Sheila Caffrey, Louise Cuffaro and Dan Warrington, NEU National Executive members, personal capacity
The Labour government has been forced to make a concession on teacher pay. It has accepted the School Teachers Pay Review Body (STRB) recommendation and is awarding a 6.5% pay increase over two years for teachers in England – 3.5% for 2026-27, and 3% for the following year. The original proposal was for it to be over three years.
It is a concession made by a government in crisis, under pressure from the threat of national strike action by the National Education Union (NEU). The union is due to start a national ballot on 3 October.
But this isn’t the time to take our foot off the pedal. The announcement doesn’t meet the demands made by NEU members in the indicative ballot in April.
The pay award is not fully funded – there is a shortfall of £461 million. It will therefore mean more redundancies of school staff to pay for it. The NEU says that schools will have to “find £460 million from budgets already at breaking point. This is the equivalent of 8,300 school staff: 3,900 teachers and 4,400 support staff.”
This is the opposite of dealing with the funding crisis, which members want action on – it will make it worse. And this is when we know the crisis in the Middle East is ongoing and energy bills are rising, which will make school budgets even tighter.
The award does nothing to tackle excessive workload, one of the key issues that NEU members want to fight over. The only concession on this is to stop a planned attack on working hours which would have made the situation even worse.
Andy Burnham is about to become Labour Prime Minister. But we already know he has said he will stick to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules, and he is being backed by all the pro-austerity Blairite and Starmerite Labour MPs.
We cannot afford to ‘give him time’. The best way to ‘influence’ Burnham is to keep the pressure on. The NEU’s own figures show that since the strike wave in 2023, teachers have won twice what both Tory and Labour ministers originally proposed. The markets and big business are piling pressure on – we must do as well!
In the indicative ballot, 90.5% of teachers were willing to take action on a 48% turnout – 150,000 teachers. That’s a really solid basis for a ballot for action in the autumn, especially if a strong lead is given. A bold lead by the NEU can also encourage other education unions to take action.
The NEU Executive met on 9 July and agreed to run an online ‘snap poll’ of NEU members from 11-18 July. They are being asked if they accept the offer, or are prepared to take action for more pay, and/or for full funding for the pay award.
Reps and activists must use this short window to campaign as vigorously as possible for a strong yes vote for action.
Why a snap poll?
We and other Exec members argued against holding this poll, as members have already voted in one consultation and made their views known extremely clearly. The strike ballot isn’t planned until October – there’s plenty of time for proper discussion and preparation by members, especially once they see what the funding gap in schools under Andy Burnham is really like.
We argued for the union leadership to recommend action, and for a question that would make it clear this is about fighting on funding, redundancies and workload, not just pay – in line with the questions members were asked back in April.
