The leaders of the largest teaching union have said that its pay dispute with the government may not be won this academic year, but they are “confident” that they will win.
Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU teaching union, told members today that education secretary Gillian Keegan was “deluded” over the situation in schools and was “living in a fantasy world”.
Speaking at the NEU annual conference in Harrogate today for the last time, Dr Bousted told Ms Keegan: “Do your job.”
It comes after the NEU voted overwhelmingly to reject the government’s pay offer earlier this week, alongside two school leaders’ unions.
Last week, the Department for Education made all four teaching unions the offer of a £1,000 non-consolidated payment for 2022-23 and an average 4.5 per cent rise for 2023-24.
But leaders have since voiced concerns about the affordability of the government offer after it was revealed that just 0.5 per cent of the overall 4.5 per cent pay award for next year, plus the £1,000 one-off payment for this year, would have come through new funding.
Mr Courtney said today: ”Mary and I have only five more months and it is just conceivable we might not win on our watch. But you are going to win - I have every confidence in that.”
He added that, if necessary, the union would organise the ”biggest demo Manchester has seen for decades” on 2 October and “carry on a campaign right into the general election year”.
Dr Bousted added that Ms Keegan was the “latest in a long line” of Conservative secretaries of state ”who seem to be only tangentially connected with the reality of what is going on in schools”.
She said: “When Kevin and I show her the evidence of teacher flight from the profession, she dismisses it with a wave of her hand. There’s a shortage of workers throughout the economy, she says.”
“Teaching is not a special case, she implies. It’s not as bad as you say it is, she responds.”
A recent report said that the government was set to miss its teacher trainee recruitment target for the second year in a row, despite a hike in bursaries.
Addressing the secretary of state, Dr Bousted said: “Gillian, I have to tell you, you are deluded. You are living in a fantasy world. You are secretary of state for education, it’s your job to ensure that there are enough teachers and leaders and support staff in our schools.
“It’s your job to make the strongest case to the Treasury that education needs funding so that our schools can recruit and retain teachers and support staff, and to make the working lives of teachers and leaders better so that they are willing to stay in the profession.”
”Do your job, Gillian.”
Mr Courtney said that the reaction of the DfE to union rejections of the pay offer was “badly misjudged”.
Yesterday, in response to the NAHT school leaders’ union rejecting the government pay offer, a DfE source told Tes that the union seemed “determined to raise the temperature” and the rhetoric used was to be expected “from NEU, not NAHT”.
Dr Bousted said that the government had not been able to “drive a wedge between teachers and parents” over the pay dispute.
Speaking to the conference this morning, incoming general secretary of the NEU, Daniel Kebede, said that he intended to “build the strikes”.
He said: “Enough is enough. I stood on a platform that said education needs fundamental change. This government has abused our profession’s dedication to education. We need an end to pay cuts.
“We need an end to the massive overwork of our staff. People working late into the night at the end of a busy day only to get up early and do it all again the next day.
“We need an end to Ofsted, a pernicious organisation that is finally justly under scrutiny that it so richly deserves.”
