With little sign of progress on talks over teacher pay in England, despite a further three days of regional strikes by teacher members of the NEU teaching union this week, the union said it is set to discuss further strikes during the summer term at a meeting of its national executive later this month.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said on Friday that she had urged the union to attend “serious and intensive talks on all areas” of the dispute.
Her comments came after the Department for Education issued statistics that claimed more schools remained at least partially open in the areas affected by walkouts during last week’s regional strikes than on the national day of strike action at the start of last month.
Across each of the three days, for the regions affected by walkouts, “at least 90 per cent of schools were open in some capacity,” the DfE said.
But a spokesperson for the NEU said the figures were misleading and needed to be “taken with more than a pinch of salt” because schools where just 0.1 per cent of pupils attended can be classified as “partially open”.
Both the NEU and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said they were not aware of any fresh talks invitation from the government, indicating that there has been no movement on the dispute after four days of industrial action by teachers so far.
With two days of national strikes still to come later this month, Tes spoke to policy experts about if and when we’re likely to see a change in response from the government in the face of an increasingly unionised teaching workforce and further industrial action.
Member numbers growing across three unions
Tes understands that education union membership has grown by more than 52,000 in the last two months, according to NEU, the NAHT school leaders’ union and ASCL data.
Since announcing its strike ballot results in January, the NEU has gained around 50,000 mostly teaching members, with 7,000 of those joining over the five weeks since the first national strike day at the beginning of last month.
The membership numbers for ASCL are also growing, at a faster rate than the normal attrition of members retiring or otherwise leaving the profession, Tes understands.
The heads’ union now has more than 24,000 members, 16 per cent higher than the last published union figures in 2021.
Meanwhile, NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman told Tes that his union saw its fastest growth period in its history in the first six weeks of 2023, with around 1,000 new members joining and attrition no higher than expected for this time of year.
He said the union is the largest it has ever been in its 125-year history, and he believes ”teachers and leaders are rediscovering the strength of mutual support and the power of collective endeavour”.
NAHT’s total membership now totals 49,082, an increase of 5 per cent since its last published union figures for 2021 (46,631).
Tes has contacted the NASUWT teaching union to ask about its membership but has not received a response.
Sam Freedman, a former DfE senior adviser, told Tes that the increase in the unionised workforce was happening due to a “frustration with the government position” but he doesn’t anticipate it “changing the government position”.
Angus Walker, a former DfE special adviser, said he thought it was “pretty much priced in that when there’s industrial action that you see spikes in union membership” due to increased awareness of unions, but he’s unsure if this will have an impact on the final outcome.
Mr Walker says he believes strike day turnout levels will have more of an impact, and whether disruption during key periods such as exams will start to turn parental support, which is currently sitting at 60 per cent backing teachers’ reasons for striking according to a recent poll.
‘Whoever wins over the parents, has the public on side, and at the moment teachers have the parents. But does that change if you start messing with kids’ exams?” he said.
However, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU, has said that future teacher strikes would not take place during GCSE and A-level exams.
Will increased numbers equal harden resolve?
Mr Walker said one of the options the DfE has is to try to “starve the unions out...to try and break the unions”.
“There will be people within the Conservative Party who will say this is a fantastic opportunity to break the NEU,” he said.
“But other people will be saying: we need a way out of this. When we get to the pay body, can we also add in a one-off payment, which would then not be deemed inflationary by the Treasury?” he said.
But he added he didn’t expect there to be a new pay deal and he couldn’t see the Treasury “coughing up”.
Mark Lehain, head of education at CPS think tank and former DfE special adviser, said it would be “interesting to see what impact there is on future union actions” given the increase, but he predicts a shift from the DfE would “only be as part of wider coordinated moves [on public sector pay] across government”.
Health unions agreed to call off strikes last week after the department of health invited them for a “series of intensive talks” on the condition that walkouts did not go ahead.
The NEU had said it was similarly prepared to pause last week’s strikes if the government comes up with a “serious” pay proposal to end the dispute, but said none was made.
Turnout will be key
Jonathan Simons, director at Public First, said that while a shift to NEU “at the margins” will “probably mean more classroom teachers on strike”, the question was “whether that is outweighed by general strike fatigue”.
If turnout remains high, Mr Simons said that “will increase the pressure on Number 10 and the Treasury to do a settlement in and around the budget”.
On the increases across all unions, Tom Richmond, director of the EDSK think tank, said that as ongoing problems with pay and conditions “collide” with the “cost-of-living crisis, some teachers [who are not members] could suddenly feel exposed and unsupported”, and might seek to be part of a “stronger support network”.
But Mr Richmond said that while school staff may want to continue to walk out, “it could become harder for staff, particularly those on lower salaries”.
And he said another factor to take into account is that with exam season approaching, teacher and parent attention will “inevitably start shifting towards high-stakes exams”.
