Tamworth teachers will meet on Monday to determine what industrial action their schools will take as they fight to overturn staff advertising changes implemented in April.

Schools in the North West will face more industrial action as rolling stopwork meetings are carried out across the State.

The regional meetings will continue over a period of five weeks. Hard-to-staff schools will link up with schools in favoured areas and write letters to department officials and government representatives in opposition to the changes.

New England Teachers Federation organiser Owen Hasler told The Leader teachers in designated schools would stop work for a short amount of time for one day.

“Schools in my area are taking brief stopwork action on one day over the next four weeks and will link up with the more favourable areas,” he said.

“This is to make it clear that the rural areas are supported by those favoured areas.

“The favoured Picton area in Sydney will link up with schools in Warialda who are recognised as hard-to-staff schools, and non-incentive schools who rely on the ordinary transfer system.

“They will be having a half-hour stopwork meeting where staff will write to local members of parliament and indicate to them their total dissatisfaction and rejection to the changes, and feeling totally misled by this.

“The Tamworth teachers association will meet on Monday and will make the decision on what action they will take in week three of the term.

“Narrabri and Wee Waa will also take action on week four and Guyra, Uralla and Armidale in week five.

“In week six there will be a Sky Channel stopwork

meeting.”

A spokesman from the Department of Education and Training (DET) said the department was disappointed that more industrial action would go ahead.

“DET is disappointed the teachers federation has decided to take this action,” he said.

“There will be minimal disruption to classes and schools will be operating as normal.

“The new staffing procedures were implemented to enhance the way we staff our schools to attract the best qualified teachers to meet local needs.

“These modest changes introduced at the beginning of term two will benefit both students and teachers.

“No teacher loses award rights as a result of these additional options available to schools.

“The department will continue to fulfil its obligation to have a qualified teacher in every class in every location.

“We are continuing to talk to the union about the new staffing procedures.”