the dispute; the union would not proceed with industrial action.”

Mrs Sheard said the closure of the school’s sixth form had meant it needed to reduce the number of staff it had. She said the job losses were not happening to allow the school to become an academy.

She said she hoped that talks with teaching unions would continue this week and that she was hopeful that a positive outcome could be found to avoid the industrial action next week.