Pay and funding campaign

Before Easter, over 150,000 National Education Union (NEU) teacher members – just over 50 per cent of those eligible to do so – took part in our preliminary ballot over pay and funding. Over 90 per cent of those who responded said they would vote ‘yes’ to strike action if asked in a formal ballot.

Following that result, delegates at our annual conference agreed an emergency motion that set the strategy for our next steps. We are ready, we are prepared, and we are able to take any further industrial action necessary to ensure educators and schools get the fair deal they deserve.

This month - April, the NEU presented clear oral evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) of the need for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise and further funding to improve staffing levels.

The general secretary, Daniel Kebede wrote to Gillian Keegan, urging her to meet with us as soon as possible. Daniel called on the Education Secretary to urgently intervene to ensure that teachers in England receive a fully funded above-inflation pay rise for 2024-25, and that she also ensure there is further funding to provide improved levels of staffing.

Our evidence included powerful testimony from practicing teachers and set out how years of real-terms pay cuts and excessive workload have created a recruitment and retention crisis that puts education on the brink, jeopardising pupil provision, especially for those most in need.

Preliminary ballot results - England

Over the last four weeks teachers in England have been voting in their tens of thousands in our preliminary online ballot. Thank you to every single one of you who voted to demonstrate to the Government the strength of feeling among teachers on the issues of pay and funding in our schools.

Overall Turnout: 145,197 (50.3%)

Q1: Do you agree that you should receive an above-inflation pay rise for 2024-25?

YES: 97.7% NO: 2.3%

Q2: Would you vote “yes” to strike action for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise that constitutes a meaningful step towards a long-term correction in pay, and further funding to provide improved levels of staffing provision in schools and education services?

YES: 90.3% NO: 9.7%

Our national executive will meet next week, at our conference in Bournemouth, to discuss this result and decide the next steps we’ll be taking.

The preliminary ballot of support staff in England and Wales is still live and will close on 19 April.

Together we will save our schools.

School funding

In the past few months, our country’s schools have made the news for all the wrong reasons. From concrete ceilings falling in, to record numbers of schools in deficit, and arts education increasingly inaccessible — it’s clear that our schools are struggling to cope, and our students are suffering the consequences. 

70% of all schools in England have less funding in real terms than in 2010. That means that because of Government cuts, they cannot afford the same costs they could fourteen years ago. 

We’re demanding the UK Government fund schools properly — that’s the minimum our children deserve. 

Ask your MP to stop school cuts

2023 Pay implementation

Last year, NEU members voted overwhelmingly to accept the pay offer.

NEU members’ strike action forced the Government to improve its 2023-24 pay offer to teachers by 3 per cent, to 6.5 per cent, and commit an extra £900 million to properly fund the teacher pay offer and protect support staff jobs.

The NEU has continued to campaign for a properly funded correction in teacher pay to reverse the real-terms cuts imposed since 2010 and for further improvements in education funding to restore the percentage of GDP devoted to education to at least the 5 per cent OECD average. Read more on how the 2023 pay offer was funded.