The country’s biggest teaching union has said it would be prepared to pause next week’s strikes if the government comes up with a “serious” pay proposal to end the dispute.
However, the NEU said unless that offer is made, the planned regional strikes will be going ahead next week.
This comes after education secretary Gillian Keegan yesterday invited unions to formal talks over pay on the condition that next week’s teacher strikes are called off.
The government raised tensions further today when the prime minister’s spokesperson said that there would be “no talks” with education unions if strike action next week is not cancelled.
The union has now said it had committed to the government that: ”In a sign of goodwill, if substantive progress can be made, we are prepared to recommend a pause to strikes next week to our national executive committee this Saturday.”
A union spokesperson added: “If the government comes forward with a serious proposal to end the dispute ahead of Saturday and we consider it compelling enough, then we will put it to our national executive this Saturday with the recommendation to pause forthcoming strike action in order to discuss it further. As things stand, however, no such offer has been made and the strikes remain in place.”
Today Downing Street said that the offer of talks with the NEU would be put in jeopardy if planned strike action is not called off.
Members of the NEU 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 action set to take place later that week.
NEU ‘ready to negotiate’ to make progress
Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU, said the union was “ready to begin negotiations now”.
“We are prepared to negotiate every day, and throughout the weekend, to make progress,” they said.
While Dr Bousted and Mr Courtney said it seemed “incredible to us that ministers are intent on putting this obstacle in the way of substantial negotiations”, they said that ”if substantive progress can be made, we are prepared to recommend a pause to strikes next week”.
But they said it was “unacceptable that ministers are not willing to give any information about the scope of the proposed negotiations nor the funding available to increase pay for teachers this year or, indeed, if any funding is available to do this”.
“This means, in effect, that ministers are requiring the NEU to give up the only thing that has brought the government to the negotiating table, without any assurance that the negotiations are, indeed, serious and in good faith.
“We reiterate - we are ready to negotiate. We are prepared, should the negotiations make real progress, to pause next week’s strikes. But the government has to show good faith. We ask ministers to drop its preconditions and to begin serious negotiations.”
Government offers ‘olive branch with thorns’
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said today: “The discussions and the talks are on the basis that they do stop strike action - there will be no talks, obviously, if they do not take that step.”
They added that the prime minister was “disappointed” that the NEU had chosen not to call off next week’s action.
The spokesperson said that the NEU “and many other unions have wanted to talk about pay and have wanted to have these discussions for some time” and the government was “inviting them to have those discussions”.
Responding to the statement made by Downing Street today, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “This is a ludicrous situation, created by the government.” He added that with “every move” the government was showing it had “no understanding of how to conduct good industrial relations”.
“Gillian Keegan boasts that you don’t need to go on strike to talk to her, but it now seems that is exactly what you have to be doing,” he said.
“After a series of meaningless encounters, the secretary of state holds out a public olive branch with thorns attached that make it impossible to grab.”
Mr Whiteman suggested that the move could be an attempt by the government to “boost public support rather than a genuine attempt to deal with the recruitment and retention crisis they have created”.
Speaking to Tes this afternoon, Mr Whiteman said that the “longer this government-instigated stand-off persists and the DfE doesn’t enter meaningful talks, the more likely it is we will have no choice but to talk to our members about reballoting”.
The NAHT previously said it was “committed to balloting again” on industrial action after its last strike ballot failed to meet the legal turnout threshold.
At the time, Mr Whiteman said the union would “wait and see how much progress is made” and would test members’ views again when current talks conclude or break down.
Today, he added: “The secretary of state has consistently said you don’t need to be on strike to talk to her. Our members are not on strike but now the Department for Education and secretary of state won’t talk to us, so this position seems to have changed.”
