Union leaders have urged education secretary Gillian Keegan to make a “fully funded” pay proposal when they meet for talks next week to avoid the next teacher strike action going ahead.
The NEU teaching union has said talks will take place next Wednesday between unions and the Department for Education.
And NEU joint general secretary Kevin Courtney said “there is still time to avoid the strikes”, telling Tes that “all serious offers will be listened to”.
Members of the teaching union are set to walk out over pay in the Northern, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber regions on Tuesday 28 February, with further regional and national strike action set to take place in March.
On the first NEU strike day on 1 February, it is estimated that around 300,000 teachers walked out across the country, and DfE data from the day suggested that 54 per cent of schools restricted attendance, with 9.3 per cent of those fully closed.
Union leaders last met with Ms Keegan at the end of January in a last-ditch attempt to avoid strike action on 1 February.
Previous negotiations failed to reach a resolution to the pay dispute.
Teacher strikes: NEU will consider ‘serious’ pay offers
Mr Courtney told Tes today: “There is still time to avoid the strikes in England from 28 February.”
He added that the secretary of state “should make a fully funded proposal which helps resolve the cost-of-living crisis for teachers”.
Mr Courtney said this would “help the recruitment and retention problems”. “We hope that she does that at the meeting next week,” he added.
Asked by Tes if the union would be willing to take less than an above-inflation pay offer from Ms Keegan, Mr Courtney said all serious offers would be considered.
Yesterday the NEU announced that strike action over pay had been suspended in Wales in the wake of an improved offer from the Welsh government.
Earlier today chancellor Jeremy Hunt said it is “not a no” to demands for increased pay offers for public sector workers taking industrial action, but he warned against funding these through “inflationary” borrowing.
The chancellor told broadcasters at a science facility in central London: “We should listen to the very clear warning from the Bank of England governor yesterday, who said that if you fund higher wage settlements through borrowing that is inflationary, and that’s why it’s a very difficult situation.
“We want to get back into a situation where people’s real wages are growing. But the one thing that we shouldn’t do, if we want that to happen, is to do something that digs in this high inflation.”
Asked if that meant no more money for striking workers, Mr Hunt said: “It’s not a no, it’s saying we’ll talk about absolutely anything, except things that will dig in the very high inflation that is causing people to see the cost of their weekly shop go up and the value of their wages erode.”
The NEU is demanding a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise for teachers.
