England’s biggest teaching union, the National Education Union, has announced it will ballot on strike action.
The NEU has accused the government’s proposed 2.8% pay rise for public sector workers of “insulting” the profession and said Labour had betrayed thousands of teachers who voted them into office last year.
At a special meeting, the union agreed to proceed with a preliminary online ballot to gauge strength of feeling, and will follow this up with an indicative ballot of members between 1 March and 11 April.
Industrial action would likely then take place in the summer term.
Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, said: “Government must face up to the fact that the problems in teacher pay are far from resolved.
Teacher pay
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“Since 2010 pay for teachers in England has declined by a fifth. The profession no longer attracts enough graduates to keep up with the soaring vacancies.”
He said the 2.8% proposal is “not sufficient to even start to address the crisis in recruitment and retention”.
Teachers and other public sector workers received above-inflation pay rises of 5.5% for the 2024-25 pay year
Schools were hit by eight days of national strikes in 2023 after a series of below-inflation pay proposals, and the NEU claims that thousands of teachers “voted for the change that Labour promised for education”.
Kebede added: “The suggestion that an unfunded pay award can be paid for by making ‘efficiencies’ is an insult to a profession who have already endured 14 years of austerity .
“No teacher or leader will be able to identify efficiencies without cutting staff or resources or both. This is a fact that the government knows only too well. After years of cuts to funding there is nothing left in the coffers.
“They promised to invest in education, to recruit 6,500 teachers and to value education and to secure the life chances of our children.
“We need to see their commitment in deeds as well as words. Sentiment alone will not fill the excessive teacher vacancies nor will deliver the world class education our children deserve.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the NEU ballot was “an extraordinary decision”.
“In three years, teachers have had a combined pay increase of over 17%.
“As schools and families continue doing everything they can to improve attendance, and after the millions of school days lost through both the pandemic and recent industrial action, union leaderships need to think long and hard about whose interests they are putting first.
“For the government and the education secretary, it is always children who come first.”
Teachers at sixth form colleges have been on strike this week (7-9 January) after rejecting what they call a “two-tier pay system” in the sector.
Teachers working in academised sixth form colleges have been offered a 5.5% rise for the next academic year, while those in non-academised sixth forms have been offered 3.5% from September to April, and 5.5% from April onwards.
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