Teachers are preparing to go on strike again next week for the second time in just over a month as the row with the government over pay continues.

Members of the National Education Union in Kent will walk out on Thursday, March 2, with a rally set to take place in Canterbury from 11.30am, starting off at the Westgate Gardens.

Previous action took place on February 1 in the first teaching strike in decades, with an overwhelming number of teachers and educational professionals flocking to the streets of the city to protest.

The regional secretary of the NEU, Maria Fawcett, said: "Despite a full month to come to the table with concrete proposals on pay, [education secretary] Gillian Keegan has done nothing to resolve our dispute. At our meeting on 15 February she made no offer.

"The responsibility to avert further strikes rests with the education secretary, and she has failed.

"Our members have broken through the threshold for ballots. They have bravely taken strike action already. The strength of feeling is all too clear. Enough is enough.

"We regret having to take strike action and the disruption it causes, but it is also self-evident that disruption to education is now part of a pupil's daily life.

"This is the point we have repeatedly made to the education secretary. It is time for her to come up with solutions."

The latest decision to strike comes as hundreds of thousands of people working in the education industry demand a fully-funded, above-inflation pay rise.

Members of the NEU from the South East, South West and London will all join together to strike. Other regions will strike on neighbouring days.

It is not yet clear how many teachers or how many schools this will affect but the NEU says its membership has grown by 47,000 since the ballot result on strike action was announced in January.

The NEU says it "stands up for the future of education" and brings "the voices of more than 450,000 teachers, lecturers, support staff and leaders" together.

It also claims to be the largest education union in Europe.

During the February 1 strikes, Andrea Kite, NEU rep and teacher at St Anselm's Catholic School in Canterbury, was with colleagues on the picket line outside the school in Old Dover Road and explained why they had decided to walk out.

"If this pay rise isn't fully-funded by the government, it comes from our school budget - which means that we'll have less money available to do the things that we really want to do with our students, so our students will suffer," she said.

"When staff leave mid-year they won't be replaced, and that's the issue.

"It's for our students, to give them a better education.

"We see our bills going up don't we, not just in the supermarket, but our fuel bills, etc. And what money we are being offered just isn't even going to cover that.

"I think something like 44% of new teachers leave within the first five years of teaching. In the past 10 years the government has missed its target for teacher recruitment in nine of those 10 years.

"People just don't want to come into teaching because it just isn't worth it. They can get better paid jobs elsewhere with the qualifications."