BRITAIN’S largest education union will campaign against Labour if teachers are not offered a fully-funded above-inflation pay rise, National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede warned as he drew its annual conference to a close today.

He said that Labour MPs will face a “high political price” if the supposedly independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB)’s offer does not address the sector’s recruitment and retention crisis.

The conference this week voted to launch formal ballot if the government’s final teacher pay and funding offer for 2025/26 remains unacceptable, with strikes as early as autumn.

Mr Kebede said: “They may say austerity is over, but in this union we believe that austerity will only be ended by deeds not words.

“Government say it would be indefensible to take industrial action.

“Well I say to this government: it is indefensible for a Labour government to cut school funding.”

He accused the Department for Education of betraying children by recommending a 2.8 per cent unfunded pay rise in its evidence to the STRB.

Government pay offers higher than the STRB’s are unheard of.

“This government has pledged billions of pounds for military expansion at the expense of the most vulnerable in society,” he said.

“It is an outrage. The labour movement should unite in its condemnation.”

Delegates cheered as he called for a pay cap for multi-academy fat cats.

Showing a picture of Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris multi-academy trust who received a £515,000 salary for 2023-24, he said: “This is not just an injustice; it is a national scandal.”

Backing a 2 per cent wealth tax on all assets above £5 million, he also told of his fears as a father to a six-year-old boy and how he was stunned into silence watching the Netflix drama Adolescence.

“Social media platforms have become breeding grounds for misogynistic content and at the same time, the widespread availability of violent and degrading pornography is shaping young people’s perceptions of sex and relationships,” said Mr Kebede.

Branding Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as “our own little pound-shop Trump who knows nothing about education,” he warned Reform is part of a global movement of populist right organisations that “seek to dismantle our public services, privatise education, and scapegoat refugees and the oppressed for society’s problems.

“And while this government might be rolling out the red carpet for Farage to walk into Number 10 through their austerity agenda, we won’t stand for it,” he said.