NI teachers offered 5.5% pay rise again

Teachers in Northern Ireland are again to be offered a pay rise of 5.5% as part of efforts to secure a 2024/25 pay agreement.

The revised agreement also contains commitments to address concerns about teacher workloads.

In February, the majority of teachers rejected an offer of 5.5% and started action short of strike in schools.

A failure to deal with demands on teacher's workloads was cited by many as a reason for rejecting that previous offer.

Some teachers also objected to a proposal that all industrial action be paused while pay negotiations took place.

Now the teaching employers - who include the Department of Education (DE), the Education Authority (EA) and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) - are trying again.

The pay rise is expected to cost Stormont around £48m in 2024/25 and £83m as a recurring cost in future years.

The 5.5% pay rise will be backdated to 1 September 2024, but with the 2024/25 financial year almost at an end, time for agreement is short.

The Chief Executive of CCMS, Eve Bremner, said the teaching employers had made a "significant offer".

"Management Side wants to resolve this dispute and bring an end to the current industrial action, so we have worked extremely hard to secure the funding for this offer and the resources to deliver the workload measures," she said.

"While we acknowledge that not every workload concern can be resolved in one year, this would serve as a positive start.

"We would encourage teachers to consider the revised offer and supporting information."

The details of the pay offer are on the Department of Education's website.

Meanwhile, the Education Minister Paul Givan has said that some pupils in Northern Ireland will sit new tests in Maths and English at primary and post-primary school.

Pupils will sit tests to assess their literacy and numeracy at the end of P4, P7 and Third form.

But they will only be taken by pupils in a sample of schools, rather than all schools, and will be used to assess Northern Ireland-wide performance in literacy and numeracy.

The tests are similar to Sats (standardised assessment tests) which are taken by primary school pupils in England to measure their performance, but individual pupils results will not be published in Northern Ireland.

In a statement, Givan said that the tests would be introduced in the 2025/26 school year for a three-year period and would stop Northern Ireland being an "outlier."

"Literacy and numeracy are the essential foundation of all education," he said.

"Northern Ireland is currently without any measures of how our system is performing in both these areas at primary school and Key Stage 3."

"This is not acceptable and makes us an outlier internationally in being without basic performance data."

"This new approach is designed to provide a clear, evidence-based understanding of how well our pupils are developing essential knowledge and skills in reading, writing and mathematics and will provide an authoritative picture on our national educational performance."

"The findings from the assessments will support curriculum development and teacher professional learning."

The new tests will be created and delivered by the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) with first taking place in March 2026.