TORONTO -- Students in Ontario's public elementary schools won't get their extracurricular activities back any time soon.

The union representing the teachers said it won't ask its 76,000 members to resume voluntary activities, like supervising sports teams and clubs.

It will take "real actions" for Premier Kathleen Wynne's government to regain the confidence of teachers, the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario said Thursday.

So far, the governing Liberals have only promised to listen and work with the union to change the bargaining process in the future, said ETFO president Sam Hammond.

"Discussions have been positive and are moving in the right direction," he said in an interview.

"But in terms of concrete results or finding resolutions to outstanding concerns, that hasn't happened yet. And because of that, we're not in a position to chance our advice to members around voluntary extracurricular activities."

Hammond wouldn't say what those concerns were or what actions he's looking for.

"I will not bargain any issues in the public," he said.

Education Minister Liz Sandals said her government is pleased the union wants to keep talking.

"But it is disappointed that ETFO has decided not to resume the voluntary provision of extracurricular activities at this time," she said in a statement.

"Extracurricular activities enrich the educational experience of both students and teachers."

ETFO is taking a different stance from the union representing public high school teachers, which urged its 60,000 members last week to return to extracurricular activities.

But the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation said the majority of teachers don't want to go back because they're still too angry with the government for imposing contracts.

It's the same for elementary teachers, Hammond said.

"There is still a great deal of anger and frustration amongst our members across the province," he said.

Teachers want more than just friendly words from the government, said NDP education critic Peter Tabuns.

"Let's face it: the government acted in a very heavy-handed way in the last few months," he said.

"They created this conflict. There's a lot of ill-will out there, a lot of angry people. It is going to take a lot of work to clean up this mess."

The Liberals promised that extracurriculars would come back soon, only to be proven wrong a few days later, said Progressive Conservative critic Lisa MacLeod.

"At the end of the day though, Kathleen Wynne isn't really suffering here, Sam Hammond isn't really suffering here," she said.

"Six, seven and eight-year-old kids are suffering, and I think that's got to end."

She appealed directly to teachers, asking them to consider what their protest is doing to students.

"There are a lot of great teachers out there, a lot of them that are doing a lot of this anyway, and I am encouraging them to continue to do so," MacLeod said.

The Liberals used controversial legislation to foist the contracts on teachers in January, which cut benefits and froze the wages of most instructors.

The two unions had urged their members to stop all voluntary activities in their labour battle with the government, which resulted in rotating one-day strikes last December.

Asked if he was worried about a public backlash, Hammond said he hopes to resolve ETFO's concerns with the government "sooner rather than later."