Joint union letter to MPs on STRB

Today the National Education Union, jointly with our sister unions ASCL and NAHT, has written to all MPs, asking them to urge Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to publish the STRB report into teacher pay and urgently re-enter talks with the unions to resolve our dispute.

The full letter reads:

Dear Member of Parliament,

As representatives of hundreds of thousands of teachers and head teachers we are writing to you to urge you to intervene to help resolve the crisis in our schools.

As we rapidly approach the end of the summer term, school governors and leaders are still waiting to hear from the Department for Education what pay rise they will be expected to implement for teachers from September and whether additional funding will be provided to schools to finance this.

Head teachers are trying to plan their budgets for next school year, to cope with the worsening recruitment and retention crisis in education and to ensure the best resources and opportunities for their students. They cannot plan properly in this vacuum.

The Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, has admitted she has received the report of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), which makes recommendations on teacher and leader pay.

Indeed, the Sunday Times reported a full month ago that the STRB was advising a 6.5 per cent increase. Despite this, her department has declined to reveal the content of the report nor ministers’ response to its recommendations.

It is disrespectful in the extreme for ministers to conceal the STRB report when they will have to publish it within the next few weeks: in previous years the delayed publication of this report has caused much disruption to our members, and it is imperative that we avoid a repeat of this. At the same time, the Government is refusing to enter talks with the unions to resolve the ongoing dispute over pay. In so doing, the Government is not giving education the priority it deserves.

So, today we are jointly calling on you to write to the Secretary of State for Education and the Prime Minister, asking for the STRB report to be published without further delay and for the Government to enter talks with the unions to resolve the pay dispute.

We look forward to your response, which we will share with our members within your constituency.

Yours sincerely,

Geoff Barton 
General Secretary, ASCL

Paul Whiteman 
General Secretary, NAHT

Mary Bousted 
Joint General Secretary, NEU

Kevin Courtney 
Joint General Secretary, NEU