The government’s pay deal for teachers, while improved from their initial offer, still amounts to cuts to education

On 22 May, the independent School Teacher Pay Review Body finally released its recommendation for a 4% pay increase for teachers, including £650m to help cover the costs, which the government has accepted. It is a significant improvement over the initial 2.8% the government offered earlier in the year, but according to the National Education Union, it still falls £400m short of what is needed fully to fund the deal.

The new offer is progress, and is evidence Starmer is feeling the heat from education unions. In a recent indicative ballot, NEU members voted overwhelmingly to reject the initial pay offer (93.7%) and to strike if necessary (83.4%).

In recent years, the NEU has been a leading light in the trade-union movement. We forced school closures during the Covid pandemic in 2020, saving untold lives, and were the sole schools union to strike in our last pay dispute in 2023. Tens of thousands have joined the NEU since then, and the number of reps has grown as a result. The NEU has been a driving force behind the People’s Assembly anti-austerity march on 7 June in London.

Nonetheless, it must be recognised that the last pay dispute in 2023 ended in a compromise deal. When eight days of NEU strike action in the spring met with Tory intransigence, the leaders of all four education unions threatened a full system shutdown in the autumn, which could have forced the government to deliver an above-inflation, fully funded pay rise. Yet the unions settled without that fight, and the deal amounted to a pay cut.

I think this has led to some disorientation and demoralisation in our union. Although our recent indicative ballot showed continued readiness to strike among a layer of teachers, turnout fell clearly short of the 50% ballot response threshold that would be needed to validate an actual ballot (47.5%).

Contrast this to the resident doctors, who stood their ground in their last pay dispute, with eleven rounds of strike action, and won a 22% pay rise over two years, making a good start in their journey toward pay restoration. This year, the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, has called its own pay offer of 4% ‘derisory’ as resident doctors are still paid a quarter less, in real terms, than they were in 2019.

The implications for pay restoration and funding in education mirror those in health. In his testimony to the STPRB,  Daniel Kebede said:

‘We have got the highest primary class sizes in Europe. We have the highest secondary class sizes on record … There are no “efficiencies” that can be made without further damaging education … Teacher pay has been cut by over a fifth in real terms since 2010…’

Teachers understand all this and care very deeply about it. To inspire teachers to take action and parents and students to support them, we should be calling for full pay restoration, plus additional funding to expand school services. If not now, when? Surely, it is better to do so when health workers are campaigning for the same?

To be sure, it would be a big win for trade unions if the government commits to the additional £400m to fund the pay rise, but the NEU and the other education unions should register a dispute with the government whether or not they do. In addition to workplace meetings, we could build mass rallies, marches and community forums to mobilise support as the Birmingham bin workers have done.

We won’t win it all in one go, but if the doctors are any indication, we’ll get a lot closer if we try, and our unions will be stronger for it. We need to think bigger.