TEACHERS formed a united front outside the Crest Boys' Academy yesterday (Wednesday, April 21) morning in a strike over redundancies which caused the school to close for the day.

Disgruntled staff staged the picket line outside the former John Kelly Boys' School, in Crest Road, Neasden, which was transformed into the Crest Boys' Academy last year.

The school is now run by Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust (EACT), which recently sent out a letter from its principal Keith Miller, informing parents staff face the axe.

The trust says it plans make up to seven redundancies which includes fours members of the senior leadership team and three classroom assistants.

Workers have held several meetings and asked EACT to delay their decision.

The strike has been organised by three teacher unions - Association of Teachers and
Lecturers (ATL), National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

In a letter sent to parents by the unions, it said: "We are nonetheless, deeply concerned that your child will miss a day of their education, especially at this important time of year.

However, if staff are sacked and we simply standby and do nothing we firmly believe more sackings will follow and your child’s education will be damaged further.

"EACT has ignored our requests and intend to go ahead. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of the school’s teaching staff feel that we have no other option but to take industrial action."

There are 608 pupils on the school roll. The academy was originally funded for more than 750 pupils but when it opened in September last year it had not attracted that number of children.

Therefore the Department of Children, Schools and Family (DCSF) has over-funded the academy to the tune of more than £1 million. The school says it is cushioning the full impact of the clawback required by the DCSF.

A spokesman from the trust said: “The strike is irresponsible and we very much regret the unions’ decision to press ahead with it. It disrupts pupils’ education, at a key time leading up to exams. And it is entirely self-defeating. We sympathise entirely with the views and concerns of our hard-working staff, but it’s a simple fact that there were too many teaching staff for the number of pupils on roll.

"We’ve reluctantly had to make a number of people compulsorily redundant. As a result, we have now got a sustainable ratio of teachers to pupils – which is still high compared to the national average.

“Despite the short-term damage caused by the strike, Crest Boys will organisationally be in a stronger position to build on its excellent progress in this its first academic year as an academy.

Pupils are on course to significantly improve their GCSE results this year - which simply reinforces that this strike action is highly damaging and inappropriate.”