Today marks an unprecedented step in ASCL’s history, as we open
our first consultative ballot for national industrial action, in
which we will be asking members if they believe we should move to
a formal ballot for strike action and/or action short of a
strike.
ASCL’s consultative ballot follows a period of extensive
consultation including surveys, meetings, and webinars, where we
heard the strength of our members’ feelings about the continued
underfunding of education and the major consequences this is
having both for ASCL members and for the children and young
people they serve. This underfunding is exacerbating the already
alarming teacher and leader recruitment and retention crisis,
through hampering schools’ ability to recruit and retain a
sufficient quantity and quality of support staff, teachers, and
leaders due to financial restrictions and uncompetitive terms and
conditions.
Most importantly, this underfunding is compromising the ability
of our schools and colleges to provide the education and care to
which our children and young people are entitled – particularly
as we begin to emerge from the pandemic.
As an organisation which speaks on behalf of members and acts on
behalf of children and young people, we cannot sit back and let
this continue.
Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and
College Leaders, said: “While yesterday's extra money is welcome,
it comes in the context of a decade of real-terms cuts and a
teachers' pay award this year which is both inadequate to improve
recruitment and retention and unaffordable because there isn't
enough money for schools to be able to pay it. We will now be
asking members to participate in our consultative ballot and
guide our next steps.”
All members eligible to vote in ASCL’s consultative ballot
received their voting link this morning and will have until
December 16th to cast their vote.
