Schools in England brace for more strikes as NEU rejects pay offer

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Parents in England face another wave of strikes and school closures after teachers belonging to the National Education Union decisively rejected the government’s pay offer.

NEU members voted by 98% not to accept the offer of a ?1,000 one-off payment and a 4.3% pay rise for most teachers from September, triggering two further days of strikes in England on Thursday 27 April and Tuesday 2 May.

More than 195,000 members voted in the pay ballot – two-thirds of the union’s active membership – with only 2% voting to accept the government’s offer.

Kevin Courtney, the NEU’s joint general secretary, said in comments directed at the education secretary, Gillian Keegan: “We are saying to you that you need to make a better offer because this dispute is not going away.”

When the result was announced at the NEU’s annual conference in Harrogate, delegates broke into chants of “come on Gill, pay the bill”.

Mary Bousted, the union’s other joint general secretary, noted that the government’s offer was worse than pay deals that recently resolved disputes in other countries within the UK. “Gillian, why do you think that teachers in England are worth less than teachers in Wales or Scotland?” Bousted said.

“To parents we say that we have no wish to disrupt education, indeed our action is aimed at getting the government to invest in the education of this generation of children and the people who teach them. We are asking our school reps to plan with headteachers to ensure that year 11 and year 13 students have a full programme of education on the upcoming strike days”.

Students begin sitting A-level and GCSE exams from 15 May.

The NEU conference will this week debate an emergency motion to confirm the two further strike days, and to hold a fresh ballot next month that would authorise further strikes this summer.

Keegan said she was “extremely disappointed” by the NEU’s decision to reject her offer, and would refuse further negotiations until the Department for Education had received pay recommendations for 2023-24 from the independent School Teachers’ Review Body.

“The offer was funded, including major new investment of over half a billion pounds, in addition to the record funding already planned for school budgets. The NEU’s decision to reject it will simply result in more disruption for children and less money for teachers today. Pay will now be decided by the independent pay review body, which will recommend pay rises for next year,” Keegan said.

The rejection of the government’s offer, which could be followed by the other major teaching unions, is a setback for Keegan after she entered into six days of intense negotiations last month. The DfE’s offer also included the establishment of a new taskforce to reduce teacher workload.

Keegan had said the offer was “final” and the one-off payment would be lost if teachers rejected the deal.

The DfE had procured additional funding for the one-off ?1,000 payment that would have been on top of the 5% pay rise already set out for the current school year, while the 4.5% overall offer was an improvement on the 3% the government had originally put forward for 2023-24.

Three other unions, the NASUWT, Association of School and College Leaders and National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) are also balloting members on the offer, with the NAHT also asking if they would take industrial action if it is rejected. NAHT members were balloted in January but failed to get over the 50% threshold of members’ voting required for industrial action.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that even including the pay offer, salaries for experienced teachers would still be 13% lower than in 2010.

Last month unions in Scotland accepted a pay increase worth more than 14% for most teachers. In Wales the unions accepted an additional 3% pay rise for the current school year and a 5% increase for 2023-24.