SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND BRACE FOR MORE STRIKES AS TEACHERS IN ENGLAND REJECT PAY OFFER

Mon 03 Apr 2023:

After the National Education Union’s pay offer was decisively rejected by teachers, parents in England face another wave of strikes and school closures.

NEU members voted 98% against accepting the offer of a £1,000 one-time payment and a 4.3% pay increase for most teachers starting in September, triggering two more days of strikes in England on Thursday, April 27 and Tuesday, May 2.

More than 195,000 members, or two-thirds of the union’s active membership, voted in the pay ballot, with only 2% voting to accept the government’s offer.

Kevin Courtney, the NEU’s joint general secretary, said in comments directed at the education secretary, Gillian Keegan: “We are saying to you that you need to make a better offer because this dispute is not going away.”

Tens of thousands of teachers across the UK have gone on strike this year in demand of above-inflation pay raises, leaving classrooms empty and putting pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to intervene.

The government has argued that higher pay rises would only worsen inflation.

Teachers in Wales have ended their strike action after voting to accept a pay offer comprising an additional 3% pay award for 2022/23 alongside a 1.5% one-off payment, and a government-funded 5% rise for the following year.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, even with the pay offer, salaries for experienced teachers would be 13% lower than in 2010.

Last month, teachers’ unions in Scotland agreed to a pay increase of more than 14%. In Wales, unions agreed to a 3% pay increase for the current school year and a 5% raise for 2023-24.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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