14 February 2003
Teachers will leave the profession if the government imposes the 2.9% pay rise recommended by the School Teachers' Review Body last week, the National Union of Teachers has warned.
The union expects calls for industrial action at its Easter conference. It had sought a 10% rise.
The recommendation also infuriated local government employers who, by contrast, complained that it was too generous. It would add almost £500m to the teachers' £17bn pay bill, of which around 30% is raised through the council tax.
Graham Lane, the education chair at the Local Government Association, said councils would be £60m out of pocket because the government had assumed only a 2.5% pay hike. He predicted that 13 councils would not have enough money to pay teachers the full amount.
A National Union of Teachers spokeswoman said: 'Calls for action are likely but the action teachers are likely to take is to leave the profession.'
Other teaching unions also reacted angrily. Gerald Imison, joint acting general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: 'This pay award has given teachers pitifully little.'
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers' general secretary Eamonn O'Kane said: 'The recommended award… breaks from the pattern of recent years in which the review body has recommended above the rate of inflation.'
All the unions welcomed the review body's rejection of the government's proposal for a three-year pay deal. But they are likely to be further angered by the agreement struck for a 3.5% rise for further education staff.
The review body said there had been a substantial improvement in teachers' pay, and action to reduce workloads 'should in the coming years contribute to a substantial improvement in teachers' overall conditions'.
Teachers in inner London were recommended to get higher increases to combat the capital's chronic recruitment and retention problems.
Lane called the criteria for both these increases and the compensating government grant 'bizarre'. Inner London increases totalled 4.6%, and several councils could not pay this, he warned.
PFfeb2003
