Teachers are on a path to taking further strike action after the largest education union opened the door to launching a formal strike ballot.
Delegates of the National Education Union’s (NEU) have voted for districts, branches and school groups to “immediately prepare” for a formal industrial action ballot. It will launch its ballot if the Government’s final pay offer for teachers for 2025/26 “remains unacceptable” – or if the Government does not announce real-terms funding increases in the spending review in June.
The motion, which was passed at the NEU’s conference in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, slammed the Government’s recommended 2.8% pay rise for September as being “inadequate and unfunded” and said it would prevent the Government achieving its target of recruiting 6,500 more teachers.
In December, teachers responded furiously to the Government’s recommended 2.8% pay rise. The offer is unfunded so any pay rise for teachers would mean cuts elsewhere across the education sector. The motion added: “Austerity will be ended by deeds not words and a Labour government should invest in education. Schools are starved of funding and there are no ‘efficiencies’ to be made. A fully funded above inflation pay rise for educators is necessary.”
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Last week NEU members voted to reject the government’s 2.8% pay offer for teachers in England and expressed their willingness to strike in a preliminary electronic ballot. Some 93.7% of members rejected the pay award, while 83.4% said they would be willing to take action to secure an increased pay award. The overall turnout was 134,487, or 47.2 per cent of those eligible to vote.
In its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December, the Department for Education said a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate” and would “maintain the competitiveness” of teachers’ pay despite the “challenging financial backdrop” the Government is facing. The Government has yet to publish the recommendations of the teachers’ pay review body, or its decision on whether to accept them.
During the first half of 2023, teachers took widespread strike action, with staff downing tools for eight days. Many schools were forced to close on strike days and kids suffered huge disruption amid Tory inaction on the pay deal. By July all of the four main school teaching and leadership unions in England announced that their members had decided to accept the Government’s pay offer of a 6.5% cash-terms increase for the 2023 to 2024 academic year.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “Members of the National Education Union have put the Government on notice. “The Government’s unfunded and inadequate 2.8% proposed increase would mean another pay cut against inflation and would see teacher pay fall further behind pay in other professions.
“The result would be an intensification of the already critical recruitment and retention problems, so the pay cut would affect children and families too. The Government must turn the page on failed austerity and instead invest properly in education.
“It must publish the STRB report immediately and commit to the pay correction needed to reverse the huge pay cuts against inflation since 2010. NEU members will continue to fight for the pay levels needed to properly value, recruit and retain the teachers our education service needs. The NEU will closely monitor developments and will consider the next steps in our campaign to fund fair pay.”
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