More than 8,000 schools across the UK were forced to close today as teachers staged their first national strike in 20 years in a dispute over pay.
In separate but co-ordinated stoppages, 100,000 civil servants including jobcentre workers were also staging 24-hour strikes today, as were 30,000 college lecturers and coastguard staff.
Up to 200,000 members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) are taking part in the one-day action in protest at a three-year pay deal announced in January.
"Teachers do not take the decision to strike easily, or lightly, but their patience has been stretched to the limit," said Christine Blower, the NUT's acting General Secretary. "This is not just a one year issue. After three years of below-inflation pay increases, the prospect for a further three years of the same is the last straw."
The pay deal, recommended by the independent School Teachers' Review Body which included the NUT, would see salaries rise by 2.45 per cent from September 2008, and by 2.3 per cent in September 2009 and 2010.
"It is regrettable for pupils, it is regrettable for parents," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said. "This a government that over 10 years has doubled expenditure on education."
The Local Government Association said estimates suggested that about 4,100 schools had shut and another 4,000 partially closed because of the strike. That meant about a third of all schools in England would be affected, it said. It is the first time that teachers across the country have gone on strike for 21 years.
Millions of government workers have expressed disappointment at their latest pay awards, most notably police officers, thousands of whom marched through London in January to protest at a decision not to backdate their pay rise.