PUPILS staged a protest against staff cuts at their school.

About 100 children from Basildon Lower Academy gathered in the school grounds to protest against plans to slash up to 30 jobs at their school and Basildon Upper Academy.

They grouped together in the school yard before lessons started to chant, “we’re on strike” and “we shall not be moved”.

They were dispersed by staff, but some of the protesters ran on to the school fields to continue the protest, saying, “we won’t give up that easily”.

Staff followed them on to the fields and dispersed them again.

A parent, who didn’t want to be named, said a group of pupils had organised the protest by handing out posters and flyers informing their classmates about their views and intentions to “strike”.

She said they wanted to save the classroom support assistants, whose jobs are under threat.

The £45million Basildon Academies, which brought together the former Chalvedon School as the Upper Academy and former Barstable School as the Lower Academy, opened in 2009.

Two months ago, they received a scathing Ofsted report, highlighting poor discipline, high absence rates and the need for improvements by teachers and leadership staff.

Last week, the academies announced a number of teaching assistants, caretakers, non-teaching pastoral staff and lab technicians would have to go because the schools were suffering from a cash shortage, due to Government funding cuts.

A statement from the academies’ governing body said staff reductions would not affect frontline teachers in the classroom and they would try to avoid making compulsory redundancies.

No one from either academy was available for comment.