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Camden New Journal - by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 19 July 2007

Teachers walk out of lessons over pay cut
for new staff

PARLIAMENT Hill School in Highgate Road was closed on Thursday after a row erupted between teachers and the governing body over the decision to axe a pay bonus for new staff.
Seventy teachers stayed home in protest at the cuts, and students were warned not to come in. It was the first time in at least 20 years strike action had been taken by Camden teachers.
Governors at the school cut the bonus, called the recruitment and retainment payment, which works out at about £2,000 a year, last November after deciding the money would be better spent elsewhere.
But it has caused resentment in the staffroom as teachers employed before that date will continue to be paid the wage sweetener.
And fears that the cuts will stretch to all teachers led to staff who are not yet threatened also joining the strike.
Councillor Andrew Mennear, Camden’s Tory education chief, came out in support of the governors’ decision at Parliament Hill, and said he “deeply regretted” the walk-out.
But the National Union of Teachers, which organised the strike, said the cuts could make it harder to recruit and retain teachers.
Cllr Mennear said: “I don’t have a concern that it will affect the education standards, but if that happened the schools would alter and reverse their recruitment and retainment policy. Schools feel it is better to target the payment when they recruit staff.”
Two other schools in the borough – Hampstead in West Hampstead and Maria Fidelis in Somers Town – have also scrapped the bonus.
NUT member Andrew Baisley said: “It is the first time in the NUT’s living memory that we have arranged a teachers’ strike.
“We were forced into it because the school refused to talk to us. They have now agreed to a meeting, but it is a shame it had to go so far.”

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