TEACHERS could withdraw from duties because crushing workloads have led to a crisis in recruitment and retention, their largest union affirmed yesterday.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference in Cardiff voted to support action short of strike, as they emphasised that teacher stress was leading to poor learning conditions.

James McAsh, a newly qualified teacher in Lambeth, compared the modern education landscape with the depiction of teaching in the 1967 film To Sir, with Love, starring Sidney Poitier as a young worker in a challenging east London school.

“There’s one scene where Poitier has a boxing match with one of the students,” he said.

“It’s moving, but health & safety would never allow it. So an equally moving scene might include Poitier struggling, against all the odds, to deliver an outstanding verdict in a last-minute mock Ofsted.

“The last scene in the film sees Poitier receive a job offer outside of teaching. After seeing the effect that he has had on the children he has worked with, the final shot has him ripping up the letter.

“Conference, I’m sorry to say that that is the most unrealistic bit in the whole film.

“This is the main front in the fight against neoliberal education. Crippling workload is pushing teachers out of the profession and attacking our health and well-being.”

East London design & technology (DT) teacher Amy Johnson told the conference: “I, like many other teachers, have considered leaving the profession, but by bringing about real change in my working life I have fallen back in love with my job.

“There aren’t enough DT teachers because it simply doesn’t pay enough and jobs in design do.

“The government must find the money for education and start listening to us and stop telling us how to do our job.”

A motion overwhelmingly passed at the conference resolved to “encourage NUT members to take collective action in defence of reasonable working conditions.”

It called on the union to draw on the education select committee’s recent call for a limit on teachers’ working hours beyond the school day.

Teachers also voted to “ballot for a national campaign of strike and non-strike action” — for which they will seek the involvement of other unions — over pay when enough support has been drummed up among members.

Delegates called for pay to return to pre-2010 levels and an end to the performance-related pay system.

The union says pay is down 20 per cent since the Tories took power.