Leftie unions launch strike app to help teachers shut classrooms in lockdown
LEFTIE unions have launched a strike app to help teachers shut classrooms in lockdown.
The “Escalation App”, created by the National Education Union, provides teaching staff with a step-by-step guide to challenge head teachers attempting to keep classrooms open during lockdown.
The app offers staff a checklist, including whether they have seen a positive coronavirus case at school, with a five-step “escalation” process.
This ranges from discussing outbreaks in school with fellow union members to requesting a ballot for strike action in a local NEU branch.
It comes after teaching unions hit out at the government’s decision to keep schools open during a second national lockdown, with Downing Street insisting that closing them is a “last resort”.
The NEU’s bosses claim schools are “an engine for virus transmission” as a row with ministers intensified.
Tory MP Robert Halfon today lashed out at unions for wanting to close schools – despite scientific evidence suggesting it is safe for them to remain open.
He told the Evening Standard: “I wish the NEU would provide an app that showed how to keep our children learning and stop an epidemic of educational poverty, potentially damaging children’s life chances forever.
“The NEU seem more concerned about closing schools than keeping children learning.
“It’s wonderful that so many heads, teachers and support staff have ignored the union and are doing everything possible to ensure that pupils carry on with their education.”
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He added that “almost every study” shows that it is safe to reopen schools.
This was echoed by the Prime Minister in his speech to the nation on Saturday, when he reiterated that “school is the best place for children to be”.
Defending the app, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU alongside Mary Bousted, said it “allows rep to keep a real-time record of concerns and the progress of efforts to tackle them”.