The Association of School and College Leaders will hold the first strike ballot in its 150-year history from next month, it has been announced today.

The union will ballot its 24,000 members in England on strike action over its ongoing dispute with the Department for Education.

The ballot will run from 19 June to 31 July, and ASCL expects that any resulting strike action will take place in the autumn term and that it will be coordinated with other education unions.

ASCL said that it was in a formal trade dispute with the education secretary over “the worsening employment terms and conditions of members as a result of the insufficiency of school funding and the crisis in teacher and leader recruitment and retention caused by pay erosion and unsustainable workload”.

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The union said the dispute was triggered by the decision of Gillian Keegan to “implement a teacher and leader pay award significantly below inflation in the academic year 2022-23 and without adequate funding to cover the cost of the pay award”.

All four of the main education unions have ongoing plans to ballot members over strike action this term, with the NEU teaching union and the NAHT school leaders’ union’s ballots already underway.

Last month, the four education unions held an unprecedented joint press conference in which they warned that future strike action over teacher pay and conditions could be coordinated.

Today, ASCL’s general secretary Geoff Barton said: “We have exhausted all other avenues in our efforts to secure an improved deal from the government which addresses the recruitment and retention crisis and ensures that schools have sufficient funding to afford pay awards and other costs. However, the government’s answer was an offer which failed to adequately address these issues and was comprehensively rejected by all education unions.

“The government’s neglect of the education system is having a devastating impact on our members, on teachers and other school staff in general, and on the pupils they serve.

“This cannot go on and, regretfully, we now have no option other than to ballot for industrial action in order to bring the government back to the negotiating table and to secure a meaningful settlement that provides a better deal for education.”

Earlier this week, the leaders of ASCL, NAHT, NEU and NASUWT wrote to Ms Keegan, calling for the government to formally publish the recently leaked pay recommendation made by the STRB and to urgently restart negotiations in the dispute over teacher and leader pay, and the funding of pay awards.

According to reports, the STRB is recommending a 6.5 per cent pay rise for teachers next year.

Today’s announcement also comes as the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) announced that it is holding a formal ballot on industrial action as it remains in dispute with the Local Government Association.