Members of the NASUWT teaching union have voted against holding a formal ballot for industrial action over pay and working conditions, it was announced today.
An overwhelming majority (78 per cent) of NASUWT teacher-members in England who took part in a consultative ballot rejected moving to a national statutory ballot for industrial action.
The turnout for the consultative ballot has not yet been announced.
The results were released at the union’s annual conference in Harrogate, Yorkshire over the Easter weekend.
The ballot was carried out between February and March to gauge whether state school teachers would be interested in taking industrial action on pay, workload, working hours and wellbeing.
Prioritising political campaigning
A motion, which NASUWT delegates will debate on Saturday, calls for political campaigning to “take priority over industrial action”.
A new deal for teachers - on pay, workload, working hours and wellbeing - will only be secured when there is a government in Westminster that is on the side of teachers, education and public services, the union’s leader has said.
In his speech at the conference on Saturday, Patrick Roach, general secretary of NASUWT, accused the Conservative government of holding teachers and young people “to ransom” by failing to set a date for the general election.
A survey of nearly 7,000 NASUWT members in January suggested that 89 per cent believe the government is not doing enough to address excessive workload and high working hours.
Dr Roach said: “Our members are clear that the government has run out of time to fix the problems of 14 years of neglect and decline.
“It would be a fantasy for the prime minister to pretend that he can claim the support of teachers at the general election by simply riding out the next few months and doing nothing.”
He added that NASUWT members would be looking carefully at how the government responds to reports from the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) and the Workload Reduction Taskforce due later this summer.
“The general election will be a crucial test of the government’s education record and its commitment to the future of the teaching profession,” he added.
NEU indicative strike ballot
On Friday, the NEU teaching union, the largest in the UK, said it will consider its next steps at a special executive meeting on Tuesday after an overwhelming majority of its teacher-members in England and Wales, who took part in a preliminary ballot, said they would strike to secure an above-inflation pay rise and further funding for staffing.
Any appropriate recommendations will be put to the NEU’s annual conference in Bournemouth next week and voted on by delegates in the subsequent days.
Last month, the Department for Education said in evidence to the STRB that teachers’ pay awards should “return to a more sustainable level” after “two unprecedented years”.
In July last year, 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 education unions was called off.
NASUWT conference motions
Elsewhere at the NASUWT conference, teachers have called for the amount of time teachers are given for planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) to be increased to 20 per cent to tackle workload pressures.
Members also called for further reform to school inspections to protect teachers’ mental health.
A recent NASUWT survey of members found that six in 10 teachers said inspection was the biggest contributor to their workloads.
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