Teachers have voted to strike, with 90.4% of those balloted by the National Education Union (NEU) in England supporting industrial action on a turnout of 53.3%. In Wales, a 92.3% majority voted in favour with a turnout of 58.1%.
The majority of schools in England and Wales will close on 1 February, on 15 March (Budget day) and on 16 March, but these will be accompanied by a series of one-day regional strikes.
In total employers face the prospect of staff with school-age children having to find childcare or take leave on four days between the start of next month and mid-March. Around 23,400 schools will be affected.
The NEU is pursuing a fully-funded above-inflation pay rise, after the government announced that most teachers would receive a pay rise of approximately 5%, around half of the current inflation level.
Teachers’ strikes in England and Wales
• 1 February – England and Wales
• 14 February – Wales
• 28 February – North, North West, Yorkshire and Humber
• 1 March – East Midlands, West Midlands and East
• 2 March – South West, London and South East
• 15-16 March – England and Wales.
Teachers’ strikes in Scotland
• Local one-day strikes ongoing from 16 January to 6 February, by local authority.
Teachers’ strikes in Northern Ireland
• Co-ordinated action short of strike ongoing, with unions contemplating joint strikes in February 2023.
The NEU, the largest education union in the UK, balloted around 300,000 teacher and support staff members.
In England, a ballot of support staff in schools saw a 84.1% majority on a turnout of 46.5%, missing the threshold. In Wales, 88.3% voted in favour of strike on a turnout of 51.3%.
A joint statement from both NEU general secretaries, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, said: “This is not about a pay rise but correcting historic real-terms pay cuts. Teachers have lost 23% in real-terms since 2010, and support staff 27% over the same period. The average 5% pay rise for teachers this year is some 7% behind inflation. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, that is an unsustainable situation.
“The government has also been happy to sit by as their own recruitment targets are routinely missed. Teachers are leaving in droves, a third gone within five years of qualifying. This is a scandalous waste of talent and taxpayers’ money, yet the government seems unbothered about the conditions they are allowing schools and colleges to slide into.”
The NEU said the reasons for the recruitment and retention crisis are “not a mystery” citing reports in the last week from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the National Foundation for Educational Research.
Claims that teachers’ pay had fallen 23% did not match the IFS’s calculations, which found that between 2010 and 2022, real-terms salaries for the most experienced and senior teachers had fallen 13%. For middle earners, it was 9-10% and starting salaries had fallen 5%, with an overall average of 11%.
“The government must know there is going to have to be a correction on teacher pay,” continued Bousted and Courtney. “They must realise that school support staff need a pay rise. If they do not, then the consequences are clear for parents and children.
“The lack of dedicated maths teachers, for example, means that one in eight pupils are having work set and assessed by people who are not qualified in the teaching of maths.”
They added: “It continues to be the aspiration of the NEU and its membership that this dispute can be resolved without recourse to strike action. We regret having to take strike action, and are willing to enter into negotiations at any time, any place, but this situation cannot go on.”
The education secretary has said she plans to meet union leaders later this week.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast Gillian Keegan said: “You don’t have to strike to get a meeting with me, to get attention from me. And I’m very interested in supporting teachers, they do a fantastic job – they really are changing lives every day.”
She claimed that changes had been made to tackle recruitment and retention challenges in the profession, including providing more support for teachers in the early years of their role.
Keegan has also said that headteachers were being urged to keep “as many schools open for as many children as possible”.
Last week, another teachers union, the NASUWT, failed to reach the threshold for industrial action in its ballot.
This article was originally published on 16 January and updated on 17 January.
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