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  "description": "‘Nobody ever wants to take strike action – It was something we felt compelled to do because we had no other choice’",
  "path": "/the-sen-teacher-whose-strike-action-made-headlines/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-05T09:00:06.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.leicester.news",
  "tags": [
    "Click here for membership",
    "close the service",
    "130,000 signed a petition"
  ],
  "textContent": "This story was published by ****the Leicester Gazette**** : a local, independent newspaper about Leicestershire. 1,000 people have already joined our mailing list. Just use that button below to ****sign up for free.****\n\n__No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Want to support our work?__ Click here for membership__.__\n\nSubscribe for free\n\nThe name ‘Tom Barker’ may be familiar to some readers, the name has appeared in many local newspaper headlines over the last few months. Tom is a special education needs (SEN) teaching assistant and Unison rep at Ash Field Academy, a Sen school in North Evington, which caters for 157 students, many of which have complex health, medical, and special educational needs.\n\nTom has been suspended since October of last year; the suspension occurred just days after 86 per cent of Unison members voted in favour of strike action over cuts.\n\nUnison, along with supporters, are accusing the schools’ operator, Discovery Academy Trust (DSAT) of union-busting. DSAT continues to deny these claims, stating that Tom's suspension is part of a separate HR investigation.\n\nAt the time of writing, Tom has been absent from work for well over six months. Unison has confirmed a total of 14 days of strike action supporting Tom, who they say has been “victimised” by DSAT.\n\nSince October, Tom has appeared on panels alongside the likes of Your Party co-founder Zarah Sultana and Unison regional leaders. But who is Tom barker, and why did he decide to strike?\n\nAs I take my seat in the Clarendon Perk, Tom begins: “Nobody ever wants to take strike action,” he says, sipping his coffee. “It was something we felt compelled to do because we had no other choice.” He is referring, of course, to the strike action which took place in 2023, and the strike action which almost took place in 2025.\n\nAccording to Tom, the union at Ash Field has a history of successfully lobbying for workers at the school. In 2023 workers discovered a pay disparity between Ash Field and other Sen staff in Leicester. “Negotiations kind of came to an end,” says Tom. “They made an offer which included fixing the problem in the future – only in the future, and not in the present or past.”\n\n“We went to members to ballot for industrial action, we won a consultative ballot, and we won a formal industrial action ballot overwhelmingly, at the start none of us thought it would be a long, drawn out thing, but the dispute ended up going on for eight months, including 43 days of strike action.”\n\n“It came to an end when we announced all our actions for the duration of November,” says Tom. “Then they came back to us with a significantly improved order, 99 per cent of members accepted.”\n\n“Through that process we’ve been able to build a really strong union, people understand the role of the union not just in defending individual rights, but defending collective rights” says Tom.\n\nFast-forward two years later to the summer 2025, and DSAT began a redundancy consultation. Unison completed a formal industrial action ballot, which returned “an overwhelming majority.” So much so, says Tom, that DSAT “reinstated the same number of posts that they’d cut previously – that was really important because nobody wants to strike, and we didn't have to in that instance.”\n\nAccording to Tom, the 2025 strikes – or rather, the lack thereof – are evidence that “having a strong union is the best defence for services, maintaining pay and conditions.”\n\nTom’s story goes back further than 2023, though. “I'm a socialist,” Tom tells me. “I've been involved in campaigns to prevent cuts to public services for a long time, it's what I do.”\n\n## Join the conversation\n\nOur app is more than just a way to keep up – it's a gateway to award-winning journalism and the local community.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n__Want to support our work?__ Click here for membership__.__\n\n“I’ve been involved in campaigning supporting public services for a really long time,” he says. “Around 2015, I was on the committee who ran the campaign to save Glenfield's children's heart unit.”\n\nFor context, the Glenfield Children’s Heart Unit was scheduled for closure following a national review, but NHS England dropped its plans to close the service in November 2017. Over 130,000 signed a petition to save the centre, and the heart unit was moved to Leicester Royal Infirmary.\n\nTom continues: “After that campaign was concluded I was elected as the secretary of a broader campaign called Save our NHS Leicestershire, I had to stand down because of too much pressure from union roles.\n\n“That campaign was centred around protecting services, it had a lot of successes. Some of the biggest successes were challenging UHL [University Hospitals Leicester] on their restructuring, which included reducing the number of hospital beds. Our campaign had a really positive impact on that.\n\n“It’s those ideas that I take into my job as a union rep, to defend services and protect the terms and conditions and the rights of members”\n\nDespite this year's strike action supporting Tom, the idea he is the ‘man at the centre’ of the strikes is something that Tom refutes massively. “This is something which gets said quite a lot, when we talk about disputes,” he says. “People tend to talk about individuals but that’s not really the whole picture, behind one person there's usually a collective, the union.\n\n“Every dispute that we’re in, it's a dispute as members of a union, usually we informally ballot people, then if it's strong, we’ll formally ballot people. The law requires us to go through that process, this collectivises our movement.”\n\nThe idea of the strike being driven by a ‘collective’ has been really important to Tom. It shows that “I do have support.” he says. “Having members supporting me as well has been really good, the Unison branch has been fully behind me as well.”\n\nAccording to the latest press release, Unison has 11 strike dates coming up across June and July. “It’s up to the members where they go,” says Tom, when I ask him how long the union is willing to strike for. “As far as I'm concerned, I just want to be back at work now, I want the processes to conclude so I can return.”\n\nHe concludes our interview with this: “I love my job, working with students is at the centre of everything I do. Students are at the centre of it, there's a lot of challenges, especially given the background of government cuts, not funding education, public services, not funding Send, it makes the role really challenging at times, but I think it's a role a lot of us really enjoy.”\n\n* * *\n\n**Before you go…** We’ve recently surpassed 1,000 subscribers, which is amazing considering we’re a small team on a shoestring budget.\n\nNow, we’re ready for the next stage of the Leicester Gazette. **Download our new app and get all of our journalism anytime, anywhere.**\n\nThe app connects with **Bluesky** , **Mastodon** and **Threads** , giving you access to a network of around 60 million people. It’s a safer, more meaningful alternative to mainstream social media – owned by the community.\n\n\n \n\n\n* * *",
  "title": "The Sen teacher whose strike action made headlines",
  "updatedAt": "2026-07-05T11:00:08.763Z"
}