Hordes of teachers descended upon the Department for Education today to protest the government’s pay award snub to colleges.
More than 2,000 members of the National Education Union (NEU) working in sixth form colleges across the country walked out this afternoon in the first of three proposed days of striking.
Ministers and civil servants heard loud chants and speeches from a crowd of unionised teachers protesting outside the Department for Education’s headquarters calling for funding for the 5.5 per cent pay award to apply to the non-academised sixth form college sector.
Teachers gathered on the pavement opposite Sanctuary Buildings chanting, “What do we want? Fair pay. When do we want it? Now,” and loudly booed mentions of education secretary Bridget Phillipson and skills minister Jacqui Smith.
It marks the first national walk out by education staff since the general election.
The strike stems from the summer announcement that schools and academised sixth form colleges would receive £1.2 billion to fund a 5.5 per cent pay rise for 2024/25. But standalone sixth form colleges and further education colleges would be excluded from the deal.
Government officials are under pressure from sixth form college bosses to U-turn on the decision after the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) launched a judicial review against DfE’s “sickening” decision.
Smith maintains she made the FE pay case “strongly” to the Treasury before the Autumn budget and agreed that FE and school teacher pay should match.
NEU members are set to strike again on December 3 and 4 if DfE does not resolve the dispute.
Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, said the strike could have been “easily averted”.
“It’s shameful that you are going into Christmas with 0 per cent as your pay award at the moment,” he told strikers.
He added: “It is small beer we are asking for. £15 million. That’s not what we’re asking for, that’s what the SFCA is asking for.”
NEU post-16 representative Duncan Blackie told the crowd that the sixth form sector faces becoming “two-tiered” if DfE does not settle the dispute soon.
“Colleges that are represented here will be emptied in years to come, because the pay difference [with schools] is so, so enormous,” he said.
He urged the SFCA and the Association of Colleges to tell colleges to pay the award, funded or not.
“Don’t mess about. We want the government to tell you to pay the money, but if they don’t, then pay the money. You can resolve this dispute as well,” he said.
Teachers told FE Week that their employers have empathised with workers over the snub.
“They’re just as frustrated as we are,” said Graham Childs, head of BTEC law at Peter Symonds College.
“They know that the SFCA want to make a pay award, but without the promise of extra money, the only way to do that will mean to make shortages elsewhere. We don’t want to see our pay rise funded by redundancies of other staff.”
‘We expected better of a Labour government’
Kebede added that the strike was also about reversing the “deep, severe” recruitment crisis in sixth form college sector.
“This is about turning the tide on a direction of travel that seeks to erode and privatise education,” he told the crowd.
Earlier this month, NEU achieved a 97 per cent vote in favour of striking from 32 of the 39 colleges balloted.
Sixth form teachers told FE Week they assumed the DfE originally made an error by excluding them but given it has not rectified the oversight, it could “potentially” be a tactic to force sixth form colleges to academise.
“That’s something even the Tories didn’t try to do,” Ian Morton, accounting teacher at WQE and Regent College in Leicester. “We just expected better of a Labour government. No Labour government worthy of the name performs actions like this.”
“It must be by design and it’s just really sickening,” Childs added.
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