TEACHERS must not relent on calls for an end to take-home pay cuts, a new grassroots group of National Education Union (NEU) members demanded today.

Educators Say No! said any suggestion that the austerity-hit workforce should accept further below-inflation wage cuts are “unacceptable and counterproductive.”

The intervention comes as Tory ministers find themselves under increasing pressure to publish the latest report from the sector’s pay review body, which has allegedly recommended a 6.5 per cent salary boost.

The reported amount tops the average 4.5 per cent deal tabled by Downing Street earlier this year amid national strikes across England’s primaries and secondaries.

In a joint statement published last Friday, NEU joint general secretaries Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney argued that if the higher offer were “properly funded, such a rise could bring this dispute to a close.”

But in an open letter, the new group said: “We have not been consulted on this and we do not agree with it.

“[The 6.5 per cent offer] would represent a further real-terms erosion in our pay and would mark a defeat in a campaign that was initially about winning a fully funded inflation-matching pay offer.

“The NEU should be making plans to reject [it]. Our union has built a mass campaign around the intention of winning fully funded inflation-matching pay offers – we cannot relent now.”

The union is currently re-balloting members for a new six-month industrial action mandate ahead of the autumn term. 

An NEU spokesperson told the Morning Star: “Currently no offer of any description has been put by the Department for Education. 

“If an offer is made the decision on whether to accept or not will be put to members and it will be for [them] to decide.”