Overworked teachers set to vote on strike action

Teachers are threatening renewed industrial action in the classroom after half-term if there is no deal on reducing their workload by the end of next month.

Britain's biggest teachers union, the National Union of Teachers, is poised to re-ballot its members if talks with the Government fail to make significant headway.

In a letter to Estelle Morris, the Education and Skills Secretary, Doug McAvoy, the union's general secretary, warns that "time is finite" for reaching an agreement.

He reminds her that the talks on modernising the profession were set up only after teachers unions had taken industrial action over staffing shortages, forcing pupils without a teacher to be sent home.

Union leaders are almost certain to receive backing for industrial action if they seek a fresh mandate through a ballot. The original decision to refuse to cover lessons for which there was no teacher available received massive support.

All three TUC-affiliated teachers unions – the NUT, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers – will also urge their members this week to boycott a list of 25 administrative tasks, such as invigilating exams and collecting dinner money, which Ms Morris herself has said she wants to spare teachers from doing in the future.

Mr McAvoy said he was deeply concerned that there had been no "early wins" for teachers as a result of the talks.

His thinly veiled threat comes on the eve of a speech by Ms Morris today to the General Teaching Council, the body set up recently to police the profession, in which she is expected to speak about her plans for modernising the profession.

The teachers' unions have demanded a 35-hour week and want guaranteed marking and preparation time up to the equivalent of a day a week away from the classroom.

Ms Morris has dismissed the demand for 35 hours a week but has promised to employ extra classroom assistance to relieve teachers of their administrative burdens, and conceded that this would give them time away from the classroom for marking.

However, she also wants classroom assistants to take over lessons when teachers are absent and have set work for pupils. Teachers worry that this could lead to a dumbing-down of the profession.

A more realistic timetable would be for an agreement by the time the conclusions of the teachers' pay review body on next year's salaries award is published in January – rather than by the end of the month.

Mr McAvoy's letter, though, emphasises that the talks on workload have been running for a year and a half. Sources at the Department for Education and Skills insisted the talks were "progressing well".

A timetable has been agreed with the unions for two further meetings with civil servants before David Miliband, the minister for School Standards, outlines final government thinking on a package for reducing workload next month. Eamonn O'Kane, general secretary of the NASUWT, said a further ballot on industrial action was "very much an end game".

Meanwhile, leaders of the 300 further education colleges have told lecturers' unions that there is no point in reopening pay negotiations, making strike action a virtual certainty. Five out of six further education unions have threatened walkouts on 5 November, over a 3.3 per cent pay offer they rejected.