A Cabinet minister today begged teachers not to go on strike over an inflation-busting 2.8 per cent pay offer.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said she realised ‘life has been very very tough’ in classrooms but insisted staff had to ‘work together’ with the government.
The plea, in a round of interviews this morning, comes as the public finances come under huge pressure from spiking costs of servicing debt.
Markets have been pushing up the risk premium on state borrowing, partly in response to the Budget tax and spending splurge – with Labour having signed off a series of bumper pay deals immediately after winning power.
The National Education Union (NEU) announced yesterday that it is holding an indicative ballot over the latest 2.8 per cent offer for teachers in England.
Members will be asked whether they would be willing to take industrial action if the Government does not commit to a much higher and fully funded pay rise.
Delegates at the NEU’s annual conference in mid-April could then trigger a formal ballot in the summer term if action is backed.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said the current proposal of 2.8 per cent for 2025/26 is ‘not sufficient’ to address teacher shortages.
Appearing on Sky News this morning, Ms Nandy said ‘now is not the time to strike’.
‘In six months, we’ve taken more action than the Conservative government took in the last 14 years,’ she said.
‘We’ve come forward with a pay offer to improve their living standards.
‘But more than that, when I speak to teachers across the country, including at Byron boys school, what they want is to make sure that we relieve the pressures on teachers so they can get back to the core job of teaching so that they can deal with the children in front of them, particularly the post-Covid generation, who have so many challenges.
‘That’s exactly what Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, is doing with a long-term plan to improve the educational standards and outcomes for children in this country.
‘Just this week we passed legislation that would have one core standard minimum offer for parents across the state system.
‘And I’ll just say to the teaching workforce, I know it’s been tough but we need to work together in the interests of children.
‘We’re confident that we’ve got the right answers working together with them and now is not the time to strike, now is the time to move forward.’
A Downing Street spokesman said yesterday: ‘As we continue to tackle unacceptable levels of school absence after millions of school days lost through both the pandemic and recent industrial action, we call on unions not to put children’s learning at risk and to put pupils’ interests first.
‘We have been clear that future pay awards must be fair to both taxpayers and workers, especially when we are faced with unprecedented, inherited challenges, and the £22 billion black hole in the public finances.
‘2.8 per cent is above the OBR’s inflation forecast for this year, and in the last three years, teachers have had a combined pay increase of more than 17 per cent.’
The Department for Education (DfE) said a 2.8 per cent rise would ‘maintain the competitiveness of teachers’ pay despite the challenging financial backdrop the Government is facing’.
In written evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December, the DfE said: ‘The Department’s view is that a 2.8 per cent teacher pay award would be appropriate for 2025/26.’
The STRB has not yet made its formal recommendations for teacher pay in England for the next academic year.
Teachers and headteachers in England received a fully funded 5.5 per cent pay rise in September last year.
NEU members staged eight days of strike action in state schools in England in 2023 in a long-running pay dispute.
In July 2023, the Government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5 per cent increase for teachers in England, and co-ordinated strike action by four unions was called off.