On a previous strike at Whitefield School (Photo: Guy Smallman)
The Labour government has suggested that teachers’ pay should rise by 6.5 percent over the next three years, in its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body.
But this doesn’t do enough to reverse the huge cuts to teachers’ pay since 2010. Unions should be looking to take hard-hitting action to make the government cough up.
Pay currently sits around 23 percent lower in real terms than it was in 2010. This has hit living standards, and fuelled a recruitment and retention crisis amid significant teacher shortages.
The government also recommended that the pay deal is not fully funded. This means that part of the funding for the pay deal would come out of the budgets of schools themselves. With a serious lack of funding for schools, it would force through even more cuts.
Schools are reaching breaking point in many areas. The Institute of Fiscal Studies found that school spending per student in England fell in real terms by 9 percent between 2009-20. While there was some progress towards reversing this in the 2019 and 2021 Spending Rounds, it was not enough due to persistent inflation.
Labour’s Comprehensive Spending Review of 2025 has done little to improve the funding situation.
A joint trade union statement from the NEU, NAHT, ASCL and Community slammed the offer.
“Labour was elected on a promise of change,” the statement said. “It must now deliver for teachers, school leaders, parents and pupils.”
It said “radical change is needed”. “Our unions therefore call for urgent, significant and fully funded movement towards complete reversal of the real terms pay cuts for teachers and school leaders since 2010.”
Labour has shown that it will do the best it can to squeeze working class people. Union leaders should be looking to build towards a strike ballot in response to this miserly offer.
At Whitefield School in Waltham Forest, east London, education workers are taking the fight to bosses.
NEU union members were set to be out next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and have more strikes planned.
Management has pushed through changes without properly communicating with workers, including increased class sizes, which are negatively impacting students’ education.
Whitefield is a school for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send). But the resources for children are so poor that workers are having to buy things out of their own pocket.
Previous picket lines have been strong, showing the appetite to fight. Pablo Phillips, joint branch secretary for Waltham Forest NEU, told Socialist Worker, “Bosses still haven’t done what they are supposed to do.
“The class sizes are still a problem and members still feel unsafe. Therefore they are taking action.”
NEU union members walked out on Tuesday and were set to strike on Friday, with three more days planned next week.
Academisation acts as a form of privatisation, as it results in schools being taken out of democratic control. It is right to push back against this—and the union should look to escalate to continuous action to ramp up the pressure.
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