The general secretaries of all four major education unions have revealed they are set to draw up coordinated school leader and teacher strike action plans, as each prepares to ballot members over strike action this term.

The leaders of the NEU, the NASUWT and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) joined the NAHT school leaders’ union leadership on the first day of its annual conference this afternoon to reveal plans to coordinate walkouts if members back industrial action in simultaneous ballots being held this term.

The move comes as the NAHT announced that it will ballot members on strike action over pay, funding, workload and wellbeing after the government failed to reopen negotiations on teacher pay following the unions’ rejection of its offer last month.

Today’s announcement will mean that all four education unions will ballot over strike action this term, which will give them the legal mandate to plan strike action stretching into next year if backed by members.

• NAHT: Headteachers vote to reject pay offer
• NEU: Half of teachers in England say workload is unmanageable
• Background: Heads’ union fails to reach threshold for strike

Members of the NAHT voted to reject the government pay offer earlier this month alongside fellow education unions the NEU, ASCL and the NASUWT. 

In an online ballot over the pay offer, more than three-quarters (78 per cent) of NAHT members also said they would be willing to support and take industrial action if the offer was rejected.

And now, the NAHT has said it will ballot members next month over strike action.

The general secretaries have announced “coordination of their unions’ industrial action going forward” at a press conference at the NAHT’s annual conference in Telford this afternoon.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, said that the unions’ decision to coordinate any future strikes is “an unprecedented show of solidarity” and sends “a clear signal to government” that the dispute “is not going away”.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU, said that “in washing her hands of any responsibility for resolving the teacher pay and funding dispute” the education secretary Gillian Keegan had “united the teaching profession in its determination to not accept the poor offer currently on the table”.

He added: “Parents and the education profession will be in no doubt that if further industrial action needs to be taken the blame for this will lie squarely at the government’s door.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL, said that “every effort” had been made to “resolve this matter through other means”.

However, he said that the government’s “refusal” to reopen negotiations had left the union “with no other option than to ballot for strike action”.

He added: “It is clear that all unions feel the same way and we are committed to working with them to fight for fairer pay, improved funding, manageable workloads and other changes that are needed to ensure schools have the capacity to provide the level of education that children and young people deserve.”

NAHT to launch re-ballot next month

The NAHT’s previous strike ballot on the government’s 2022-23 pay offer failed to meet the legal turnout threshold, but the union said that it was “committed to balloting again” on industrial action.

NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said: “Our members have been very clear: they are fed up with their continued mistreatment by government, and they want to stand up and be counted.”

Mr Whiteman said that he took part in recent negotiations with the education secretary in “good faith”, but members had been clear that the subsequent pay offer from the government was “just not good enough”.

“School leaders have suffered over a decade of pay erosion and are feeling the pinch of the cost-of-living crisis just like everyone else. But they still voted against a pay rise, knowing the damage it would do to their schools, pupils and staff.

“A pay offer from government without the funding to back it is an utterly empty promise. It simply leads to redundancies and reduced support for children.

“The government knows what it needs to bring to the table to continue negotiations. And our ballot announcement today sends a strong message that we will not go away. This dispute will continue - the government needs to recognise that and engage.”

Last month, the Department for Education made all four teaching unions the offer of a £1,000 non-consolidated payment for 2022-23 and an average 4.5 per cent rise for 2023-24.

But leaders voiced concern over the affordability of the government offer after it was revealed that just 0.5 per cent of the overall 4.5 per cent pay award for next year, plus the £1,000 one-off payment for this year, would have come through new funding.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We have made a fair and reasonable teacher pay offer to the unions, which recognises teachers’ hard work and commitment.

“Next year, school funding will be at its highest level in history, in real terms per pupil, as measured by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“We know schools are facing increased costs like energy and staffing, and are providing an extra £2 billion in each of the next two years to cover those costs. As a result, school funding is set to rise faster than forecast inflation in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.”