Teaching union votes to ballot for action if pay offer not fully funded

A teaching union will ballot its members for industrial action if the Government offers a pay award that is “not fully funded”.

Delegates at the annual conference of the NASUWT teaching union in Liverpool have voted to “step up” its campaigning to secure a fully funded, real-terms pay award for teachers for 2025/26.

A motion, passed at the NASUWT conference, called on the union’s national action committee “to reject any pay award that is not fully funded and to move immediately to ballot members for industrial action”.

Let the message go out from this conference loud and clear, we will not accept another unfunded or partially funded pay offer

The vote comes after another teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), said it would launch a formal ballot on strike action if the Government’s final pay offer for teachers remained “unacceptable”.

In its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December, the Department for Education (DfE) said a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate” and would “maintain the competitiveness” of teachers’ pay despite the “challenging financial backdrop” the Government is facing.

The Government has yet to publish the recommendations of the teachers’ pay review body, or its decision on whether to accept them.

The motion, which was carried at the NASUWT conference on Saturday, called on the Government to use the spending review in June to fully fund public services to ensure that schools “can recruit and retain the staff needed”.

Delegate Dan Lister, junior vice president of the NASUWT, said: “Let the message go out from this conference loud and clear, we will not accept another unfunded or partially funded pay offer.

“We will not settle for empty promises while our colleagues burn out and our students miss out.

“We call on the national executive to intensify its campaign, and we empower the national action committee to reject any pay deal that isn’t fully funded and move swiftly to ballot for industrial action if necessary.

“The Government’s recommendation to the STRB for a 2.8% partially funded pay award is not acceptable.

“The Government’s recommendation makes it clear that efficiencies will need to be made.

“We know what this means. It means restructures, it means redundancies, members losing their jobs and children losing their teachers.”

We are also clear that if the Government fails to fully fund the next pay award, the NASUWT will be left with no choice but to ballot our members for industrial action

Delegate Julie Blogg, from North Yorkshire, said: “If we really want to engender support from the public, we need to show them the fundamental problems with a lack of funding.

“It isn’t just about my wages. It is about the care I can give to my students.

“It is the reality of being there when they need us. They need to know that we are there because if they don’t fund it, we’re not going to be there.”

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “The NASUWT conference has today made it crystal clear that teachers deserve a real terms pay rise and that schools must be provided with the additional funding needed to pay for it.

“We are also clear that if the Government fails to fully fund the next pay award, the NASUWT will be left with no choice but to ballot our members for industrial action.

“We know that the Government has been handed the pay review body’s latest report and we hope that the pay review body has been ambitious in putting forward recommendations that will address the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis.

“Any suggestion that teachers might be offered a real terms pay cut, or that the pay award will not be fully funded, or that any school or college will have to make further cuts to provision for pupils in order to pay teachers, would be wholly unacceptable.”

Earlier this week, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, suggested that school strikes could be staged as early as the autumn if the Government’s final pay and funding offer is not increased.

Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson said: “With school staff, parents and young people working so hard to turn the tide on school attendance, any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible.

“Following a 5.5% pay award in a hugely challenging fiscal context, I would urge unions to put children first.”

In a video shown at the conference on Saturday, Ms Phillipson warned of more “difficult decisions” on the horizon due to a tough financial inheritance.

In a message to members of the NASUWT teaching union, she said: “This Government is on a mission to broaden opportunity for every child and the single most important factor is you – the teachers and the dedicated staff who work so hard every day for our children and young people.”

Ms Phillipson added: “Delivering our mission isn’t going to be easy.

“The toughest financial inheritance in a generation has meant that we’ve already had to take some incredibly difficult decisions, and I’m afraid that more are still coming.”

Teachers in England received a fully funded 5.5% pay rise in September last year.

NEU members staged eight days of strike action in state schools in England in 2023 in a long-running pay dispute.

In July 2023, the Government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5% increase for teachers in England, and coordinated strike action by four unions was called off.

The NASUWT teaching union is due to make an announcement next week on the nominations received for its next general secretary.

The national executive of the NASUWT endorsed Matt Wrack, former leader of the Fire Brigades Union, to replace Mr Roach as the union’s general secretary after he announced in October that he was not seeking re-election.

But under the union’s rules, local associations can nominate challengers and if a candidate gets endorsements from 25 associations there will be an election.

The deadline for submissions for any potential challengers for the position of general secretary was Saturday – the final day of the NASUWT’s conference.

An NASUWT spokesperson said: “Following the close of nominations, the union will undertake the required checks on the validity of all nominations received and an announcement will be made at the conclusion of this process next week.”