Teachers in Cumbria and the Northeast have announced they will go on strike for two days amid pay disputes.

Staff in the National Education Union (NEU) will strike on July 5 and 7, continuing their campaign to win an above-inflation pay rise.

In early April 2023, a pay and funding offer from Government was rejected by 98 per cent of NEU members on a 66 per cent turnout.

Their sister unions held similar votes with similar results, with the message to education secretary Gillian Keegan loud and clear.

A re-ballot of NEU teacher members in state schools opened on May 15 and will close on July 28.

Across the North, the NEU will be marking the strike with pickets and rallies, with July 5 seeing picket lines across many schools in the Northeast and Cumbria, and several events listed for July 7.

These include a rally in Durham at 12pm, and a picnic in the park in Keswick’s Fitz Park at 11:30am.

For NEU teacher members in England’s state schools, next week marks their seventh and eighth day of strike action since February 1.

Teacher members in sixth-form colleges took an additional day of action in November 2022.

The most recent strike day for teachers was on May 2, 2023.

Commenting on the days of action, Beth Farhat of the National Education Union, said: “There is a crisis in education, schools and colleges are haemorrhaging staff, and those who remain are having to work unacceptably high numbers of additional hours in return for pay which continues to worsen in value.

“The government's latest teacher census shows that a third have left the sector within five years of qualifying.

“They are missing their own training targets as a matter of routine, and teacher vacancies are up by 55 per cent in just 12 months.

“The government’s latest position is to let this continue and to deliver yet another real-terms pay cut upon teachers.

“Gillian Keegan can avert strike action by publishing the STRB report and restart talks to find a serious solution to the dispute.”