A union has criticised the Government’s latest pay offer for teachers, which proposes a partially funded settlement.
In light of the School Teachers Review Body’s pay recommendations, the Department for Education yesterday announced proposals for teachers pay to be increased by 3.5% from September this year, and 3% from September 2027.
While funding of £1.8bn is to be delivered to schools over 2 years to support these increases, the Government has confirmed that schools will need to fund the first 1% of each pay award ‘through continued efforts to maximise value from their budgets’.
Responding to the move, the National Education Union (NEU) has called for the pay rises to be fully funded and for the Government to propose an above-inflation offer.
It revealed in May that a formal ballot for teacher and support staff members’ strike action will open on October 3 and close on December 15, with more than 150,000 NEU members having voted in the indicative ballots, which revealed that 90.5% of teachers and 86.1% of support staff would back strike action over funding, pay and workload.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: ‘Pressure from the NEU has forced the Government beyond its original pay and funding offer. But let us be clear: a partially funded settlement still means cuts to education, and the NEU will never accept that.’
He added: ‘With inflation set to rise, members know this offer is not the decisive shift needed to reverse real-terms pay cuts since 2010 or restore the competitiveness of teacher pay.
‘The Government’s action on CEO pay is a start, but it is not enough. It will not be retrospective, and the waste and inequality in the academies system must be tackled through a fair, transparent and enforceable shared pay framework.’
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, commented: ‘Although there remains some way to go to achieve our aim of restoring the value of pay to 2010 levels, this represents another step in the right direction so long as we don’t see a big spike in inflation.’
He added: ‘It is helpful that the Government is bringing some additional funding to support schools, but we need to be clear that this is not a fully-funded award and it will mean more pressure on already stretched budgets. There is very little headroom in existing budgets and talk of ‘maximising value’ is deeply unhelpful.’
