The National Education Union (NEU) has warned that it will campaign against Labour MPs if the government fails to improve its pay offer to teachers in England for next year.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, criticised the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, for “betrayal” of their supporters, and told the union’s annual conference to prepare for industrial action if their pay and funding was not satisfactory.
“Government says it would be indefensible for the NEU to take industrial action. Well I say to this government: it is indefensible for a Labour government – a Labour government! – to cut school funding,” Kebede told delegates.
The Department for Education (DfE) has recommended a 2.8% rise to the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) for the 2025-26 pay award. The DfE has yet to publish the STRB’s findings but Kebede said any outcome needed to be above inflation and include compensation for school budgets.
Kebede said: “If the STRB recommendation is not above inflation, if it is not a pay award that takes a step towards a correction in pay, if it does not address the crisis in [teacher] recruitment and retention, and unless it is fully funded, then we stand ready to act industrially.
“We will make Labour MPs pay a high political price through our campaigning in their constituencies, with our parents, across the country.”
Earlier, the NEU conference in Harrogate had rejected the government’s 2.8% offer as “inadequate” and voted to hold a formal ballot on strike action if it was not improved and school funding was not boosted to compensate for the extra salary costs.
The DfE responded that the NEU’s decision was “premature” before the STRB’s final report had been published and the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “Any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible.”
The NEU delegates also voted to label Reform UK as “far-right and racist”, setting off verbal skirmishing between Kebede and Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader, with Kebede calling Farage “a pound shop Trump” and Farage declaring “war” on the NEU and saying its general secretary was “a self-declared Marxist”.
In his speech, Kebede said: “While this government might be rolling out the red carpet for Farage to walk into No 10, through their austerity agenda, we won’t stand for it.
“Farage wants war, that’s fine – but I want our union to continue to live rent-free in his head as we organise for an education system and society where any child regardless of background, of colour, of religion, feels safe, happy and can flourish.”
Kebede also referred to the provocative Netflix series Adolescence, saying that schools were seeing a rise in misogynistic behaviour, enabled by social media platforms and the widespread availability of violent and degrading pornography online.
“We are in a safeguarding crisis. And it is being fuelled by tech companies that prioritise profits over people, engagement over ethics, and algorithms over accountability, Kebede said, adding: “We cannot entrust this technology to the Silicon Valley tech bros who are only in it for the money.”
