The country’s biggest teaching union has set a date for a preliminary strike action ballot over teacher pay and school funding.
The NEU teaching union has said it will begin an indicative ballot of its members on 2 March.
The announcement of the indicative ballot comes after the union’s general secretary, Daniel Kebede, wrote to education secretary Gillian Keegan yesterday calling for talks over school funding for next year and how the “competitiveness of teachers’ pay can be addressed”.
In his letter to Ms Keegan, posted on X by the NEU, Mr Kebede said that the union “did not believe schools will be able to afford any pay rise for teachers” next year.
He also expressed his disappointment about the education secretary’s letter to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December to kick off the formal pay review process for next year.
In that letter, Ms Keegan said the STRB, in making its recommendations on teacher pay, should consider the impact of pay rises on school budgets and the cost pressures that schools are facing.
The NEU said today that its indicative ballot will ask members if they would be willing to take strike action for a “fully funded pay increase, as a meaningful step to achieve a long-term correction in pay”.
The union added that its executive is due to finalise the details of the indicative ballot on 24 February.
Months of teacher strike action
Last year the government was faced with months of teacher walkouts by NEU members, and all four major education unions backed industrial action in disputes over pay and workload.
This industrial action mostly came to an end after the unions accepted a pay offer from the Department for Education giving teachers and leaders a 6.5 per cent rise from September 2023.
However, the NASUWT teaching union has been carrying out industrial action since September last year, with the union instructing eligible members to limit their working time by working to rule.
The DfE is currently consulting on its plan to impose minimum service levels on schools during future teacher industrial action. This could mean teachers being issued with notices asking them to be in work on strike days.
The plan, aimed at keep around three in four pupils in school during strikes, has been condemned by many in the sector, after it was first revealed by Tes last year.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Unions, including NEU, should engage with the independent process rather than discussing industrial action, which only disrupts children’s education.”
