Teachers to vote on striking over pay and school funding
Members of the UK’s largest teaching union will take part in a formal ballot for strike action later this year.
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It comes after National Education Union (NEU) members signalled they would be prepared to take industrial action over teacher pay and workload as well as school funding in an indicative ballot last month.
Teaching unions have criticised the Department for Education’s (DfE) recommendation that teachers should receive a 6.5% pay increase over the next three years.
The NEU’s national executive has now decided to move to a formal ballot of teachersand support staff in state schools in England if the Department for Education does not up its pay offer.
The ballot would open on October 3 and close on December 15.NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “Unfunded below-inflation pay increases are an insult.“
The Government is well aware that schools do not have the money to fund them. If ministers insist that any pay rise must be carved out of already decimated school budgets, then it is a wilful rejection of reality. It completely fails to understand what our schools are having to cope with.
“No member wants to be taking strike action. To avoid this collision course, the Government needs to step up and deliver the properly-funded education system our children and young people deserve. It is time to save education.”