The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has appealed to teachers in Church of England schools to keep them open during the strike action expected this week.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) have voted to strike on seven days in the next two months in a pay dispute. The first action is on Wednesday 1 February.
In an address to the CofE’s national education conference in London on Friday, Ms Keegan said the Church of England ran one-fifth of state-funded schools, a quarter of all primary schools and was the largest provider of academy trusts.
On top of her in-tray, when she was appointed in October, was a letter from all four teaching unions asking for more money. Weeks later, in the autumn statement, the government agreed to give a further £2bn to education.
She said she understood the pressures people were under with economic challenges, but for teachers to have an impact, they needed to be in school. “My ask of all of you is that you now work with me to keep as many schools open and as many children in schools as possible during the disruptive strike action,” she said.
Ms Keegan agreed with the prime minister’s suggestion that maths should continue to be taught until the age of 18. “We use maths every day in our lives from grocery shopping to buying financial products and mortgages, to understanding good debt from bad debt, and we must equip children to deal with life’s complexities,” she said.
Earlier, she praised the record of Church of England schools, saying they had a reputation for excellence, and that the CofE was one of the Department of Education’s most valued partners.
The conference is the fifth of its kind and attracted teachers from all parts of England. Pupils performed music and dance during the presentations.
Among the speakers, the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, who — like Ms Keegan had attended Catholic schools as a child — welcomed the focus of the conference on providing flourishing schools.
Dame Rachel said the Church of England had set up the education system to develop the whole person, all their talents, their spirit and their soul: “That is the reason we don’t just do academics, it’s the reason we’ve always had a strong pastoral focus, ethos focus,” she said.
Referring to a survey of more than half a million children, commissioned when she first came into office, she said the data showed children wanted a good home life, good education, a job, enough money and friends, to be part of a community, fairness and a good environment.
“This generation of children are civic-minded, social and outward-looking. They care about their local areas desperately and they want to play,” Dame Rachel said.
Schools should be like a family, providing love, and when families are overwhelmed and turn to services for support. “I would love to see the local authorities wrap their services around your schools, so that families can get their needs met with people they trust,” she added.
Lord Boateng, who chairs the Church of England’s Racial Justice Commission, said there was racism in the world, the country and in schools. Black people were subjected to hatred, were less likely to do well at school and more likely to be excluded.
He drew attention to gypsies, travellers and Roma who were the least-liked group in the country, with 44.6 per cent of people holding negative views of them.
The Racial Justice Commission had been profoundly shocked to hear their testimony of discrimination. Lord Boateng said they were the most underachieving group in school, least likely to enter higher education, had the lowest rate of attendance and the highest rate of permanent exclusion.
He appealed to schools to create partnerships with communities to address the issue, which required policy, strategy and resources.
The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, addressed his remarks to school leaders, saying leadership was hard and demanding and required the ability to deal with failure.
He told of being called in to speak to the head of a school in his parish who poured her heart out to him about the weight of responsibility leading the school.
Archbishop Cottrell spoke of the importance for leaders to look after themselves and find time for “replenishing”. He said: “It led me to reimagine my whole role in that school, that I wasn’t just there to do an assembly and be with the children in the classroom.
“I had an important pastoral and spiritual role within the whole school, and particularly with the adults who worked there, be it the head teacher, the classroom assistant or the cook … And this, surely, is one of the great joys and advantages of a church school.”
