TEACHERS must “vehemently defend” pro-Palestine Action protesters’ right to peaceful dissent, a union leader said today.

In his opening speech to the National Education Union’s annual conference, president Ed Harlow hailed the “dignity and steely resolve” of hundreds of pensioners who held signs opposing the group’s terror ban in Westminster last September.

The High Court ruled the Home Office ban on Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation unlawful last month, “but attacks on the right to protest go on and we must vehemently defend the right to dissent peacefully as a cornerstone of our freedom and democracy.”

Mr Harlow also warned that an extra £4 billion funding between now and 2029 to support more children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in mainstream schools will be “swallowed up” into general cash-starved school budgets.

The reforms equate to half a teaching assistant on average for each primary school and “will not deliver the seismic shift we need in order to get to grips with a Send crisis that has rumbled on for years,” he said.

“[It] will be swallowed by yet another unfunded pay award with the government once again expecting schools to find ‘efficiency savings’.”

The Department for Education’s plans for a partially funded 6.5 per cent raise for teachers over three years “risks being woefully inadequate and out of date before it is even implemented” due to rising inflation, he added.

On social media, the union leader warned that school-level phone bans “will not be enough,” urging ministers to “deal with the issue at source and begin to get to grips with the tech giants who monopolise, commodify and monetise our children’s attention.”