Doug MacAvoy, the leader of Britain's biggest teaching union, has given assurances that any industrial action will not affect next term's public exams.

Speaking on Breakfast this morning, he said the unions were still hopeful that they could persuade the Education Secretary Estelle Morris to move to limit teachers' working hours.

The union blames staff shortages and bureaucracy for long working hours

If not, he said, the NUT would make sure that industrial action did not affect public exams such as GCSE's and A Levels.

"All the independent evidence is that teachers work between 55 and 58 hours a week," he told Breakfast.

staff shortages

Too much bureaucracy, too few classroom assistants and an increasing recruitment and retention problem in many schools were all to blame for teachers' excessive workloads, he said.

He added: "We will not disrupt exams at all. I doubt there will be any industrial action this term - it would be more likely to take place in the Autumn term.

"In London, where we have already had some industrial action, we protected those children taking public exams."

To see Doug MacAvoy's interiview in full, click on the watch/listen box at the top of this page