Teacher and support staff pay deals: the questions we need to ask

From the 21st September, teacher members of the NEU will be asked to vote in a ‘snap poll’ about this year’s pay offer. The poll is the last route to action on this year’s pay deal. Here, rs21 members in NEU examine the deal, the reality of the poll and look at the questions we need to consider for the future.

The Teacher Pay Offer for Sept 2024

With a new government in July came a reset of relations between the NEU and the Secretary of State for Education. In the first week of the summer holidays, that reset was followed by the announcement of a 5.5% pay award for teachers in England. The Government (and our union leadership) insists that this is a fully-funded award. The award is above the current measure of inflation (RPI was 3.6% in July) and has been won on the back of the successful strike ballot in Spring 2024. The National Executive has voted to recommend this deal to members in the snap poll.

The Support Staff pay offer for April 2024

Support Staff pay rates are negotiated by the Local Government unions with the Local Government Association (LGA). The latest offer from the Local Government employers is for an increase of £1,290 (pro-rata) on all pay spine points. This equates to a 2.5% at the top of the scale and 5.7% at the bottom. It is not fully funded. Currently, the NEU has a positive consultation result in favour of action on this offer – though this action will be focussed on funding the increase and will likely be dependent on either teachers or the Local Government unions taking action.

What attitude to the deals should educators take?

Both pay awards fall below what is needed and should be rejected. Educators should campaign for a rejection in the snap poll and push for strike action from support staff. However, we should not be under any illusion about the outcome of the poll – it is likely that the result will be heavily in favour of accepting the pay deal for teachers. 

So why oppose the deal? The key question isn’t really this deal but how we achieve our goal of pay restoration. Over the last three years, our members have threatened and then taken strike action in support of pay and funding. This campaign has won a series of ‘increases’ (Sept 2022: 5%; Sept 2023: 6.5%; Sept 2024: 5.5%) which have followed a long period of pay cuts. While the combined increase won over the last three years doesn’t necessarily keep us ahead of inflation, it does represent a victory for teachers and shows that taking action works.

Over the same period, however, elements within our union leadership have failed to learn that lesson. We have a series of occasions when the leadership majority in our union has put the breaks on action – this happened in March 2023 with the Wales deal and the ‘pause’ in England; with the decision to not strike during exams in May and June 2023; in signing up to recommend the 6.5% in July 2023; in refusing to move to ballot in October 2023 when the Tories retrospectively withdrew the pay funding; in giving a short consultative ballot period in Feb 2024 and, finally, recommending that we ignore the consultative ballot result and not move to a strike ballot at Conference in April 2024. This is a long list but shows a pattern of the Executive majority (and its allies in the paid bureaucracy) holding back action wherever possible. 

These blocks to action are often accompanied by an appeal to a long term plan for pay restoration and an increase in education funding. The real question we need to ask, then, is what is this strategy? Does anyone seriously think that the government will just increase pay and funding off their own backs, given their fetish for austerity? The only real way we will achieve pay restoration and the required funding is through our own action – action that is consistently put off or deemed impossible, even in the face of a democratic evidence to the contrary. Our key argument against this deal must therefore be: where is the plan for pay restoration and an increase in funding?

Why should we reject this teacher pay offer?

There are some key reasons that this year’s offer should be rejected on its own terms. Firstly, the offer isn’t funded with new money. The government and our union leadership are claiming that this award is fully funded on the basis that schools have already budgeted for some sort of increase. This is true but we know that schools are already up against the wall in terms of funding: this ‘headroom’ in the budgets is really education cuts that have already been carried out. 

Secondly, the new money for the funded part of this pay offer is being directly taken from other parts of state spending – namely from other parts of the education budget, from winter fuel payments for pensioners and from the social care cap. This does not represent an increase in spending for our class by taking more money from the rich to fund schools, instead it robs Peter to pay Paul and takes money from other crucial areas of government spending. 

Lastly, this offer is based on this year’s School Teacher Pay Review Body (STRB) recommendation. So have all of the previous offers mentioned above. The STRB is supposedly independent but, in reality, takes its marching orders from the government of the day. Our union opposes its existence and calls for direct negotiations with the DfE. Instead, we find ourselves continually striking or threatening action in defence of the STRB’s recommendations – rather than the sort of numbers we need to be able to win pay restoration.

What about support staff?

Support staff are in a simultaneously better and worse position. The rejection of the LGA’s offer by Unison and Unite in Local Government means that at least NEU support staff are not fighting for more alone. However, the sectarianism of the local government union bureaucracies means that the NEU has no official say in that headline number. Instead, the NEU is reduced to fighting sectionally over funding the Local Government offer (this funding comes from the DfE so, according to the arcane TUC rules, we can ballot over it). In reality, the pattern has been that where teachers are being called out on strike, support staff get forgotten as well. 

Again, the key question for this year’s pay round is how we move support staff representation forward. There are various vague discussions about this at a national level but, as all of them involve cracking a few eggs, the omelette never gets made and we continually find ourselves in the same position. If action for support staff doesn’t materialise, in a situation where they are bearing the brunt of funding pressures, then we need to ask again the question of what is the strategy for representation? How do we break this cycle?

What about 6th form teachers?

When we were finally able to get a straight answer from the government, it became apparent that they intended to include 6th form college teachers in academies in the 5.5% offer, but not those that haven’t academised (as ever FE college staff are dealt with separately, but also look likely to be excluded). This disparity is completely unjustifiable, and only explicable as an extension of the bribe introduced by the Tory government to exclude academised 6th forms from paying VAT but not the rest. Our negotiators have correctly responded by promising to counter this with a formal strike ballot. It’s vital that this ballot is well-supported, won convincingly and carried through to a clear victory so the government knows we need to be taken seriously.

Where do we go next?

In schools across the country, educators need to oppose this year’s pay deal in the snap poll. We shouldn’t accept the logic of austerity or being pitted against pensioners. But we also need to recognise that the deal will probably sail through: in a year where dither and delay have marked our industrial strategy, it is unlikely that enough educators will feel confident enough to challenge the bureaucracy’s lead. 

But we also need to keep returning to the questions about strategy. How are we going to win pay restoration? How do we win real extra funding for schools? How can we protect and represent support staff effectively? If we continue to experience vague condescension from the bureaucracy on these questions, then we will have to provide the answers ourselves and that means discussing it with as many educators as possible as a starting point.