Building on your success

The NASUWT has opened a consultative ballot for members who work in state-funded schools in England.

This gives you the opportunity to tell us whether you want to take industrial action on:

  • pay;

  • workload;

  • working hours; and

  • wellbeing.

The ballot opened on Monday 19 February and we sent you an email with a link to the ballot.

If we don’t hold an email address for you, we sent a letter with details of how to access the ballot. Please consider updating your contact details by adding an email address to your membership record.

You will need your NASUWT membership number to register your vote. This will be included in the email or letter.

The consultative ballot closes at midnight on Wednesday 20 March 2024.

If you believe you’re eligible to vote and haven’t received an email or a letter, please email the ballot inbox.

Email the ballot inbox

Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT General Secretary, drills down into the reasons behind the TUC’s finding that teachers are the profession working the highest amount of unpaid overtime. It is costing you on average more than £15,000 in free overtime and saving the Government £6bn every year.

As we continue to build on the success you achieved last year, we are asking the Government to invest in the future of the teaching profession. By participating in the ballot, you make our case to the Government even stronger that teachers deserve better.

‘Every teacher deserves decent working conditions and to be highly paid for the important job they do. While workload and working hours continue to rise, teachers’ pay is continuing to fall.’ --- Dr Patrick Roach

Frequently asked questions

We have prepared some answers to common questions about the consultative ballot. Please follow the link on the right/below.

You can also email us if you have any issues with the ballot.

Email the ballot inbox

Our campaign for a Better Deal for Teachers continues for all our members, wherever they work, including in the supply, sixth-form and independent sectors.

Please also visit our Time for a Limit campaign page to find out what you can do by building on the action taken last year.

What you have you achieved so far

Your votes succeeded in ending months of stonewalling and prevarication by ministers. The prospect of widespread disruption in schools last autumn brought the Government back to the negotiating table, ending four months in which ministers refused to engage.

Within two days of our ballot result, the Government promised to honour the STRB recommendation on pay and engage in further negotiations on workload and working time. See further details below.

The STRB recommendation of a 6.5% pay increase was accepted by members with a recommendation to accept and the NASUWT continues to press the Government on pay restoration and action to reduce workload and working hours.

Our members have been clear that real progress is needed urgently on all these matters.

You may have more money in your pocket now, but we also demand pay restoration, not more real-terms pay cuts, to end the recruitment and retention crisis and raise the status of the teaching profession.

In May, we told Education Secretary Gillian Keegan that our campaign will continue until:

  • adequate funding is provided to all state-funded schools to deliver an acceptable pay settlement for all teachers and headteachers for the academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24;

  • appropriate statutory and non-statutory measures are agreed to reduce excessive workload of teachers and headteachers;

  • appropriate statutory and non-statutory measures are agreed to limit and bring significant downward pressure on the working hours of teachers and headteachers.

What the Government promised

Following intensive talks last week, the Government has now announced that it will:

  • commit more than £1.4 billion extra funding to schools towards the teachers’ pay award for 2023/24;

  • accept the STRB recommendation of a minimum 6.5% pay award to all salary scales and allowances;

  • commit to a package of new measures to tackle workload and working time.

These important commitments would not have come about without your continued support for our Better Deal for Teachers campaign and the industrial action ballot.

Teachers’ pay

The Government has accepted the recommendation of the independent pay review body - the STRB - to increase the pay and allowances of teachers and headteachers by 6.5% from September 2023.

This is more than the 4.5% award previously offered by the Government which was rejected by NASUWT members by a margin of nine to one.

The Government had hoped that the STRB would recommend a pay award close to its previous offer. They didn’t. The Government was set to reject the recommendation from the STRB, but your vote made it impossible for them to do that and avoid the prospect of widespread industrial action across the country.

Funding

Members have always been clear that any pay award must also be fully funded in order to avoid cuts to jobs and frontline services in schools.

Following the vote for industrial action, the Government conceded that schools did not have the money required to deliver a pay award above 3.5%.

As a result, we have persuaded the Government to commit to a package of additional money for schools worth more than £1.4 billion. This is equivalent to an additional 3% uplift to school budgets paid for by a new Teachers’ Pay Grant which will deliver an extra £525 million to schools in 2023/24 and an extra £900 million in 2024/25.

This additional funding will go to every school and academy in order to pay teachers, while protecting frontline service delivery. All schools will receive more money in their budgets to fund teachers’ pay and ensure no cuts to existing provision within schools or to SEN budgets, early years or 16-19 provision.

We have also secured an additional pot of £40 million to support schools that are struggling financially. 

We have also secured additional money for 16-19 provision, including for sixth-form colleges. The Government announced an extra £185 million in 2023/24 and £285 million in 2024/25 to go to sixth-form and FE colleges.

We will now be discussing with the leaders of the Sixth Form Colleges Association how that funding will be used to deliver an acceptable pay award for sixth-form college teachers.

The Government has now launched its formal statutory consultation on the STRB’s Report and on changes to the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document. The consultation will run for ten weeks, closing on 21 September. As ever, we will be responding fully to the consultation.

Workload and working time

While pay restoration remains a key priority for our members, we have also been clear to the Government that tackling workload and excessive working hours must also be a priority.

The package of commitments we have secured from the Government include promises on tackling excessive workload and working hours, including:

  • a Government target to reduce teachers’ working hours by a minimum of five hours per week;

  • a national taskforce comprising Government and unions to tackle excessive workload;

  • statutory guidance listing tasks that should not be carried out by teachers and school leaders;

  • maximising sign-up by schools and academies to the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter;

  • further engagement with unions and Ofsted to reduce the impacts of inspection on the workload and wellbeing of teachers and school leaders.

Despite these concessions the ballot has allowed us to achieve from the Government, we remain in dispute as we continue our fight for pay restoration and an end to excessive workload and working time.

Thank you once again to all our members and activists who worked so incredibly hard to win these changes from the Government.

Your action has already made a massive difference. It has moved the Government to promise billions more funding for school/college budgets and improvements on pay and working conditions.

Your continued support will help secure even more as we continue our fight for a Better Deal for Teachers.

Would you like to be more active in the NASUWT?

The NASUWT is a member-led Union, which means you getting actively involved in your Union to support your colleagues at work.

Getting active in the Union can take a variety of forms and will mean you also get access to FREE training, support, and personal and professional development: you can be proud in the knowledge that you are undertaking a role that helps teachers in their workplaces.

Find out more

Join the campaign

 


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