Michael Gove's most troubled week as Education Secretary got worse yesterday when teachers called a first national strike against his ideological assault on their profession.

More than 320,000 members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will swap classrooms for picket lines in England and Wales on March 26 - and other unions could yet join in.

The action is in response to Mr Gove's plans to let individual headteachers decide pay, heap more work on teachers but keep them in the classroom until 68 and rip up the national curriculum.