Teachers staging walkout at Staffordshire and Birmingham school trust in redundancy row

Teachers are staging industrial action at a trust running a number of schools in Staffordshire and Birmingham over redundancies.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) were due to launch a series of strikes on Wednesday, January 14 in protest at redundancy plans at the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership based in Sutton Coldfield.

The trust said the union's action was "regrettable" and plans were in place to reduce any disruption caused by the walkout at 20 schools including it's flagship site in Kittoe Road, Sutton, and it was doing all it could to resolve the dispute.

Its website stated there was a need to reduce staff numbers due to significant overstaffing, an issue that had initially been masked by an accounting error in the financial year 2022-23.

Some partnership sites– including The Bridge School in Lichfield and Greysbrooke Primary in Shenstone, in Staffordshire, were not expected to be affected by the strike but other sites were to be completely closed on Wednesday and Thursday as a result.

The action is expected to take place over nine days including on January 20-22 and January 26-29 at sites including Tamworth, Birmingham and Coventry.

In a statement Author Terry Learning Partnership said: "We are committed to tackling the financial challenges we face so that we bring stability to the trust and schools as quickly as possible, while at the same time maintaining the high standards of education and care that our pupils and their families deserve and expect.

"Returning to a financially sustainable position means taking some difficult decisions. We continue to explore every area of expenditure and have identified numerous savings through reducing non-staffing costs. To ensure we move forward rapidly and are secure long-term, we have also started a consultation on a restructure of the organisation. We are continuing to implement a programme of significant change to improve the trust’s financial position, including appointing a new interim finance director to provide oversight on how decisions are made and evaluated.

"The industrial action, affecting schools across the trust, is regrettable as pupils will miss vital days of education and parents will be hugely inconvenienced. We are doing all we can to resolve the dispute as swiftly as possible and we continue to seek constructive talks with the NEU. Plans are in place to minimise any disruption to learning both today and on those days when future strikes are planned."

In 2024 The Department for Education and Education (DfE) and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) told the partnership to improve its finances after it failed to balance the books.

Affected schools include: