Teacher Strikes in 2026 "Inevitable" After Budget, Warns Union Leader
Kebede: "strikes to save education will be inevitable in 2026" (Alamy)
3 min read
The leader of the largest education union has told PoliticsHome that industrial action next year is inevitable unless schools are given more funding.
The general secretary for the National Education Union (NEU), Daniel Kebede, said schools and colleagues are in a "full-blown funding crisis" which Rachel Reeves' Budget on Wednesday "did nothing to fix".
"Without a change of direction from the government, and real investment in education, strikes to save education will be inevitable in 2026," he told PoliticsHome following the Chancellor's House of Commons statement.
There has been growing tension between education unions and the government in recent months due to complaints over teacher pay and reforms to the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Last month, the Department for Education (DfE) told the teacher pay body that pay should rise by 6.5 per cent over the next three years. According to DfE evidence, combined with previous pay decisions, this would result in teacher pay increasing by 17 per cent over the course of this Parliament. However, education unions argue that this will not make up for real-terms cuts to teacher pay in recent years.
Kebede warned that the Budget "offered no correction".
"This isn’t about percentages," he told PoliticsHome.
"It’s about the teacher who avoids drinking water because the staff toilet has been broken for months. It’s about children learning in their coats because the heating can’t be switched on. It’s about the teaching assistant doing the work of three people because the other two posts were cut."
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has previously said that "any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible".
While the government announced more money for school libraries and playgrounds in the Budget on Wednesday, figures in the education sector were hoping that the Treasury would do more to address the financial pressures facing schools. There have been expert warnings that minimum per-pupil funding will not keep up with schools’ rising costs next year.
PoliticsHome has contacted the Department for Education for comment.
Elsewhere in education, the Budget raised fresh concerns over the financial pressures facing special educational needs and disabilities services, also known as SEND.
The government announced that the cost of providing SEND would shift entirely onto the national government from 2028, in an attempt to offset local authority debt. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility said "no savings have been identified to offset the estimated £6bn pressure this will create".
The OBR's independent forecast accompanying the Budget described local authority spending on SEND as "rapidly growing".
The DfE is expected to publish long-awaited proposals for SEND reform early next year. The plans were meant to come in October, but were delayed, PoliticsHome reported at the time.
