More than four in five members of the country’s biggest teaching union who responded to a preliminary ballot have indicated they would be willing to take strike action over the government’s pay rise recommendation.
In a preliminary ballot, 83.4 per cent of NEU members said they would be willing to take strike action to secure a higher, fully-funded pay rise than the 2.8 per cent that the Department for Education has recommended to the teacher pay review body.
Most members (93.7 per cent) voted to reject the 2.8 per cent recommendation.
Nearly half of NEU’s members (47.2 per cent) eligible to vote voted in the preliminary ballot, which had a turnout of 134,487 teachers.
Support for strike action
NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “Our members know that there needs to be a major pay correction, with teacher pay significantly improved against inflation and other professions, for us to have any hope of filling vacancies in our schools or attracting graduates into teaching.
“The government must listen to our profession and change course on teacher pay. And it must recognise the dire state of school funding and invest in education to give the next generation the best chance possible in life.
“We call on the government to do the right thing and fund fair pay and invest in our schools.”
The preliminary ballot closed today. The NEU will decide whether to proceed to a formal strike ballot at its annual conference next week, after the union’s executive meets.
The government recommended in December that the teacher pay rise for 2025-26 should be 2.8 per cent. No additional funding for schools to cover this was mentioned in the Department for Education’s submission to pay review organisation the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB). The DfE said at the time that most schools would need to find efficiencies in 2025-26.
The government has yet to make a formal pay offer. The next step is for the STRB to make a recommendation. The DfE indicated last year it was aiming to announce the pay award as soon as possible after April 2025.
Teaching unions have repeatedly warned that an unfunded 2.8 per cent pay award would result in further school cuts and would not be enough to address the recruitment and retention crisis.
Mr Kebede said the government does not “really have much choice” but to increase its recommendation of 2.8 per cent.
“Unless we receive a pay award that takes steps to address the crisis in recruitment and retention, and unless that is fully funded to ensure there’s no detriment to education provision, I think the system really risks grinding to a halt now,” he said.
In March the DfE estimated that schools will have £400 million headroom in their budgets in 2025-26, but admitted this only amounted to covering a pay rise of around 1.3 per cent.
The NEU launched its indicative ballot on 1 March. It asked two questions: whether members accepted or rejected the government’s recommended rise, and whether they were willing to take strike action to secure a higher, fully funded award.
One of Labour’s first decisions after the election was to accept the STRB’s recommendation of a 5.5 per cent teacher pay award for this year, which was fully funded.
The previous year, teachers received a 6.5 per cent rise after the DfE had originally proposed a 3.5 per cent increase. Teachers in the NEU went on strike over pay in 2023 to secure the 6.5 per cent rise.
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