Many teachers rejected the government’s pay offer because they feared it would harm their schools rather than their pockets, new research suggests.
Just four per cent of teachers wanted to accept the current deal, which is mostly unfunded, according to a survey of school staff who are members of all different unions and none.
But when asked if they would accept the offer if the government funded it fully, rather than expecting schools to find most of the money from existing budgets, 41 per cent of teachers said they would accept it.
Education app Teacher Tapp, which carried out the poll, said: “It seems likely the government could have brought the strike action to a close by fully funding the pay offer across all schools...Teachers’ anger is as much about the effect on schools as the effect on their pockets.”
The government had offered a 4.3 per cent pay rise next year for most teachers, as well as a one-off £1000 payment this year. It said it believed schools could afford to fund most of the pay rise from their budgets, and that extra money would have been provided to make up the rest.
