Nursery World - Teachers resist six-term year

* NASUWT members have protested at Essex education authority's plan to introduce a six-term school year from this September. The teachers' union said last week that 68 per cent of teachers who returned their papers for a consultative ballot had voted for strike action over the county's plan to reduce summer holidays to four weeks and to fix the Easter break in 2005 two weeks after the Easter weekend.

The teachers' union said last week that 68 per cent of teachers who returned their papers for a consultative ballot had voted for strike action over the county's plan to reduce summer holidays to four weeks and to fix the Easter break in 2005 two weeks after the Easter weekend.

NASUWT general secretary Eamonn O'Kane said the changes failed to take into account the fact that Essex had eight neighbouring LEAs whose term dates were similar to each other. He said the different working patterns would 'create havoc for working parents with children in schools in both Essex and its neighbouring LEAs', forcing them to find extra childcare.

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