This year, we may have won a higher percentage pay increase than the Government wanted to gift us, and some of it at least is funded, but every educator knows that the crisis in schools is getting worse. We should be balloting over this year’s ‘offer’ but, more urgently, we need to develop a long term strategy that starts arguing for a different vision of education. Instead of striking merely for a few additional percentage points, we should strike for the four twenties: a maximum class size of 20; 20 per cent Planning, Preparation, and Assessment (PPA) time; a 20 per cent pay rise; and a 20 per cent increase in per-pupil funding.

Funding

Funding is often cited as a key issue for educators - this is because every day we are dealing with the effects of an underfunded system. Indeed, the key issue of workload can only be solved by more funding. More funding means less contact time and smaller class sizes, the key drivers of the workload crisis. Conversely, less funding means more work and a much worse educational experience for children.

The funding for the 2025 pay deals will be a key question in schools - and it is not funded. In fact, the same level of cuts will be required to pay this four per cent award as would have been required for the 2.8 per cent offer, which was overwhelmingly rejected in the consultative ballot. The government claims to fund 1.7 per cent of the 4 per cent offer and 0.9 per cent of the support staff’s 3.8 per cent offer. They claim to have provided schools with extra money already for the remaining percentage, leaving 1 per cent to be found by cuts. Those same cuts have been deemed unacceptable by members and declared unaffordable by school leaders and government quangos alike.

This follows a familiar pattern where our pay increases over the last three years have all been partially funded. This has massively increased the pressures on school budgets, leading to a workload storm, rising class sizes and job cuts. We cannot accept more of the same.

The partial funding for this year’s deal is not a new investment in education. It comes from cuts within the DfE - those cuts will result in job losses amongst DfE employees and cuts to crucial programmes aimed at helping children. We are, like previous years, being asked to be complicit in accepting cuts elsewhere to fund our inadequate pay award.

Will the 2025 pay offer make any difference in schools?

As well as the funding and workload crisis, we face another crisis in schools - that of recruitment and retention. Being an educator is simply not attractive enough as a job - long hours, high levels of emotional support and huge social responsibilities are expected in return for a wage that is not competitive with similar level jobs. Will the 4 per cent and the 3.2 per cent change this? Not at all. In fact, our action since 2021 has led to a series of pay ‘increases’ amounting to 23.9 per cent over four years. This is an impressive number and it would be much lower, probably single digits, without our

strikes, ballots and campaigns. However, the compound CPI inflation over the last four years is also at 23.9 per cent, meaning that our wages have stood still in real terms. Relative to similar jobs, they continue to fall (as highlighted by the STRB, graph below). We have stopped the successive pay cuts but we are as far away from pay restoration as before - while at the same time those pay cuts have increased the pressure on school budgets.

A strategy to save education

Our union leaders are often caught out by accepting the limits that the government present as self evident; so this offer is better than what we were offered before in that it will deliver an approximately inflationary increase for educators; but it will still lead to a level of cuts deemed unacceptable by our union leadership only one month ago.

On top of this we have to face the fact that this last ballot was more difficult to win. This is partly a result of the sell out in 2023 (look at what the doctors achieved when they kept fighting) and partly a result of last year’s abandonment of action. Underlying this is the feeling that members are constantly being led halfway up the mountain with no clear pathway to the top. And this is happening year after year.

We need to break out of this cycle of diminishing returns and the only way to achieve that is by putting into practice some of the rhetorical flourishes that NEU’s General Secretary Daniel Kebede likes to make when he is amongst activists: we need to clearly articulate a different tax policy - one that redistributes wealth. This needs to be coupled with a relentless focus on the percentage of GDP currently spent on education (down from 5.7 per cent in 2010 to 4.1 per cent in 2024). Lastly we need to put a figure on pay restoration and show how it can be reached. Depending on how you calculate it, we need a wage increase of 19 per cent to 23 per cent to reach 2010 levels. This would cost an extra £6bn - ten times more than what has been offered this year. We need to articulate to parents why that percentage is important for their children and why it’s worth taxing some rich people to fund it.

But we can’t just stop there. For many of us, being an educator isn’t about the money (if it was, we’d do something different) but it is about making a difference in our communities. Our strikes need to be linked to that idea constantly - we shouldn’t go on strike for a few extra percentage points when we could go on strike for a maximum class size of 20; 20 per cent PPA time; a 20 per cent pay rise for all staff; and a 20 per cent increase in per-pupil funding. We might not win that all in one go but we would at least have a route to the top of the mountain and we would show parents and the public that we have a different vision of education to offer - one that serves our children and our communities. 

Where unions, like the British Medical Association (BMA), have stood firm on these issues, they’ve won more. We should not accept the government’s terms on this. While some in the leadership will baulk at this sort of talk, in reality it will be easier to win with members than begging bowl percentages each year that get us a little more money in exchange for another nail in the coffin of schools. 

This strategy, of shifting the window on what our strike action can achieve, needs to be pushed out in schools now. It is the only real way to build a coalition beyond the ranks of educators that can deliver meaningful change in our classrooms; anything less is simply managing the stagnation and eventual collapse of our education system. 

We should build on the example of the sixth form strike of 2024/25 by building reps conferences and infrastructure to allow this fight to be led by activists on the ground. This would put power in the hands of education workers, not trade union leaders who famously backed down three years ago, leaving us in the difficulty in which we now find ourselves.

In the immediate term, it means members putting their executive members under pressure to respond, as the BMA have already done, by calling a strike ballot that is presented as part of a wider strategy to win a different education system. Any ballot should be addressed to all members, not just teachers, because we stand a much higher chance of winning more in this fight if we bring out all of our members, including support staff who are essential for keeping schools open. It also means reps, members, workplace leaders and educators carrying an argument for a different education system into every school, classroom and street in the country.

Let’s not fight over crumbs when we should be demanding the whole pie.