National Education Union teacher members in England have agreed to accept progress made on pay and funding and to end industrial action.
The decision was made by the members through three separate ballots which closed last Friday.
This follows the governments offer of a 6.5% pay rise for teachers from September, implementing the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Pay Review Body (STRB).
There will be additional funding given to schools to cover 3% of this, amounting to £900m in the 2024-25 financial year. This money will come from ‘reprioritising within the DfE’s existing budget’, but ‘frontline services’ will be protected; it will be delivered in the form of a grant for schools. More information on the amount of funding each school will receive is available on the DfE website.
The remaining 3.5% of the funding is to come from schools’ budgets, which the the DfE increased following extra funding announced in last year’s autumn statement.
The school leaders' union NAHT has also announced that its members – school leaders in the majority of schools in England – have voted to accept the goevrnment's offer too.
Teacher members of the NEU have taken eight days of strike action in England state schools between February and July 2023.
Commenting on the results of the three ballots, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the National Education Union, said that the government ‘should be in no doubt that we will hold its feet to the fire on delivering for teachers and support staff on workload and funding and continue to represent the profession in future STRB consultations.’ They add: ‘It remains the view of the NEU that school and college funding is far from adequate. It remains a commitment of the NEU to campaign for further increases in teacher pay.’
.@MaryBoustedNEU on @BBCRadio4 earlier, discussing today’s #PayUpNow #SaveOurSchools pay offer consultation and re-ballot results.
— National Education Union (@NEUnion) July 31, 2023
“This is a significant achievement – it’s not all that we wanted but we will continue to campaign for better school funding and for a restoration of… pic.twitter.com/9LvT9Nu7gq
