Sixth form college teachers will walk out for a further three days despite last week’s £50 million in-year pay deal.
Around 2,000 National Education Union (NEU) members in 32 standalone sixth form colleges will take the action on January 29, February 6 and 7.
These new strike days will add to seven strike days already taken by NEU members this academic year.
Another sixth form college teaching union – NASUWT – opened its own ballot for strike action on Monday.
It comes days after ministers agreed to give sixth form colleges and general FE colleges a £50 million “one-off” grant to help fund teacher pay awards between April and July 2025.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), which dropped a judicial review claim against the government after this agreement was reached, increased its pay recommendation for 2024/25 from 2 per cent for the whole year to 3.5 per cent for September 2024 to March 2025, increasing to 5.5 per cent from April 2025 onwards.
But this is still short of the pay award being given to schools and academised sixth forms who are implementing a 5.5 per cent wage increase for the full 2024/25 academic year after the government gave them £1.2 billion in September.
Unions have rejected this offer for colleges on the basis that it would constitute a two-tier pay award.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “Our sixth form teachers working in non-academised colleges started 2025 on below-freezing picket lines, as they showed their determination whatever the weather to reject a two-tier pay system.
“We should not have entered the new year with this glaringly obvious injustice still in place, and it is well past time that the government put the necessary funding in place to guarantee the same pay award for every college teacher.”
Kebede added: “We will never accept a situation in which college teachers in non-academised colleges are paid less than their academised peers for identical work. It is absurd and blatantly unfair to under-fund sixth form colleges in this way, risking lasting damage to longstanding collective bargaining arrangements.”
NEU announced in November it achieved a 97 per cent vote in favour of strike action in 32 of the 39 sixth form colleges balloted.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the SFCA, said he was “extremely disappointed” that NEU has announced further strike action before formal pay talks have concluded.
He told FE Week: “Pay rates for sixth from college teachers (excluding annual incremental progression increases) have increased by 18 per cent since September 2022. We have made a pay offer that amounts to 4.3 per cent across the year and is well above the rate of inflation.
“We cannot make a 5.5 per cent pay offer for the whole year, because the government has not provided funding for the whole year. Students will pay the price for this through further disruption to their education.”
Watkin added: “The government could stop the strikes immediately by providing sixth form colleges with the same funding to support a pay increase that they have provided to schools and academies. We urge them to do so without delay.”
The 32 sixth form colleges taking strike action:
- Aquinas College (Stockport)
- Barton Peveril Sixth Form College (Eastleigh)
- Bolton Sixth Form College
- Brighton Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College
- Cardinal Newman College (Preston)
- Christ The King Sixth Form College (Lewisham)
- Christ The King Sixth Form College Aquinas
- Capital City College – Angel (Islington)
- Greenhead College (Huddersfield)
- Henley College
- Hills Road Sixth Form College (Cambridge)
- Holy Cross College (Bury)
- Itchen College (Southampton)
- Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College (Birmingham)
- Leyton Sixth Form College
- Loreto College (Manchester)
- Luton Sixth Form College
- Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College (Leeds)
- Peter Symonds College (Winchester)
- Richard Collyer, The College of (Horsham)
- Scarborough Sixth Form College
- Shrewsbury Colleges Group
- Sir George Monoux College (Walthamstow)
- St Brendan’s Sixth Form College (Bristol)
- St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College (Kensington)
- St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College (Clapham)
- St John Rigby RC Sixth Form College (Wigan)
- Varndean College (Brighton)
- Wilberforce College (Hull)
- Winstanley College (Wigan)
- WQE and Regent College Group (Leicester)
- Wyke Sixth Form College
- Xaverian College (Manchester)
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