Status Anxiety | 3 December 2011

At the time of writing, it looks very much as if the West London Free School won’t be affected by Wednesday’s strike. Critics of free schools have come up with a number of theories as to why this is. We’ve been accused of only hiring non-unionised teachers, which would have been some feat of telepathy given that it’s against the law to ask prospective employees whether they’re union members. Others have suggested we’ve included a clause in all the teachers’ contracts forbidding them to strike on pain of dismissal. That, too, would be illegal.

The truth is far simpler. I suspect the majority of the teaching staff at the school are members of trade unions — most teachers are — and some of them are even members of unions that have voted to strike. The reason they’ve decided not to is because they don’t want to disrupt the education of the pupils or inconvenience their parents.