Teacher strikes: When are teachers' strikes happening and where?
- Published
Teachers in England are preparing to take more strike action.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) - England's biggest teaching union - have said they will hold national strikes on 5 and 7 July.
They have held three regional and five national strike days since February. The most recent one had the biggest impact on schools.
The NEU, and other English unions rejected the government's last pay offer and want to discuss again how much they think they should be paid.
A strike is when a group of workers decide to stop working to try to bring about change.
Employees do this when they want to protest against something they think is unfair where they work, like pay or working conditions.
Strikes often happen because workers want those in charge to listen to what they want.
A strike is a way of taking industrial action to protest.
The Department for Education have said that further strike action would cause "real damage" to learning.
No further strike dates are scheduled in Wales or Northern Ireland, and Scotland accepted the Scottish government's pay offer earlier in the year.
Why are teachers striking?
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One of the key reasons teachers say they are striking is over pay, the amount of money teachers get to do their job.
Unions argue that inflation - which sees the cost of things, like food and fuel go up - is at 8.7% and teachers need to be paid more so they can afford these things.
After the February strikes, the government made a new pay offer for school teachers, which the Department for Education described as "fair and reasonable".
But all four unions involved in the dispute rejected the offer. They claimed schools would have had to make cuts elsewhere to afford it.
In Northern Ireland many teachers have been offered increases for the last school year and this one, but their union representatives say the offer needs to be higher.
Will schools be closed?
Some schools close on strikes days although, in England, the government said schools should open if possible.
On previous strike days more than half of England's 22,000 schools were either closed or partially closed.
Data released by the Department for Education showed that on the strike days of 15 and 16 March, 47% of all schools in England were open but restricting attendance, and 6% were fully closed.
The most recent one, on 2 May, affected more schools than ever - with fewer than half of schools (45.3%) fully open.