TEACHERS are warning of further strikes, disruption in schools and a boycott of inspections over budget cuts in education.
Two of the largest teaching unions in the north are holding their annual conferences at the weekend. The Ulster Teachers' Union (UTU) is meeting in Newcastle while members of the NASUWT will gather in Belfast. Austerity measures and budget cuts top both agendas.
Unions are angry about cuts which they claim could see 500 teachers lose their jobs with 1,000 support staff also going. One teaching union - the INTO - took strike action on March 13 in protest.
While it did not take part in the strike, the NASUWT warned that an escalation of its continuing industrial action, including the possibility of a walk out, remained firmly on the cards.
The NASUWT is engaged in action short of strike in a dispute over pay, pensions, workload and job loss.
Its conference will hear that budget reductions will "devastate education provision".
A motion to be discussed states that education is "fundamental to economic prosperity and social cohesion and must be fully protected from further savage cuts".
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the Westminster-driven austerity measures would deal a major blow to vital public services, including education.
"The high-quality provision teachers have sought to deliver will be simply unsustainable if hundreds of jobs continue to be cut," she said.
"Teachers' working lives are already blighted by excessive workload, which can only increase if more jobs are lost and those remaining in schools are left to fill the gaps. Year on year the demands on teachers and the turbulence and uncertainty increase. Teachers' dedication and commitment is being stretched to the limit.
"It is grossly unreasonable to expect them to continue to do more and more with less and less."
Justin McCamphill, NASUWT national official for Northern Ireland added that the union would continue to oppose cuts and planned redundancies.
Details of industrial action to be taken by UTU, meanwhile, will be outlined at its conference. It has agreed to commence industrial action in schools from March 30.
About 6,000 members will stop working beyond their contractual hours, limit the amount of planning they do, stop sending data to the Department of Education and boycott all inspections.
"Every cut in a school is now personal to our children. It will undoubtedly impact on our children's education and future," Sandra Brown, UTU president said.
"The minister has envisaged job losses to be realised as 'voluntary' and we would all prefer that to be the case, as no teacher welcomes an imposed stop to their career," she said.
"Yet stakeholders should be under no illusion that financially expedient, voluntary redundancy solves no problem. It simply creates others - unmanageable class sizes, loss of curriculum entitlement in the post-primary sector, loss of support for SEN children, increased risk of industrial action due to unreasonable workload, to name just a few."