����Vlog

Two teaching unions are taking steps towards a ballot on industrial action as polling shows anger among the profession over next year’s pay award.

As ����Vlog first revealed, teachers have been offered a 3.5 per cent pay rise for 2026-27 - but government funding will not cover the full cost to schools of the increase.

The Association of School and College Leaders has confirmed to ����Vlog that it will survey members this autumn “to ascertain the impact on school budgets”.

As part of that survey, the union will ask what action it should take next, including “the option of moving to an indicative ballot on industrial action”.

Pepe Di’Iasio, ASCL’s general secretary, said the union is “extremely concerned about the fact that the school teachers’ pay award is only partially funded, with schools having to provide 1.8 per cent from their budgets.

“Schools are not in a position to be able to afford these costs and long ago exhausted any potential for the efficiency savings that the government appears to believe can be magically realised.”

For many schools, the pay offer “will mean a further round of cutbacks with a resulting impact on education provision for children and young people, and on the workloads and wellbeing of leaders and teachers”, Mr Di’Iasio added.

Teachers unhappy over pay offer

The country’s biggest teaching union, the NEU, is also polling members on next steps.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, warned on social media that it would not accept a partially funded pay award and was launching a poll on Saturday on “how we move toward a formal ballot for industrial action”. The poll will run for a week.

In the run-up to this year’s pay decision, the NEU had announced it would launch a formal ballot for industrial action unless the government made a fully funded, above-inflation pay offer.

While the pay offer may end up broadly in line with inflation, there are concerns about the funding of it, given the already-stretched state of school budgets.

Asked last week by Teacher Tapp how they would prefer the government to fund the deal, 45 per cent of teachers surveyed opted for a smaller, but fully-funded, rise of 1.7 per cent.

Some 37 per cent said they would choose the current offer of a 3.5 per cent rise that is partially funded.

Some 11 per cent said they had no preference, and 6 per cent said the 1.7 per cent increase should be given to schools to decide how to spend it.

In a separate Teacher Tapp poll, 27 per cent of respondents described themselves as being angry about the pay offer.

This proportion was almost twice as high as in 2025, when teachers received a 4 per cent pay rise.

Some 37 per cent of respondents disagreed with this year’s offer, compared with 25 per cent last year.

Just 2 per cent agreed with the offer - a figure four times lower than last year.

A quarter of teachers said they were disappointed but believed the offer was necessary in the circumstances, compared with 37 per cent in 2025.

Reacting to the Teacher Tapp figures Mr Kebede said: ”It is no surprise that teachers are angry about the pay offer.”�� He added that they are even more angry about the fact that it is “not fully funded”.

��

The Department for Education said, when the deal was announced, that it will provide £700 million in additional funding to schools in 2026-27.

An additional £1.1 billion will be given to schools in 2027-28 towards the costs of the pay rise in that year.

The £700 million would cover the first 1.7 per cent of the pay rise, according to a DfE breakdown seen by ����Vlog.

As the DfE set out last week, schools will be expected to cover a further 1 per cent through savings and from existing budgets.

However, the remaining 0.8 per cent is also to be met from existing school budgets, through what the DfE describes as “financial headroom”.

Leaders have questioned the government’s assumption that schools can cover half of the pay rise from existing budgets.

When the pay deal was announced, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Our brilliant school and college teachers go above and beyond every day, and I’m determined that dedication is not just recognised but rewarded.

“This multi-year deal, backed by significant additional investment, shows the immense value we place in our teachers, while giving schools and colleges certainty over pay and their budgets.”

����Vlog has provided a breakdown of teacher pay scales for 2026-27.