Teachers' Strike Ballot 2026: What It Means for Your Child's Schooling

What's happened

The National Education Union (NEU) has confirmed it will move to a formal, legally binding strike ballot of teachers and support staff in state-maintained schools in England. The decision follows an indicative ballot in which 96 per cent of teacher members voted to reject the government's offer of an unfunded 6.5 per cent increase over three years, with 90.5 per cent saying they were prepared to take industrial action to secure better funding.

According to the union, the formal ballot will open on 3 October and close on 15 December. That timing matters: if the ballot passes the legal thresholds, the first strike days would fall in the new year, after the Christmas break.

Why now?

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede has framed the dispute as being about both pay and the wider state of school finances. He has said "Enough is enough. Unfunded below-inflation pay increases are an insult." The union argues that asking schools to fund a pay rise from existing budgets would force cuts elsewhere — to staffing, subjects on the timetable, and enrichment activities.

The government's position is that a 6.5 per cent rise over three years is what the public finances can bear. The union's position is that, without new money from the Treasury, any rise effectively comes out of children's classrooms.

What a "formal ballot" actually means

An indicative ballot is essentially a temperature check — it has no legal force. A formal ballot is different. It must clear two legal thresholds set out in the Trade Union Act 2016:

• At least 50 per cent of eligible members must vote.
• At least 40 per cent of all eligible members (not just those voting) must vote yes to strike action.

If either threshold is missed, no lawful strike can go ahead, regardless of the result on paper. This is the same hurdle the NEU narrowly failed to clear in its summer 2025 ballot, so passing it this time is not a formality.

One change worth noting: the new Employment Rights Act has altered the landscape. The Employments Right Act 2025 passed in December 2025, abolishing minimum service levels for schools during strike action. The act also classes all dismissals for participating in strike action as automatically unfair from 18 February 2026. In practice that gives the union more freedom and removes one tool ministers had to limit disruption.

The likely timeline

If the formal ballot closes on 15 December and clears the thresholds, the union must then give employers at least 14 days' notice of any strike date. Realistically, that points to:

• January 2026 onwards — earliest possible strike days, once notice periods are served.
• Spring term — the period most exposed to disruption if talks fail.
• Summer term — a particular flashpoint, because GCSE and A-level exams fall within it. The NEU has historically avoided exam days themselves, but revision lessons in May and early June are not protected.

Nothing is set in stone. Strikes can be suspended at short notice if a deal is reached — that is what happened in early 2023 once the previous government tabled a revised offer.

What schools must do on a strike day

Parents often assume a strike day means an automatic closure. It doesn't. Headteachers have a duty to keep the school open where they can, and the Department for Education's standing guidance is clear on this point. Tes has reported that the DfE issued guidance to schools advising that headteachers should take "all reasonable steps to keep the school open for as many pupils as possible".

In practice, schools usually:

• Stay fully open if few staff are striking.
• Open for priority groups if staffing is thin — typically vulnerable children and young people, the children of critical workers, and pupils due to take public examinations and other formal assessments.
• Close fully only when a safe pupil-to-staff ratio cannot be maintained.

Schools are not legally required to tell parents in advance which staff are striking — many teachers don't declare it until the morning itself. You should expect notice the day before, or sometimes on the day. Free school meals must still be provided in some form for eligible pupils, even if that means a packed lunch arrangement.

Academies set their own approach within DfE guidance, so two schools in the same town may handle the same strike day differently.

What parents can do now

There's no need to act on anything today. The ballot may not pass. Even if it does, the first strike day is months away. But a few sensible steps will save stress later.

Check your school's communications channels. Make sure you're signed up to the school app or text alerts, and that the school has an up-to-date mobile number for you. Strike-day announcements typically come through these, not the website.

Talk to your employer early. If both parents work, knowing your employer's policy on short-notice dependants' leave is more useful than trying to sort it the night before a strike.

Identify a back-up adult. A grandparent, a neighbour, another parent at the school gate. Childcare swaps work better when agreed in principle ahead of time.

Keep an eye on Year 11 and Year 13 in particular. These year groups are the ones with the least slack in the timetable. If your child is sitting GCSEs or A-levels in summer 2026, every missed lesson in the spring term matters more than it would in Year 9.

When tutoring genuinely helps — and when it doesn't

For most year groups, an occasional strike day is a manageable inconvenience, not an academic emergency. Primary children, in particular, are not at meaningful risk from one or two lost days a term.

Where private tutoring earns its keep during industrial action is narrower: pupils in exam years who are already on a tight revision timetable, or pupils who were already struggling in a specific subject before the strikes were announced. In those cases, a regular weekly session keeps momentum through any disruption — the lesson happens whether the school is open or not, and a tutor can cover topics the class teacher hasn't reached.

It is not a useful response to strikes in general. A KS2 pupil doing well at school doesn't need a tutor because of one strike day; they need a quiet morning at the kitchen table.

The honest summary

A formal ballot has been called, but no strike has yet been confirmed. The earliest realistic disruption is the spring term of 2026, and even then it depends on the ballot clearing legal thresholds and on talks between the union and the Department for Education failing to produce a revised offer.

For now: keep an eye on your school's communications, know what your contingency looks like for a strike day, and pay closer attention if your child is in a public exam year. The rest can wait until there's something concrete to react to.