Schools braced for strikes after Easter as fears over a summer of discontent grow (2025)

Teachers are preparing to walk out in protest over pay and pension cuts in the coming weeks, threatening to cause major disruption for parents and pupils during the summer term as GCSE and A-level exams take place.

Teaching unions NASUWT and National Education Union (NEU) have both said they would launch ballots on industrial action if the Government’s final pay offer for the 2025/26 academic year remained “unacceptable”.

A motion, passed at the NASUWT conference over the Easter weekend, called on the union’s national action committee “to reject any pay award that is not fully funded and to move immediately to ballot members for industrial action”.

The union also called on the Government to use the June spending review – the Chancellor’s outline of departments’ day-to-day spending – to fully fund public services to ensure that schools “can recruit and retain the staff needed”.

What pay rise has the Government offered?

The Department for Education (DfE) in December, providing evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), said a 2.8 per cent pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate”.

The DfE said this raise would “maintain the competitiveness” of teachers’ pay despite the “challenging financial backdrop” the Government is facing.

The Government has yet to publish the recommendations of the teachers’ pay review body, or its decision on whether to accept them.

Teachers in the state sector received a 5.5 per cent pay rise for the 2024/25 school year.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson warned that “any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible” and urged unions “to put children first”.

In a video shown at the NASUWT conference on Saturday, Phillipson also warned of more “difficult decisions” on the horizon due to a tough financial inheritance.

“The toughest financial inheritance in a generation has meant that we’ve already had to take some incredibly difficult decisions, and I’m afraid that more are still coming,” she said.

Unions say partially funded pay rise ‘not acceptable’

Dan Lister, junior vice president of the NASUWT, said at their conference over the weekend: “Let the message go out from this conference loud and clear, we will not accept another unfunded or partially funded pay offer.

“We will not settle for empty promises while our colleagues burn out and our students miss out.

“We call on the national executive to intensify its campaign, and we empower the national action committee to reject any pay deal that isn’t fully funded and move swiftly to ballot for industrial action if necessary.

He said the Government’s proposal to the STRB of a 2.8 per cent partially funded pay award was “not acceptable”.

“The Government’s recommendation makes it clear that efficiencies will need to be made,” he continued. “We know what this means. It means restructures, it means redundancies, members losing their jobs and children losing their teachers.”

Julie Blogg, from North Yorkshire, told the conference: “If we really want to engender support from the public, we need to show them the fundamental problems with a lack of funding.

“It isn’t just about my wages. It is about the care I can give to my students.

“It is the reality of being there when they need us. They need to know that we are there because if they don’t fund it, we’re not going to be there.”

‘No choice but to ballot our members for industrial action’

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, told the conference that “teachers deserve a real terms pay rise” and that “schools must be provided with the additional funding needed to pay for it”.

He told delegates: “We are also clear that if the Government fails to fully fund the next pay award, the NASUWT will be left with no choice but to ballot our members for industrial action.

“Any suggestion that teachers might be offered a real terms pay cut, or that the pay award will not be fully funded, or that any school or college will have to make further cuts to provision for pupils in order to pay teachers, would be wholly unacceptable.”

NEU members staged eight days of strike action in state schools in England in 2023 in a long-running pay dispute.

In July 2023, the Conservative Government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5 per cent increase for teachers in England, and coordinated strike action by four unions was called off.

Private school teachers also prepared to strike

Private school teachers have also stressed their willingness to walk out in protest at pay and pensions cuts.

Many of the teachers have complained that they have not received the same 5.5 per cent pay rise that their state school colleagues were given in the 2024-25 school year. Private schools can set their own pay. Their teachers do not receive the same standard pay rise as state school teachers set by the DfE.

Around a quarter of independent school teachers received a pay rise this academic year, according to a survey of 4,000 members by the NEU.

The union said 23 formal strike ballots had taken place at independent schools this year, which has been followed by numerous walkouts this spring. Further industrial action is expected in the summer term, when GCSE and A-level exams take place.

The NEU said strikes in fee-paying schools were becoming “commonplace as employers seek to cut teacher and support staff’s terms and conditions”.

Coventry School Foundation, which runs Bablake and King Henry VIII School, has faced 19 days of industrial action since January, The Times reported. Further walkouts are expected in the summer term.

Roedean, a £58,000-a-year girls’ boarding school in Sussex, is facing six days of strikes over two weeks when lessons resume after Easter.