LEIGH lecturers joined a national one-day strike over demands for a £3,000 pay rise on Tuesday.

Staff and students at Wigan and Leigh College's Railway Road Campus stayed away as pickets manned the main doors, but exams were allowed to go ahead unaffected.

The strike is the beginning of a campaign of industrial action to back up the claim of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE).

The action is aimed at closing the growing pay gap between college lecturers and schoolteachers.

The union is demanding that the £3,000 is the first step in a staged award that will close the gap within four years.

Currently lecturers' pay is 10 per cent behind that of their school teacher colleagues.

During national pay talks between the union and the employers' body, the Association of Colleges, on May 15, only three per cent was offered for this year.

A NATFHE spokesperson for the college said: "All we want is more respect and recognition for what we achieve in this college.

"We've seen our school and sixth form colleagues' pay justifiably rise, while most of us are stuck on low pay with little chance of progress.

"Some teachers in this college earn as little as £13,000. This is after industrial experience, a degree and a postgraduate teaching certificate. Is that what the education we provide is worth?

"Lecturers do not take action lightly. The last thing we want to do is harm the students we teach. At the end of the day, they'll get a better deal if they are taught by lecturers who are motivated and valued."