Ministers have suffered a decisive rejection of their pay offer to teachers in England, and face the threat of further industrial action, after NASUWT members voted against accepting the offer.
NASUWT is the fourth teaching union to reject the offer, with 87% of members voting against acceptance. It follows similar rejections by the National Education Union (NEU), 98% of whose members voted against, as well as the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders.
The government had offered a £1,000 one-off bonus to teachers in England this year and an average pay rise of 4.5% next year, although most teachers would have seen an increase of just 4.3%. Only a fraction of the pay offer would have been funded by extra cash from the Department for Education.
NASUWT members also voted in large numbers to back a formal ballot on industrial action, with 77% supporting a ballot to authorise strikes later this year.
Patrick Roach, the NASUWT general secretary, said the results served notice on the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, of the union’s willingness to consider strikes later this year.
“The government’s pay offer failed to come close to addressing the concerns over pay and working conditions of teachers, and this has rightly been rejected by our members,” Roach said.
“Gillian Keegan has said that she is willing to negotiate and to listen to the profession. She must now demonstrate that she means what she says by getting back around the negotiating table to find a resolution to our dispute.
“The onus is now on the government to come forward with a fully funded pay offer that will be acceptable to the profession.”
The Department for Education (DfE) said that rejecting the pay offer “will simply result in more disruption for children and less money for teachers today”.
Last week the NEU announced five further days of strike action among its members working in schools in England, with the first two on 27 April and 2 May and three more to be scheduled in June or July.
A NASUWT survey found that long working hours were affecting teachers’ wellbeing, with more than four out of five saying their mental health had declined over the last 12 months as their workload increased.
Excessive workload was the biggest reason given for declining mental health, with the 8,500 teachers who responded saying they worked 54 hours a week on average, including evenings and weekends spent on marking and administration.
NASUWT hasabout 280,000 active teachers who are members, with the vast majority working in schools and colleges in England.
