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England’s largest teaching union has warned it will launch a formal ballot for industrial action unless the government makes a fully-funded, above-inflation pay offer.

The ballot would ask teachers whether they are prepared to strike over pay and funding, the NEU teaching union has said.

General secretary Daniel Kebede told ����Vlog that the education secretary was “out of touch” after she criticised the union’s decision this weekend.

The Department for Education has recommended that teachers should receive a 6.5 per cent pay increase over the next three years, which it says is ”affordable” for schools without extra funding.

The School Teachers’ Review Body - an independent group of pay experts - was due to submit its recommendations to the DfE by February 2026.

The DfE has not confirmed the exact date it will release its final offer, but last year, schools were told at the end of May.

Phillipson calls NEU ballot ‘irresponsible’

While the government is yet to announce its final teacher pay offer, it has been following the conflict in Iran means any above-inflation pay award will be difficult to fund.

However, the NEU is warning that schools need “sufficient funding” to “prevent redundancies and rises in workload”, as well as “a fully-funded pay offer for teachers that exceeds inflation”.

Without “urgent action” to meet these demands, the NEU plans to open its formal ballot on 3 October.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, education secretary Bridget Phillipson called the union’s decision “irresponsible and massively premature” in response to the announcement.

But Mr Kebede told ����Vlog that both “the DfE and secretary of state are out of touch”.

Labour is ‘running education into the ground’

Mr Kebede added that an unfunded pay award will “take our schools from crisis to collapse and will result in yet further cuts to the education provision of children and young people”.

He said: “Teacher and support staff jobs will be lost, subjects will be cut from the curriculum, school trips and after-school clubs will be cut. The list is endless.

“This government is running education into the ground.”

Mr Kebede told the government that it needs to “deliver the properly-funded education system our children and young people deserve” to avoid any potential industrial action.

The majority of NEU members signalled that they would be prepared to launch industrial action over teacher pay, workload and school funding in an indicative ballot last month.

However, only 48.6 per cent of eligible teacher-members took part in the ballot.

Unions need at least half of the eligible members to vote in order to carry out industrial action through a formal ballot.