The first national teachers’ strike for 20 years is looking likely after the National Union of Teachers (NUT) announced it will ballot members on a one-day walkout.
Ballot papers will be sent out in February and, if approved, the walkout could hit schools across England and Wales on 24 April.
The proposed strike is in response to a row over pay. Earlier this month, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, announced a 2.45 per cent pay increase for teachers, followed by further 2.3 per cent increases in 2009 and 2010.
The increases are higher than the government’s preferred measure of inflation, the consumer prices index (CPI), and surpass the below inflation 1.9 per cent pay awards handed to other public sector workers, including the police and even MPs.
But they fall well below teaching unions’ preferred measure, the retail prices index (RPI), which stands at 4 per cent.
Steve Sinnott, NUT general secretary, said he was “very confident” teachers would vote in favour of industrial action.
He added: “To bring the best young graduates into the profession, teachers’ salaries need to be competitive with those for graduates in the private sector.
“Teachers’ pay has improved in recent years and so too has recruitment and retention. There must be no return to teacher shortages and to pay levels that sap morale.”
Teachers were further angered this week after discovering the rate of interest on student loans was being pegged to the higher RPI instead of the CPI.
But other teaching unions have been less outspoken. Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said: “We’re conducting an opinion survey of members. We genuinely want to know what our members feel about it before we make a decision about our response.”
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families defended the pay award, saying: “The 2.45 per cent award for teachers, recommended to us by the independent pay review body, is above the current CPI inflation rate and the government’s inflation target