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By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

 

 

The National Union of Teachers said a campaign of “mass resistance on the streets” should be launched as early as the autumn in protest over controversial reforms to public sector funding.

 

In an escalation of the war of words between unions and the Government, activists called for a repeat of strikes that closed schools across Britain last year – causing chaos for millions of children and parents.

 

They also approved plans for a series of small-scale walk-outs at individual schools threatened with conversation into independent academies.

 

Addressing the union’s annual conference in Torquay, one teacher compared the Coalition to Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, adding: “It is a fact that we’re living in an unelected dictatorship.”

 

The comments come after plans, unveiled by George Osborne in last month’s Budget, to link local pay to rates in the private sector in a move designed to drive economic growth.

 

 

But unions claimed that the reform would penalise teachers in poor areas as pay is deliberately depressed to reduce the gap between the public and private sectors.

 

Tony Dowling, a teacher from Gateshead, told the conference that unions should copy tactics seen during the Arab spring last year by resorting to “mass resistance on the streets” to block the changes.

 

“We can’t wait until 2015 to get rid of this government,” he said. “By then education, the NHS and many other services that we cherish will have been destroyed.”

 

Schools were closed by national strikes twice last year, while almost half were shut or partially shut by a regional walk-out in London last month.

 

He added: “When we took to the streets on March the 28th we demonstrated the masses that we could bring out, the mass resistance there is to this government. We need to recreate that.”

 

Addressing the conference, Jane Bassett, a teacher from Hackney, east London, said: “We need to resist it. It will lead to factory-style teaching. It will lead to massively demoralised teachers. It will lead to massive recruitment crisis.”

 

On Monday, the NUT passed a resolution declaring its "complete opposition to the Government's intention to attack the national pay and conditions arrangements for school teachers".

 

It instructed the union's ruling executive to take "all appropriate action", including being prepared to ballot for national strikes.

 

But the Department for Education attacked the comments. 

A spokesman for said: “We’re approaching this in an open-minded way and are well off putting forward any concrete proposals. It's a bit overblown to threaten 'mass resistance' when no union knows what it is actually resisting.”

 

The proposed action is the latest in a series of flashpoints between the Government and teaching unions.

 

The NUT has already suggested a boycott of reading tests for six-year-olds and a campaign of non-cooperation with Ofsted. It has also announced plans for a series of strikes in the summer and autumn terms over changes to pensions.

 

On Monday, the NUT also backed plans for formal strike ballots in all schools that are pulled out of local council control and forced to turn into independent academies.

 

This comes amid proposed action at Downhills Primary School in Haringey, north London, to block academy conversion.

 Telegraph