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More than 3,500 schools in England and Wales will be closed and some 2,600 partially closed on Thursday when two teaching unions stage strike action.

Action is being taken by members of the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. They say the changes will mean they will have to work longer, pay more and get less when they retire. Mr Gove told the Commons the strike would cause "massive inconvenience to hard-working families" and would hit working women particularly hard.

He said his department had established that 3,206 schools in England would be closed and 2,206 would be partially closed on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of teaching days have been lost in Wales through teachers taking time off due to stress, new figures show.

He said: "It could be because of pupil behaviour, because of workload, it could be because of things such as pressure for results. There could be bullying and harassment issues or it could be because of inspections. "Some of the days lost that are not put down to stress may be stress related in some way, but people don't necessarily want to put stress down as a reason. "In the more enlightened times that we're in now, we would like to think people would specify the true reason they're off but we do find for people who've been off for a long period of time, it might be stress but called something else."

The Welsh Assembly Government said action had been taken to reduce the amount of stress teachers faced.