TORY ministers are “turning their backs on children,” the leader of a head teachers’ union warned today after it joined sister unions in overwhelmingly rejecting the government’s latest pay offer for England. 

NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman told the National Education Union (NEU) annual conference that, according to reports, an “unnamed source in the Department for Education was upset” by his comments. 

But, to applause and cheers in the Harrogate Convention Centre, he asked: “What do they expect when the government has overworked, underpaid and over-regulated its workforce to the point of exhaustion?”