Williamson WhatsApps add insult to injury for teachers as strikes continue

The Matt Hancock WhatsApp drama rolls on, leaving not only the former Health Secretary red-faced but various of his colleagues and ex-colleagues along with him. Next under the spotlight is Gavin Williamson, who claimed in a message to Hancock during the pandemic that teachers complained about a lack of PPE in order “to have an excuse not to teach”. In a separate exchange, following the announcement that exams would be delayed to make up teaching time, Hancock messaged Williamson: “What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are.” The then Education Secretary replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.” In a tweet responding to the leaked messages, National Education Union (NEU) joint general secretary Mary Bousted declared: “Why am I utterly unsurprised to now have it absolutely confirmed that Gavin Williamson was unfit to be Secretary of State for Education.” Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton said the comments were “contemptible” and accused the former Education Secretary of “denigrating” and “stereotyping” teachers “when they were the very people who the nation needed to focus on young people in the way that the government hadn’t”.

Also responding to the leaked messages, Labour’s Stephen Morgan stressed that the teaching profession is “at crisis point”, highlighting issues around recruitment and retention. “The stuff that we’ve seen in these WhatsApp messages is a real kick in the teeth for teachers across our country,” the shadow schools minister told Sky News this morning, adding that teachers “deserve a government that gives them the respect and trust that they deserve”. The timing of the release of these particular messages coincides with walkouts by NEU members in London and southeast and southwest England, as part of seven days of national and regional strike action announced by the union in its dispute with the government over pay. Bousted’s fellow general secretary Kevin Courtney tweeted this morning in response to claims by Williamson that the messages were about “some unions and not teachers” and that he has the “utmost respect” for teachers: “Apology not accepted. I’m with some teachers at a school in Chichester this morning. They say: “We are the union.””

Quite apart from the fact that it was Williamson who made the comments (a man twice sacked from cabinet, including from the role of Education Secretary, who oversaw chaos in the exam system during the pandemic and last year was forced to resign from government amid accusations of bullying and harassment), the WhatsApp messages will add to the anger among teachers that has led to them taking strike action and the sense that the government is failing teachers and children. Bousted and Courtney declared in a joint statement in January that “anyone who values education should support us in this dispute because that is what we are standing up for”. They accused ministers of being “unbothered about the conditions they are allowing schools and colleges to slide into”, adding: “The government must know there is going to have to be a correction on teacher pay. They must realise that school support staff need a pay rise. If they do not, then the consequences are clear for parents and children.”

On LabourList this morning, we have a piece from Beth Winter, arguing that the ongoing pay disputes in the public sector demonstrate the need for a better funding formula for Wales, “based on a calculation assessing genuine need rather than simply population”. The Labour backbencher writes: “The current wave of pay disputes is a creation of the Conservative low-pay agenda. But the constitutional settlement makes it a Westminster problem for the Welsh government as well.”