The UK’s biggest teaching unions voted to accept a new pay deal and end industrial action in a boost to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as his government seeks to end months of damaging strikes across multiple industries.
Some 86% of teachers with the National Education Union voted to accept a deal on pay and funding agreed earlier this month by the government, the NEU said on Monday in a statement. Strikes planned for the fall won’t now go ahead, it said. It was joined by two other unions, the NASUWT and NAHT, who also said an overwhelming majority of respondents had accepted the new terms. A fourth union, the ASCL, voted in favor of the deal earlier this month.
The votes will be welcomed by Sunak’s governing Conservatives who are seeking to distance themselves from the narrative that the economy isn’t working for ordinary Britons after months of strikes by doctors, nurses, teachers and civil servants over pay that hasn’t kept pace with soaring inflation. The Tories trail the main opposition Labour Party by some 20 points in recent national polls, ahead of a general election that Sunak must call by January 2025 at the latest.
While the NEU said earlier this month that it would recommend the 6.5% pay deal to members, there was still the chance teachers could reject the package, as nurses did earlier this year, despite their union chiefs urging them to support a pay deal. The teaching union said its vote did not include sixth form college teachers, who continue their disputes with the government about pay and funding.
“The government should be in no doubt that we will hold its feet to the fire on delivering for teachers and support staff on workload and funding,” NEU Joint General Secretaries Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney said in the statement. “It remains the view of the NEU that school and college funding is far from adequate.”
The NASUWT also said ministers need to do more to address teachers’ concerns about working conditions. It called for an end to the current performance-related pay system and said the government should tackle excessive working hours.
