Pay rise of 6.5% would end England’s teacher strikes, union leader suggests

Ministers could ward off potential teachers’ strikes in the autumn term in England if they accept a salary increase recommended by the teachers’ independent pay review body, the head of the biggest education union has said.

Teachers who belong to the NEU continued industrial action on Friday. Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the union, said: “This could stop. What the government must do is publish the independent pay review body recommendations.”

The School Teachers’ Review Body is understood to have recommended a 6.5% increase in pay for teachers – larger than other public sector pay rises – because of concerns over the challenges faced by schools. Its report was leaked in May but has still not been made public.

The 6.5% recommendation for 2023-24 is more than two percentage points higher than the 4.3% average offer that ministers made to teachers in March, alongside increasing starting salaries to £30,000. The offer was roundly rejected by union members.

Bousted told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If it is 6.5%, they must fund schools in order to be able to pay that. And if that were the case, I believe that this would stop, so it is in the government’s hands.

“I apologise now to parents and pupils whose activities are disrupted,” she said, adding that exemptions had been given for school trips. But she said it was “essential” to remind the government “that this is a profession in crisis and they will not stay – they’ve already lost 9% of teachers, that is just unsustainable”.

Historically ministers have used pay review bodies’ recommendations to justify refusing to grant rises that match inflation. The government has now indicated that it would be prepared to block pay rises recommended by public sector review bodies.

Bousted said it was “just not acceptable” for ministers to reject the recommendations and that before they received them, they had “proclaimed proudly that this was a government which had always accepted the pay review body’s recommendations”.

She added: “The one year when the review body actually does exercise its independence because the evidence of a crisis in the profession is so great, suddenly it becomes doubtful whether the award will be paid.”

On a media round on Friday morning, the skills minister, Robert Halfon, refused to give an answer on whether the government would accept the recommendations. He said he could not answer as he had not seen the report, though it was given to the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in May.

When asked by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if the government had backtracked on the concept of accepting independent advice on pay, Halfon said: “I’m not quite clear why you’re saying there is a backtrack. I’m saying that the prime minister, the chancellor and my boss, secretary of state for education, Gillian Keegan, will be looking at that report and once that report has been published, then they will make a decision.

“That has always been the way in the past. It is nothing different to what has happened in the past, but they’ve got to go through the report properly.”