A MAJOR teachers’ conference in Bournemouth saw union leaders vow to press ahead with strike action.

Delegates at the NASUWT annual conference at the BIC were told that cuts to education were damaging teaching and learning and that there was an agenda to “control the curriculum and dictate the work of teachers.”

NASUWT and the NUT have already announced a series of local strikes in the summer term, followed by a one-day national strike in the autumn, in protest at government plans to stop an annual increase in teachers’ pay and to extend the use of linking pay to performance.

Education secretary Michael Gove has written to the leaders of both teachers’ unions saying he would meet them for talks but ruling out any renegotiation of planned changes to performance linked pay and pensions.

President Mick Lyons said: “Education, once again, is being used as a political football. Expensive and disruptive short-term changes are being imposed without the agreement of teachers and in ways that teachers recognise as damaging to education.”

Conference delegates also saw human and trade union rights campaigner Jalila al Salman presented with an International Solidarity Award.