Teachers are being offered a pay increase of up to 11.9%.

The pay offer is 8% for school leaders, ranging up to 11.9% for newly banded teachers.

Education minister Julie Edge believes the offer the department has given to teaching unions is ‘sustainable’. She said the original four percent was ‘a good offer’ and hopes the pay dispute will ‘see a positive outcome’.

This follows members of the biggest teaching union in the Isle of Man announcing they would be going on strike over six different days.

NASUWT’s chief secretary Patrick Roach has said the strike is the fault of the Manx government and claimed that teachers are ‘unable to make ends meet’ due to the cost of living as well as ‘years of pay erosion’.

All teachers’ unions have been in continuous communication with the department regarding a number of concerns, according to Ms Edge.

She said: ‘The dispute and the action is being taken by one union out of five. I feel that the department has addressed all of the issues that have been put before us and we’ve also looked at pay to ensure that the Isle of Man has a good offering in its latest pay deal.

‘NASUWT have gone public and said they will reject that pay offer, however I haven’t received notification of that directly but obviously they’ve gone public on that now.’

Ms Edge said that the department was still waiting to hear from the other unions regarding the pay deal, however it is understood that the National Education Union (NEU) has accepted the offer. Meetings will be had with school leaders in the coming days.

Ms Edge added: ‘School leaders are best placed to ensure they know how to operate their school. It could be one member of staff takes the action but the important thing is that we are communicating this well and ensuring that everyone is aware of what the contingency plan is.

‘It’s important to ensure that continuous education for our students.’

DESC chief executive Graham Kinrade explained following the suggestion of a multi-year pay deal that he was ‘unable to support’ such an arrangement.

This is because the DESC sets its budgets annually.

The union is only required to inform the department of its intention to strike, however it is not required to detail what form the strikes could take.

For example, it’s not required to tell school leaders whether all of its members will walk out or only some. This leads to complications for head teachers and the DESC for contingency planning.