More strikes are planned as the teachers refuse the offer of payment

Teachers will strike in England on Thursday 27 April and Tuesday 2 May after members of the UK’s largest education union rejected an offer to pay.

Teachers have been offered a one-time payment of £1,000 this year, and a 4.3 per cent increase next year. Starting salaries will also rise to £30,000 from September.

NEU polling results found that 98% of members supported rejecting the deal.

The education minister said it was “very disappointing”.

The National Education Union called the show “insulting” and said it “united the profession in its outrage.”

Speaking at the annual conference in Harrogate, joint general secretaries Mary Boustead and Kevin Courtney said the show was “not fully funded” and did not deal with the shortage of teachers in the schools.

In a ballot on the government’s wage offer, 191,319 NEU members voted to reject the deal with a turnout of 66%.

After hearing the announcement, delegates to the convention chanted “Come on, Jill, pay the bill.”

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said NEU’s decision to reject the wage offer “will simply lead to more disruption for children and less money for teachers today”.

“The bid has been funded including major new investments of more than half a billion pounds in addition to record funding already planned for school budgets,” it said.

Wages will now be decided by an independent wage review body, which will recommend wage increases for next year, Keegan said. This means that the £1,000 for the year will not be made.

During a visit to Rochdale, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the news of the new strike dates was “extremely disappointing” after “a very reasonable salary offer”.

Ms Boustead confirmed her plans to support GCSE and A-level students during the upcoming strike days and said Headteachers would make sure these pupils were in class for the exam.

After the vote, Ms Boustead called on ministers to “reopen negotiations” on wages.

On Tuesday at the NEU conference, members will vote on three more possible strike days at the end of June and the beginning of July, but this must be approved by the NEU executive.

Teacher salaries fell an average of 11% between 2010 and 2022, after accounting for inflation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Most public school teachers in England will see a 5% increase in 2022.

The government says it will give schools an extra £2.3 billion over the next two years. Most of the pay increases would have come from this money; The schools had received extra funding of £1,000 at once and a 0.5% wage increase for the next year.

Luke Sibieta, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that school budgets can only absorb a “small amount” of the wage offer and that some schools are already seeing costs increase faster than funding.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) says there is “just enough room” to cover the current payment offer.

Existing funding “does not compensate schools for the additional support they have had to provide increasingly vulnerable pupils,” warned Nathalie Pereira, chief executive of the Expanded Program on Immunization.

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Attending the conference, Sang Berry, a secondary school science teacher from Nottingham, said the last thing teachers wanted to do was go on strike, but that “proper funding for our schools” was needed.

He said his school struggles to hire science teachers because people “don’t want to do the job anymore” because of “the amount of stress and workload for the pay you get”.

Katie Cook, an NEU member from Tunstall in Stoke-on-Trent, took part in her first teachers’ strike earlier this year but says she cannot afford to take part in anything because she is not paid when she strikes.

“As a single parent… I struggle with the cost of living, inflation, and feeding my family. Vacations are out of the picture… all the while I am in the teaching profession at a reasonably high standard.”

Responding to news of the impending strikes in a park in Harrogate, Lorraine Givens said she understood the teachers’ position but wished things could be resolved in a different way, rather than industrial action.

She said taking more time off work to take care of her children would mean losing money for daily necessities.

Jacob Matthews is also frustrated at the prospect of more strikes and feels there needs to be a middle ground.

“Inflation is close to 11%, nobody’s going to get that kind of pay raise… But I’m a parent, not a teacher, and I know it’s not that simple.”

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labor leader, said he was disappointed and wanted to see everyone “get around the table and resolve these issues”.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, said the government needed to “get around the table” and negotiate with teachers’ unions.

NEU is not the only union involved in wage discussions.

Three other unions have also been involved in extensive talks with the government: NASUWT, the Association of School and College Leaders and the NAHT School Leaders Union. They are in the process of polling members on the current offer from the government.

The union of school leaders, NAHT, is also asking whether members will take industry action if an offer of payment is refused. NAHT members voted to strike in January – but turnout was 42%, short of the legal requirement of 50%.

Mary Boustead and Kevin Courtney, from NEU, asked why teachers in England were “less valuable” than teachers in Scotland and Wales. Education is devolved in the sense that decisions are made by the separate governments.

In Scotland, the row was resolved after teachers agreed to a 7% increase for 2022/23, which will be due back in April. They also accepted a 5% increase in April 2023, and a 2% increase in January 2024.

In Wales, NEU has accepted an 8% increased pay offer for 2022/23, which consists of an annual increase of 6.5% and one lump sum payment, plus a 5% salary increase for 2023/24.

But the Welsh School Leaders Association, NAHT Cymru, has rejected the offer and says funding arrangements remain a major concern for school leaders. Members continue to take actions short of strikes – which include refusing to attend evening meetings and only responding to calls and emails between 09:00 and 15:00 GMT.

In Northern Ireland, five unions also continue to take action short of striking.

Additional reporting by Nathan Standley and Rahab Khan