A New Deal for FE

9 September 2024

A New Deal for FE is an ambitious set of campaign demands for which we will support every FE branch in England in engaging in intense local bargaining, and bring pressure to bear on our college employers nationally. This is the first step towards winning binding national bargaining.

UCU members are at the heart of the New Deal for FE campaign and we are asking every FE member to get involved. This campaign is calling for:

a 10%/£3000 pay rise
parity with schoolteacher pay within 3 years
a minimum starting salary of £30,000 
reform of the pay spine
close equality pay gaps
national agreements on workload
a return to national bargaining
putting FE at the heart of a new government's plans.

Latest developments

FE England joint national pay claim 2025/26

In April 2025, UCU has reached agreement with the other further education trade unions (GMB, NEU, Unite and Unison) on this the Joint FE trade unions' pay claim (2025/26) and it has been submitted to the Association of Colleges (AoC).

You can click here to read the full claim here.

The claim is built on the core demands in the New Deal for FE campaign:

FE pay parity with schoolteachers' pay
national workload agreements
a new binding national bargaining framework.

Dates for the pay talks under the National Joint Forum (NJF) are currently being canvassed with the AoC so please look out for updates as the talks progress.

Important update for New Deal for FE, March 2025

The Spring Statement in March 2025 was another missed opportunity for the UK government to address the years of neglect and under-investment in further education (FE) and reverse the funding cuts to adult and community education (ACE).

To build a decade of renewal and deliver the skills needed to drive growth requires strategic investment and a workforce strategy, not a repeat of the failures of austerity: we need a New Deal for FE. We demand pay parity with schoolteachers, national workload agreements and binding national bargaining. FE branch delegates will be coming together at the end of May for the FE sector conference at UCU Congress to determine the next steps with the New Deal for FE campaign. The motions going to the FE sector conference can be found here. To make sure your FE branch participates in the union's democratic decision-making process, branches need to register delegates no later than Wednesday 23 April.

The further education committee (FEC) met recently and decided that there will be a consultation of members to gauge the levels of support for an industrial action ballot. Before the member consultation rolls out, there will be further branch briefings. Please look out for more information soon.

Finally, save the date for the national UCU demo in London on Saturday 10 May which will bring members and supporters together from FE, HE, prison and adult education to make our demands across all sectors heard.

National bargaining in FE: petition for a New Deal submitted

Staff in FE have suffered some of the worst real terms pay cuts in the education sector. Part of the reason for this is the current broken model of pay negotiations where the outcomes of national talks are not binding and colleges are not required to implement recommended pay rises. We need a fully funded settlement that all colleges are required to deliver for FE teachers.

In late 2024, we launched the New Deal for FE petition. Almost 6,000 supporters signed the petition calling for a New Deal for FE with pay parity with schoolteachers, national bargaining and action on workloads. On 7 March 2025 a UCU delegation consisting of general secretary Jo Grady, president Maxine Looby and head of further education Paul Bridge, went to the Department of Education to present it. The UCU submission to the cross-party inquiry into the further education (FE) sector was also complete.

Thank you to all UCU members have done to encourage everyone to sign the petition. You can continue to support the New Deal for FE campaign by:

presenting the petition to your college principal or senior management team
taking photos of staff and supporters holding up our 'I support a New Deal for FE' posters and giant card petition props like our members at Hopwood Hall College and MidKent College
holding a lunchtime meeting about the New Deal for FE campaign
sharing campaign leaflets in your workplace.

Click here for the March 2025 update on New Deal for FE from UCU general secretary Jo Grady.

Parliamentary lobby: making the case for a New Deal

Congratulations to everyone that joined our lobby of Parliament on 23 October 2024. Further, prison and adult education members came from across England to press MPs to support our campaigns. Politicians were matched with constituents in a packed committee room where they also heard briefings from the general secretary and UCU officers. This was a fantastic event aimed at boosting political awareness of the issues facing FE, adult and prison education staff ahead of the autumn budget.

Ask your MP to help ensure extra funding for England's colleges is spent on staff

FE has been neglected for many years and staff have suffered as a result with some of the worst pay cuts in the education sector and spiraling workloads leading to a recruitment and retention crisis. We urgently need the £300m extra FE funding announced in the Budget to be used by colleges to pay their staff fairly.

We have drafted a pro forma letter for UCU members to send to their England MP to support a New Deal for FE and call on the government to ensure the extra funding is spent on staff.

Ofsted: reform needs to be right not rushed

In February 2025, Ofsted announced proposals to replace the current inspection reports with a new system based on a 'more nuanced view of a provider's strengths and areas for improvement' from 2025-26. FE colleges and other providers will no longer be subjected to overall headline grades, they will be judged on a colour-coded five-point grading scale from 'exemplary' to 'causing concern' across up to 20 areas--compared to a maximum of 10 under the current system. The details of the new framework will need to be carefully considered however from a UCU perspective, the vitally important thing is for DfE and Ofsted to accept the current instruction framework is fundamentally flawed, not trusted and needs wholesale change rather than presentational tweaks of process or language.

UCU members have grave concerns about the stress, anxiety and adverse impact on health and wellbeing they experience as a result of Ofsted inspections and preparation for an Ofsted inspection. Our findings show that Ofsted inspections create a major health and safety risk for staff who experience significant levels of stress and anxiety both during and in the lead up to inspections.

UCU is calling for Ofsted inspections to be abolished in the further education and skills sector. There should be a co-designed, collaborative, sector-led, peer improvement model that is valued and trusted by staff, students, parents/carers and the wider population. UCU is to be consulted on the new inspection regime in both FE and prison education settings. Ofsted's duty of care towards staff in the sector must be enshrined in law. Government should commission an independent review of Ofsted's inspection practice and methodology. This should include looking at perceptions of inspection and patterns of sector improvement in Wales via Estyn and in Northern Ireland via the Education and Training Inspectorate to learn the lessons of 'light-touch' inspection adopted across the nations.

UCU submission to the School Teachers' Pay Review Body (STRB)

In September 2024, UCU was invited by the secretary of state for education to make a submission to the School Teachers' (Pay) Review Body (STRB) 2025/26. This was followed up in October with direction from the secretariat of the STRB along the lines of 'We are specifically interested in your views and evidence in relation to the impact of our pay recommendations on the further education teaching workforce in England'.

Your questions to the Minister of State for Skills

In January 2025 UCU general secretary Jo Grady met with the Minister of State for Skills, Baroness Smith of Malvern. This was an opportunity to put our concerns about the state of post-16 education, and what the Labour government should urgently do about the sector, directly to the minister. Find out what she said below.

About our New Deal for FE campaign

UCU is at a critical point in FE. The union at employer level continues to grow in organisational capacity, bargaining strength and confidence and is winning for members on pay and other terms and conditions. However, the rate of growth and depth of our capacity and density is unevenly distributed.

The Respect FE campaign, built on the union's experiences in recent years, is about laying the foundations for a New Deal for FE. It covers pay, workloads, and national bargaining. It represents a fundamental challenge to the status quo at college and sector level. It resonates with members, has traction with the core activist group but is actively resisted by the Association of Colleges (AoC) and a wide range of college leaders as it is a direct threat to their power and control.

National bargaining (in England) does not function. It has failed to meet the aspirations and demands of members and needs fundamental change. The national FE bargaining framework and agreement (NJF) is specifically set up to result in recommendations not binding collective agreements
Since FE incorporation in the early 1990s FE colleges and college groups have been autonomous legal entities covered by legislation and regulation with their own governance arrangements. It is at this level, not the national level, where the power lays
The UK government, via the DfE has an arm's length relationship with the sector. The various funding streams have a range of conditionalities attached to them, often linked to government policy priorities, such as skills and employment initiatives
The DfE has no role in setting terms and conditions or pay in FE. The DfE are not part of the NJF. The DfE position and by extension the position of the UK government is that pay and related matters are legally devolved to each FE corporation
FE funding is complex and distributed via mechanisms covering 16-19, Adult and Community Education, ESOL, apprenticeships, skills, BTEC and T-Level. It is also a source of control for the UK government and other agencies with whom UCU does not negotiate
Any fundamental change to the status quo within the sector and a potential new deal for FE in line with UCU aspirations must recognise and be able to strategically react to the existing structural, legal, and power realities.

The central premise of a New Deal for FE is that UCU is not yet ready to achieve fundamental change at sector level and any precipitate move, specifically an aggregate ballot on national bargaining in 2024, will most probably take the union and our strategic demands backwards rather than forward.

Instead of committing the union's resources on an aggregate ballot now, we should be actively focusing on continuing to build branch capacity and membership density and continue to build confidence by winning for members at branch level. The campaign needs to be built through all the union's structures, so that the decisions of the FE sector conference and the FEC are anchored in what the union does not have a reasonable prospect of securing at this time. Members must be regularly engaged and consulted as must the branch reps.

The union's communications, campaigning and political lobbying work should be clear and consistent in articulating and explaining what the New Deal for FE is and use all means at our disposal to champion and repeat the core demands.

We should be bold and ambitious and shift resources to build the biggest unified campaign rather than move to an aggregate ballot that does not have the building blocks in place at this time.