The NASUWT teaching union has told education secretary Gillian Keegan that they are in a new formal dispute, accusing her of “deliberately frustrating” the teacher pay process for next year.
In a letter to the education secretary sent today, the union said that Ms Keegan had failed “to issue a remit letter to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in a timely manner” and warned this could put “in jeopardy” the pay review body process being concluded in a proper time frame.
Each year the education secretary writes to the STRB, an independent body, asking for recommendations on teacher pay and conditions for the next year, and asking for it to come back with a report in May.
Ms Keegan wrote to the STRB on 15 November last year, but is yet to do so this term, setting out the remit for teacher pay in 2024-25.
The NASUWT said it had previously written to Ms Keegan on this issue on 15 November and received no response.
In its latest letter, the teaching union says that by failing to start the pay review body process for 2024-25, Ms Keegan has “breached” an agreement that she reached in July when this year’s pay award was agreed by unions.
And the NASUWT also accuses Ms Keegan of being in breach of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The letter says that the pay review body process “exists in place of an alternative mechanism for national collective bargaining on teachers’ pay and conditions of service”.
It adds: “We are of the view that failing to engage with us on this issue in an appropriate time frame is inconsistent with the rights of our members to be represented by the union in collective bargaining.”
‘Interference’ in teacher pay process
Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “The education secretary is deliberately interfering in the pay review process by her failure to issue a remit to the STRB, in spite of the commitments she gave to unions in the summer in order to avoid the prospect of nationally coordinated strike action.”
In the letter to Ms Keegan today, the NASUWT says that it is now “in dispute” with the education secretary over her “failure to provide an appropriate remit to the STRB to enable the pay review body to examine and bring forward recommendations on matters regarding the pay and conditions of teachers”.
It adds: “We have no wish to see further escalation of industrial dispute. However, we reserve the right to do so in the event that you do not now respond to the matters raised by the NASUWT.”
The NASUWT is already in dispute with Ms Keegan over workload and working hours and has been carrying out industrial action short of strike action since 18 September.
The union has asked Ms Keegan to confirm what steps she intends to take to “honour the commitments you made on 14 July 2023” and “ensure that the STRB is issued with an appropriate remit so that it can immediately consider the matters relating to teachers’ pay and conditions for 2024-25”.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “At the end of the pay dispute in July, Gillian Keegan promised to ‘streamline that process so that you get the information early’. It is regrettable that the government are already three weeks behind last year’s process.”
He added that it was “not acceptable for the STRB’s work to be squeezed, just as it is unacceptable for the education secretary to delay any response to the review body’s findings until summer term is at an end and heads have had to plan budgets in the dark”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that his union would urge Ms Keegan to “get on with issuing her remit to the STRB as soon as possible”.
Mr Barton said the remit letter from the education secretary “is the starting gun to a negotiation process which is often beset with delays on the part of the government and which therefore results in schools and trusts not being able to budget for pay awards”.
“The possibility of a general election being called during the pay negotiations and causing further delays is also of concern,” he added.
A Department for Education spokesperson said that earlier this year, the government delivered on its commitment to give every new teacher a starting salary of at least £30,000 and delivered on “the highest pay award for teachers in over thirty years”.
“We are committed to the independent pay review body process and we will always carefully consider the operation of the pay round on any given year.”
