The NEU teaching union does not want to disrupt exams, the union leader has said, after two more potential strike dates were announced for the summer term.
If its members reject the government’s teacher pay offer - as the NEU has recommended - the union plans to have two further days of strike action on Thursday 27 April and Tuesday 2 May.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme this morning, Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said that if union members reject the offer, “we’ll go to the government and say more talks, we will plan more strike dates. We don’t want to disrupt exams. And we will try to ensure that we do reopen negotiations”.
It comes after a period of intensive talks resulted in the Department for Education making all four teaching unions - the NEU, the NASUWT teaching union, the NAHT school leaders’ union and the Association of School and College Leaders - the offer of a £1,000 non-consolidated payment for 2022-23 and an average 4.5 per cent rise for 2023-24.
Yesterday, the NEU urged its members to reject the government’s pay offer to teachers, calling it ”insulting”, but it has put the vote to members in a ballot set to close on Sunday 2 April.
This year, GCSE exams are timetabled to begin on 15 May and finish on 21 June, while A levels finish on 27 June.
Asked if a rejection of the deal would mean strikes over the exam period and disruption to those assessments, Dr Bousted said the union “really hope that that doesn’t take place”.
Dr Bousted said that if members do reject the offer, the union would want to “go back to the government and say you have to do better”.
She then said that the union would hope to reopen negotiations and try to get an offer “that the members will find respectable”.
Other union reaction
While NASUWT appeared to be taking a more neutral stance at first yesterday evening, general secretary Dr Patrick Roach later stated that the union is “not recommending acceptance of the government’s offer” as it “falls short of what the union has demanded from the government, both for pay restoration and on non-pay improvements”.
NASUWT said it believes “that it is right to hear what our members think about the offer as it stands” and has sent out a survey.
The Association of School and College Leaders has not commented publicly on the details of the offer either way.
NAHT is yet to make a statement on the details of the pay offer, but last night general secretary Paul Whiteman said that the union’s national executive committee would be considering the details of this offer and then decide on the next steps.
