Teachers today voted in favour of a one-day strike over London cost-of-living allowances as Estelle Morris, the education secretary, warned them against returning to the "dark ages of dispute and conflict".
Hundreds of schools in the capital will be affected when around 40,000 members of the National Union of Teachers stage a one-day stoppage on March 14.
The NUT wanted allowances to go up by a third, taking the inner London payment from £3,000 to £4,000, but the government has offered 3.5%, worth an extra £105, effective from April 1.
But the teacher unions are divided over action - something Ms Morris was quick to comment on when she addressed a conference in London today.
She rebuked teachers for threatening to disrupt children's education and headteachers for refusing to implement performance-related pay in schools.
She said standards were rising in schools. "But the pace of improvement is at risk from a proposed boycott of performance management by the headteachers' associations and the threat of strike action by teachers over the London weighting allowance.
"How can we build the morale of teachers nationally if they are denied rewards for good performance by their own heads?" demanded the education secretary.
"What can I say to parents in London, if their children's education is disrupted by strike action over the London weighting allowance, which last year rose by 30%? "
She said this year's pay settlement gave teachers an above inflation pay rise of 3.5% and a shorter pay scale, meaning good teachers get more money quicker.
"How can we justify the investment that we are putting into our teachers' salaries if we can't trust that it will be returned by professional responsibility and an absolute commitment to our children's education? "
Ms Morris added: "It would be tragic if the irresponsible action of a few damaged the impact of work already achieved to build a teaching profession that is the source of national pride and the envy of the world. Today, I am setting a challenge to the unions to help us promote the value of teaching and raise the status of the teaching profession. The alternative is to return to the dark ages of dispute and conflict."
Headteachers, she said, like other managers, had to make tough decisions on how to reward their staff for good performance. "But how can we square that with threats from the heads' associations to boycott performance management or performance pay points for teachers? Strikes, boycotts, threats and lack of leadership damage the status of the profession," she said.
The ballot showed 86% of NUT London members supported the one-day stoppage. However, just three out of 10 of the 41,000 teachers eligible to do so took part - a turnout the government was bound to seize on as evidence that only a minority supported NUT bosses on the allowances campaign.
The strike will affect schools throughout greater London and in parts of the surrounding counties, including Dartford in Kent, Basildon in Essex and Slough in Berkshire, the union said. General secretary Doug McAvoy said: "The government should rethink its attitude to the allowance increases and recognise their inadequacy.
"It should not close its mind to the issue. It should gather the necessary information from the local authorities.
"It should sit down with the teachers' organisations and the authorities to deal with the inadequacies of the allowances in addressing the unique problems of London."
The second largest teacher union, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said it shared the NUT's concern about London allowances but it was better to "keep our powder dry" until after this summer's comprehensive spending review.
Nigel de Gruchy, the union's general secretary, said it was then the government's real intentions on what to do about teacher workload and conditions would become clear.
David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the low turnout suggested the response to the NUT strike call would not be as solid as they hoped.
Last month, the Secondary Heads Association and the National Association of Head Teachers threatened to stop doing the work required to process claims for performance bonuses for teachers with several years' experience. They said the government had to put an extra £1bn into the scheme over the next six years, or they would have to raid their books and equipment budgets to pay the bonuses. Mr Hart said the last people in the education world who need a lesson from the secretary of state on public service reform were headteachers. "It is unbelievable that the government seeks to pick a fight with the very people who have delivered and delivered and delivered again on the government's standards agenda. It is embarking on a conflict entirely of its own making." Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has also urged Ms Morris to do more to tackle teacher shortages in the capital.
Inadequate allowances - currently the subject of an investigation by the London Assembly - and the high cost of housing were two of the biggest problems, he said.
And the situation looked set to get worse, Mr Livingstone warned, as he estimated that London would need an extra 3,000 teachers by 2016 to cope with a projected 68,000 rise in the number of school age children.
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