“Austerity is ended in deeds not words – but rather than focusing on funding our schools this government is intent on making more cuts.”
Louise Regan, National Education Union, joined leading left trade unionists, anti-racist campaigners and movement figures for an online Arise Festival, Strike Map and Union Lefts event on how we move forward as a socialist movement. You can watch ‘Winning a socialist Future – Ending Austerity, Racism and War’ and read an edited version of Louise’ speech published below.
In 2023 and 2024 NEU members took 10 days of strike action to win fully funded pay increases worth 12.4% which was the largest real terms pay increase since 2009. I know many people thought that the election of a Labour government would bring positive change for workers and our public services. I did not think this and had little confidence in them delivering anything substantial for our members.
Unfortunately, the situation is worse than even I would have predicted. Just before Christmas the Labour government recommended an unfunded 2.8% teachers’ pay award for September 2025 stating that schools should make efficiency savings to fund this.
The vast majority of schools would need to make further cuts to pay for this and it will do nothing to deal with the recruitment and retention crisis that our schools are facing.
We know that our schools are already cut to the bone, lack of staff and support particularly for SEND pupils, limited resources and our school buildings literally crumbling around us.
Next year school costs will rise by 3.4% and schools will need an additional £700m just to cover those rising costs. 76% of primary schools and 94% of secondary schools will not be able to cover their costs. If more money is not invested in education school funding will fall to its lowest level in real terms since 2010.
More schools are in deficit now than at any point since at least 2010. Just 3% of primary schools and 6% of secondary schools say that they are financially secure. We have the highest primary class sizes in Europe and the highest secondary class sizes on record. More than a million pupils are now being taught in classes of over 30 so asking schools to find the money to fund this pay award will lead to more cuts in our schools affecting both staffing levels and resources.
Austerity is ended in deeds not words – but rather than focusing on funding our schools this government is intent on making more cuts.
Keir Starmer will be the first Labour Prime Minister since James Callaghan to tell schools to make cuts. They call this making ‘efficiency’ savings but there are no efficiencies to be made!
On top of this, we have just found out that the Ofsted review is complete following Ruth Perry, headteacher, killing herself in January 2023 after an Ofsted inspection which downgraded her school to inadequate. The ‘Big Listen’ was supposed to take into account the voice of the profession! The proposals are completely unacceptable and will do nothing to improve educators confidence in the inspection system. Moving from a one word judgement to a 1 to 5 grading proposed for the report card does not capture the complexity of the school system.
And finally the education secretary Bridget Phillipson speaking on 3 February stated that she was fully supportive of the proposals from Ofsted. She also spent a long time attacking educators for what she said Michael Gove called the soft bigotry of low expectations. Michael Gove was not respected by educators and Bridget Phillipson’s speech will highlight to our members the reason why taking action now is more important than ever.
We will continue to build for our ballot, to challenge the government around school funding and to fight for our schools to be properly funded.
- Louise Regan is an Executive Member of the National Education Union (NEU). You can follow her on Twitter/X here.
- You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X; and listen to the Arise Festival podcast on Spotify.
- You can find all upcoming events from Arise Festival here.
