More strikes planned as teachers reject pay offer

Teachers in England will strike on Thursday 27 April and Tuesday 2 May after members of the UK’s largest education union rejected a pay offer.

Teachers were offered a £1,000 one-off payment this year, and a 4.3% rise next year. Starting salaries would also rise to £30,000 from September.

The results of the NEU ballot found that 98% of members were in favour of turning the deal down.

The education secretary said it was “extremely disappointing”.

The National Education Union (NEU) described the offer as “insulting” and said it had “united the profession in its outrage”.

Speaking at the annual conference in Harrogate, Joint General Secretaries Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney said the offer was “not fully funded” and did not deal with the shortage of teachers in schools.

In a ballot over the government’s pay offer, 191,319 NEU members voted to reject the deal with a 66% turnout.

After hearing the announcement, delegates at the conference chanted “come on Gill, pay the bill”.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said the NEU’s decision to reject the pay offer “will simply result in more disruption for children and less money for teachers today”.

“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,” she said.

Ms Keegan said pay would now be decided by the independent pay review body, which would recommend pay rises for next year. This means the £1,000 payment for this year will not happen.

During a visit to Rochdale, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the news of new strike dates was “extremely disappointing” following “a very reasonable pay offer”.

Ms Bousted confirmed plans to support GCSE and A-level students during the upcoming strike days and said head teachers would make sure those pupils were in class for exam preparations.

Following the vote, Ms Bousted called on ministers to “reopen negotiations” on pay.

On Tuesday at the NEU conference, members will vote on three more potential strike days at the end of June and the beginning of July, but this would have to be approved by the NEU executive.

Teacher salaries fell by an average of 11% between 2010 and 2022, after taking inflation into account, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Most state school teachers in England had a 5% rise in 2022.

The government says it is giving schools an extra £2.3bn over the next two years. Most of the pay rise would have come from this money; schools would have received extra funding for the £1,000 one-off payment and 0.5% of the pay increase for next year.

Luke Sibieta, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said schools budgets could only absorb “a small amount” of the pay offer and that some schools were already seeing costs growing faster than funding.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) says there is “only just enough headroom” to cover the current pay offer.

Natalie Perera, the Chief Executive of the EPI, warned that the current funding “does not compensate schools for the additional support they have had to provide for increasingly vulnerable pupils”.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/