Unions call on members to reject 'insulting' pay offer

Hello and welcome back to the tes news podcast. Each episode of this podcast explores the biggest education story of the week, how that story developed, and what it means for schools, through the eyes of our expert journalists.  All of the stories discussed can be found on our website tes.com/magazine. Stories such as David Wright’s analysis piece on why schools must act on new filtering and monitoring standards from the government. A few months ago on this podcast, Senior editor Dan Worth and I discussed the tragic story of Frankie Thomas - who sadly took her own life after witnessing suicidal material on a school ipad. David Wright looks at this story in the context of new DfE filtering and monitoring standards - and explores why following them is so important.  Our news team have had a lot to cover this week. Some highlights include: tes reporter John Roberts’ breakdown of the 7 ways the DfE wants to strengthen MATs or reporter Matilda Martin’s article exploring why just 3 percent of headteachers and senior leaders believe year 6 sats results are the best measure of high standards in primary schools.  But our big story this week is teacher pay - which has of course been a big story for a while now. But has developed a lot over the course of this week. On Monday we learnt that the DfE had made an offer to education unions after intensive talks which began on the 17th March. The offer made to all 4 teaching unions, the NEU, Nasuwt, naht and ASCL, included a one off payment of £1000 for 2022-23 and a 4.5 per cent average pay increase for next year. But unions were quick to disregard the offer - with the NEU calling on its members to reject the insulting pay offer, and NASUWT and the NAHT joined in that call for their members to reject the offer, with NAHT calling the offer inadequate. Reporters Matilda Martin and Callum mason sat down earlier today to discuss what this could mean - including Gillian Keegan's plea to school leaders and the possibility of future strike days.