THE National Education Union (NEU) has pledged solidarity with PCS union’s fight for pay restoration at the latter’s annual conference, vowing to smash Labour’s “addiction to austerity” through joint strike action.

NEU senior vice-president Phil Clarke told a fringe meeting on Monday night that no other union had put the need for unity in the fight against government cuts to public services as strongly as PCS.

Describing the ongoing teacher recruitment crisis, he read out a message written by the executive head of a local school saying that “the acute teacher shortage … is crippling the college, lesson by lesson.”

“Because the pipeline of external supply teachers has run dry, this means that senior leadership has been tied up for every single lesson of every day covering classes in the hall, up to five or six classes from different year groups and different subjects,” the head teacher reveals.

“Not only is that educationally unethical for those students, quite a number of whom may be condemned to several sessions in the hall daily, but also this is why colleagues complain they cannot find senior leadership when they need them.”

Mr Clarke said: “It’s totally, totally unacceptable for the children of this country to be sitting in a hall with perhaps 200 fellow students with one adult trying to teach them and that is the situation that is happening day to day.

“We are looking to use our most powerful leverage, industrial action, if we need to, regardless of government, and I’m sure you’ll stand with us on that.

“We can work together to make sure we get the best out of a new government if they are willing, but we will break their addiction to austerity if they are not willing.”