Sheila Caffrey, NEU Executive member, personal capacity
After a year in which school buildings have literally been crumbling around our ears from the horror of RAAC concrete, when 40,000 teachers have left teaching for reasons other than retirement, and with 70% of schools having less funding in real terms now that they did in 2010, we certainly do not have an education system that is encouraging people to work in it!
That, along with the national strike days taken by the National Education Union (NEU) last year, made the Tory government-appointed teachers’ pay review board (the STRB) recommend a 5.5% pay rise for teachers this year. Other school staff sit within the local government pay offer, made by the Tories, which on average will equate to a 4.5% increase – already rejected by support staff in an indicative ballot before summer. The new Labour government is sticking to these offers.
Both of these are currently above inflation and Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, correctly states this is a step in the right direction for pay restoration; however, it is such a tiny step after well over a decade of below-inflation pay deals, that it won’t do much to stem the tide of education workers leaving.
The funding needed to cover the pay offers is about £1.1 billion, which the government has claimed to be providing. But what does that mean in reality? £683 million already has apparently been put in school budgets, referred to as ‘headroom’. This is incomprehensible to education staff who see the reality of school budgets every day.
The School Cuts website states: ‘In total, we need £12.2 billion from the government to stop the crisis in our schools from getting any worse.’ So, this ‘headroom’ simply does not exist and will again lead to cuts and redundancies in many schools.
And the Labour government says that a third of the ‘new’ money will come from other government pots of money. Asking Peter to pay Paul is divisive. There is £40 billion of unpaid taxes from the super-rich every year. There is plenty of money in society to cover the funding needed for education, health and all other public services!
The 5.5% pay deal with its limited funding is being put to the 300,000 teachers in the NEU to vote on in September. The National Executive met last week to decide whether to put forward an ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ position. Socialist Party exec members, alongside other socialist activists, argued for a ‘reject’ vote, and to ballot members to fight for better funding, linking that to workload and to keep up the pressure on pay restoration. NEU could take the lead in a campaign of all education workers across all education unions.
Although Daniel Kebede admitted there were some concerns around funding, the majority of the executive voted to recommend members accept.
If this is accepted in September, it will signal the end to the fight on pay and funding for the second year running.
‘Why?’ is a question many members would ask – when action improved the pay and funding offered last year, from the Tories! Unfortunately, some on the executive have illusions that Labour will be kinder to the unions in the future if there is no fight now.
However, Socialist Party members stand with a small group on the executive who put forward the idea that ‘If you don’t fight, you won’t win’. We will campaign for a ‘reject’ vote in September. By leading, with a fighting programme, we could build a union that would fight to win.
The majority on the executive currently are in the ‘NEU Left’ grouping. That includes members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). Over the premature ending of the pay battle in the summer of 2023, and then over whether to fight for more funding in autumn 2023, the NEU Left was split, with the SWP arguing on the same side as the Socialist Party on the exec.
In this August executive meeting it was split yet again, as the SWP argued, with us, for a ‘reject’ vote. But then when that position was lost, the SWP went on to vote for the majority ‘accept’ motion, which Socialist Party members did not.
If the NEU Left leadership cannot give a lead on the most crucial issues we face as a union, it clearly poses the need to draw together those who want to build a fighting union into a new left. There will be elections to the executive in spring next year, and we appeal to all those who want to build a fighting union to agree to support candidates who stand on that programme.
