Sunday thoughts: Why haven’t the planned teacher strikes been resolved yet, and how does this end?

The NEU is about to go on strike across 7 days next month and into March. NASUWT will not be following them (though they promise another ballot), neither will NAHT (though they too are muttering about another ballot) and ASCLs position is unclear but it seems unlikely they will formally go out on strike action.

Nevertheless, 7 days of action (with a maximum of 4 in any one region) from NEU members has the potential to cause some schools to close, and trigger disruption to many. Although Heads can ask their NEU staff members what their plans are, teachers are under no obligation to tell them before the day itself. This may mean that under a precautionary principle, heads may pre-emptively close for at least some year groups, even if it turns out later that they might have been able to keep pupils in because strike numbers are less than they forecast.

So some disruption will clearly occur. “Lockdown 2.0” is a bit dramatic, but it will be challenging in many schools.

For me, there’s two interesting questions that flow from the current dispute: why hasn’t it been resolved before getting to the point now of strike action (which no one — DfE, heads, or unions - wants) and how might the underlying issue, in the end, be dealt with?

I think there are four possible reasons why DfE hasn’t acted to head off the upcoming strike action. Many of these reasons, incidentally, apply more broadly to the general wave of industrial action taking place across the country.

Firstly, and importantly, it isn’t within DfE’s gift to avoid the strike. Although the unions are formally in dispute with the government via the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally make a revised pay offer or other deal. Firstly, because it’s unlikely that DfE has the money available to meet the NEUs pay demands, or even a compromise figure — so she would need to go to the Chancellor and seek his agreement (and the PMs) for additional funds. But even if DfE did have the money, or could find it via a reallocation of their existing budgets, Gillian Keegan would still need both formal and political permission to do a deal. It’s not often understood how little flexibility Secretaries of State have over their own departmental budgets. Keegan would need formal permission from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to reallocate her in-year budget, which can be denied on any number of grounds around value for money (and which this probably would be). And the reality is that she would also need political permission to make an offer, even if it was using previously allocated DfE money and it passed value for money tests. Her hands are tied. Even if she wanted to make a big pay offer– and I have no idea whether she does — she can’t. All she can do is to privately lobby the Chancellor and PM for agreement to a deal and the extra funds with which to do it, as Steve Barclay is leaking that he is now doing from DHSC.

Secondly, it isn’t yet clear which way public opinion will fall. If you’re DfE / Government, it’s logical to hold on if you think there’s a possibility that the strikes will fall foul of public opinion, and the strikers will concede. It’s pretty finely balanced at the moment — YouGov find 51% support for teachers striking, 41% opposed — but government may well think that those numbers will shift in their favour once a strike begins and parents become inconvenienced.

Thirdly, and relatedly, DfE may think the strike will fizzle out. Although almost 9 in 10 NEU members who voted said they would strike, only just over half of members voted in total. In other words, half of all NEU members either don’t want to strike, or don’t feel especially strongly about it. When it comes to it — and when their colleagues in NASUWT aren’t striking — many teachers may decide, even right on the morning, not to. Concentration of NEU members is likely to be uneven across the country, and so in many schools, would-be strikers from the NEU could be a very small proportion of overall teachers in a staffroom, which raises the frictional cost of taking action and may put some off. Some teachers may want to strike but not be able to afford to lose up to 4 days pay (less a token strike payment). Some won’t want to cause disruption to their classes and pupils. Some teachers may seek a ‘compromise’ by taking action for the one first national strike day to prove their point and then returning to work. All that means that it’s possible that even if a strike remains popular, it doesn’t really cause disruption — lessening the need for government to take action.

And fourthly — and oddly misunderstood by many people who ask “but why hasn’t the government begun negotiating on pay when it’s clearly obvious that they’ll need to?” — government can’t begin negotiations too quickly because of the precedent it sets. If at the first whiff of discontent from teachers (or nurses, or railway workers), government rushes to offer a new pay deal, then the incentive to take further industrial action is massively increased (and the incentive to make a bigger demand when they do threaten said action is also increased). That’s just negotiation 101. So even if government wants to deal, and even if a strike is popular, and even if it’s causing serious inconvenience which manifests in political pain for the government (tick, tick, tick for the NHS strikes), government still needs to take some time in deciding their position and showing that the bar for industrial action that results in an offer is high, and requires pain from striking workforces. We can see this slow pace having some impact on nurses strikes already (where the RCN is being very vocal that they will now seek a compromise down from their original ask) and, in a lower visibility way, with railway staff (where a deal seems close after many months of dispute — and almost certainly, on both sides, only because of many months of dispute).

So I’m not surprised in the slightest that DfE hasn’t moved on the strikes, and that the discussions with unions are cordial but have no substance. I wouldn’t expect anything substantive to change until at least after the first national day of action, and probably until the end of the 7 days (which end with a further two national strike days).

So how does this ultimately resolve itself? Let me speculate on 5 possible end points (some of which could happen in combination)

Firstly, it could end with DfE making some sort of one off payment to teachers. This could be badged as a standalone increase to pay this year, or a backdated pay award that includes more months from the previous year’s salary, or a cost of living payment, or a Please Stop Striking payment, or whatever they want to call it. HM Treasury will want to avoid this being baked into core salaries (if you give someone earning £35,000 a £3,000 pay rise, say, you need to pay that additional £3,000 every year, and also pay employer contributions of almost 25% on top of that, whereas if you give someone a £3,000 one off payment it’s much cheaper). This is — probably — how the nurses strike will resolve. And it’s probably the most likely way a teacher strike will be resolved if government wants to (important caveat, see below).

Secondly, DfE could promise to ask the STRB to recommend a bigger award in future years. The DfE submission for next year’s award could call for say a 7% uplift and — crucially — promises to fully fund schools to pay it. This would probably be the best overall outcome for the average striking teacher. It’s very expensive because it then becomes baselined, but it may be necessary not just to see off industrial action but, more importantly, to ensure healthy(-ier) recruitment and retention in future years.

Thirdly, DfE could offer something which isn’t directly money, but has a benefit. In a piece for Schools Week this week, I speculated this could be something on workload. Government could badge it as — you would work on average x% fewer hours every week in exchange for the same money, meaning an effective pay rise. Also, given workload is a significant driver of teacher discontent, this could have wider knock on benefits.

Fourthly, DfE could offer wider financial changes that aren’t core pay, but would have direct financial benefits. Rob Colvile and Mark Lehain at CPS have talked for a while about making changes to teacher pensions so teachers can choose to take elements of that upfront as higher salaries when they’re young, and in the Schools Week piece linked above, the IFS and EPI also weigh in on this being plausible. I like this a lot in theory, though it shrieks of complexity, and presumably would take a while before serving teachers saw an impact in their pay (which is what would be needed to avert a strike — you couldn’t just do it for new teachers). In a similar vein, DfE are apparently very keen on increased pay in some subjects and geographic areas. This is a longstanding policy goal of successive governments, and I like it, but I can’t see it having much impact against this widespread level of discontent on pay (and the differences would probably be so marginal as to make very little difference).

Fifthly, though — maybe it doesn’t end. Or rather, it ends because the seven days action ends, there’s some disruption during the action, there’s wider tit for tat arguments and accusations in the media, and then…..things just….pick up and carry on? In other words, DfE stick it out, either because they see disruption being at a manageable level (especially if turnout falls after the first national strike day), or because public opinion is with them, or because it seems unlikely that the unions will get support for further action, or — and never underestimate this — because inertia and an inability for government to make a collective decision means this is the default path for how the dispute is due to end. I have to say, my gut in December when I did my predictions for 2023 was that it would end this way, and I stick by that. Sam is right of course that the wider question of “but where do future teachers come from?” isn’t resolved by this inertia. But in some people’s eyes, that’s a question for after 2024.