Teacher strikes

ASCL members reject pay offer by 87%

Union achieves 56 per cent turnout in consultative ballot of members

Union achieves 56 per cent turnout in consultative ballot of members

Geoff Barton

Members of the ASCL school leaders’ union have voted to reject the government’s pay offer by a margin of 87 per cent to 13 per cent.

The union achieved 56 per cent turnout in its consultative ballot about Gillian Keegan’s offer of a £1,000 one-off payment this year and 4.3 per cent pay rise for most teachers and leaders next year.

Asked to state the “most significant factor” in their decision to vote no. Sixty-nine per cent cited the “inadequacy of the additional funding provided to schools” for next year’s offer. Twenty-nine per cent cited the inadequacy of the pay offer.

It comes after the National Education Union announced yesterday that 98 per cent of voting members had voted to reject the offer, on a turnout of 66 per cent. The NEU has called further strikes on April 27 and May 2.

ASCL said today it will convene its executive committee “shortly after the Easter break” to consider its “next steps”.

General secretary Geoff Barton said the pay offer was “inadequate in every respect”, and said moving to a formal ballot for industrial action was “certainly an option”, though no decision has yet been taken.

The offer “fails to address long-term pay erosion, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, or provide enough funding for schools to be able to afford even the meagre pay award that is on the table”.

He said talks with the government were “immensely frustrating and it took an eternity to inch towards this lacklustre set of proposals”.

“Ultimately all we could do is put it to members and let them decide. It is no surprise that they have overwhelmingly rejected the offer.”

Barton said members “will certainly be hugely concerned too about the failure of the pay offer itself to address recruitment and retention, but the immediate problem is the prospect of not being able to afford to pay it to their staff without having to make cuts elsewhere”.

He added that he was “aware that there will be speculation about whether we will move to a formal ballot on industrial action, a step we have not yet taken because we have been focused on trying to resolve this situation through negotiation”.

“This is certainly an option that will be discussed but we would emphasise that no decision on this front has been taken in either direction. It would clearly be much better for all concerned if the government responds with an improved pay offer and puts an end to the industrial dispute.”

A DfE spokesperson said ASCL’s decision to reject this offer “will simply result in more disruption for children and less money for teachers today”.

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