Richard Garner: Today's lesson: how to avoid school disruption

Like two heavyweight boxers in a marathon fight, they have been slugging it out over the Easter holiday break. In the left-hand corner is Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, armed with a welter of boycott, strike and work-to-rule motions agreed at his annual conference.

For good measure, Mr McAvoy has also accused Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, of "sinister McCarthyite" tactics for freezing his union out of all contact with civil servants over its refusal to sign an agreement allowing classroom assistants to take over lessons.

In the right-hand corner (comparably) is Charles Clarke, who will today ratchet up the disagreement between the two by asking parents: would you let your children be taught by any of this man's delegates? For good measure, he chooses the conference of the NUT's bitter rival, NASUWT (the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers), to tell his opponent tests are here to stay and he might as well sod off, or something to that effect.

It is not the behaviour you would expect from the representative of a Government that famously espouses "education, education and education" as its top three policy priorities (when it's not at war) and from the leader of a trade union with a proud tradition of fighting for universal education for all.

So what's gone wrong? Is the NUT so beyond the pale it would be wrong to even talk to it, let alone take account of anything it has to say? Or is the Government so obstinate that it just will not countenance any opposition to what it wants to do?

The answer to both questions is, I fear, a qualified yes.

As far as the NUT goes, of course, its conference has gone over the top with its series of motions favouring industrial action – over such issues as tests, teacher redundancies, classroom assistants, privatisation, salaries and, yes, even pensions. Left-wing groupings do hold sway on the conference floor, regularly defeating the (relatively) more moderate controlling group on the executive called Broadly Speaking – which itself has Maoists and former Communist Party members among its membership.

The constant calls for industrial action do give a negative image of the profession to parents sitting in their living rooms and watching the spectacle of the NUT conference. (As an education journalist of 25 years standing, I often dream of the day when someone stands up and says: "Actually, it's all right in my school. I really enjoy teaching.")

However, Charles Clarke is equally wrong if he stubbornly thinks that he can ignore everything that has gone on at the NUT conference. Not talking to it over the issue of classroom assistants is fine. Signalling a refusal to talk to the union about anything else smacks of petulance.

Mr Clarke can forget the more exaggerated demands made at the NUT's conference in Harrogate at the weekend. Most of the strikes they have called for will not happen, but there are real issues out there in the classroom that are seriously annoying teachers and that he has to address if he is to avoid serious disruption in schools over the next 12 months.

I would single out two. One is the boycott of the national curriculum tests for seven-, 11- and 14-year-olds planned for next year. Make no mistake; the union is determined to go ahead with the boycott, and its strength in primary schools means that it is likely to cause serious disruption to the tests for seven- and 11-year-olds. The momentum this has gained among ordinary classroom teachers has come because of the pressure they feel under from the Government's testing and targeting regime. They feel that they are forced to teach to the test to reach the targets and that creativity has gone out of the window. Wales has already banned tests for seven-year-olds because of this.

The other is the threat of teacher redundancies this year because the Government seriously underestimated the cost to school budgets of items such as the increased national insurance and pensions contributions and performance-related pay rises for teachers. If redundancies occur, there will be strikes to seek to avert them.

A more measured approach to testing – possibly a review of the tests for seven-year-olds if there is evidence from Wales that abandoning them does not lead to a fall in standards – and a pledge to make good the shortfall in any individual school budget that would otherwise lead to a redundancy might take the wind out of the sails of those who persistently call for strike action. They would at least have less discontent to feed on. Incidentally, the offer does not have to made directly to the NUT.

If nothing is forthcoming, I fear that what we have witnessed in the last few days will only be rounds one and two of a heavyweight battle that could last for months.

Messrs Clarke and McAvoy might relish that contest – so long as only one of them was left standing at the end of the day. (Ironically, both have similar characteristics that – in other circumstances – could lead to them getting on with each other like a house on fire, rather than figuratively setting fire to the education system.)

The tragedy is that few others would relish the dogfight. Certainly, the parents of the nation's state school children would not.

r.garner@independent.co.uk