“We won’t be divided against our colleagues: EC Manchester teachers stand in solidarity!

The following was initially sent to the EL Gazette in response to a statement issued by EC management in the paper. In it, the Manchester EC teachers challenge the “race to the bottom” logic presented in management’s statement and urge all EC teachers to get unionised!

We, the teachers at EC Manchester, express our solidarity with our colleagues in London in their campaign for pay restoration and union recognition. We also request that EL Gazette publish this statement in response to the statement from EC it published on 23rd June 2025.The simple truth is that teachers’ salaries have fallen dramatically behind cost-of-living increases. In Manchester, our real hourly wage has now fallen against inflation to around 8 percent below what it was in 2020 and further still below what we need. Whatever the precise figures for other EC schools, we know the underlying pressure remains the same.

Despite EC’s commitment to “competitive pay and conditions”, we are paid for teaching hours only, not for the time spent on lesson prep, admin tasks and trapped time, and not in the weeks when fewer hours are available. Teachers have to offer full time availability to get what is still a part-time wage, with a basic annual salary close to the minimum wage. [see note below]

Being “proud to be among the higher-paying schools in the private language sector” doesn’t pay our living costs. That formulation suggests that if other employers had held wages down further then EC would have been authorised to do so too. Such a race to the bottom risks squeezing teachers out of the sector altogether.

EC’s statement seems to paint the London union members as an unrepresentative minority. We can assure them that pay and workplace organisation are majority concerns. In Manchester, over 90% of EC teachers are members of the National Education Union and 100% of teachers co-signed a letter of protest over pay rates in May. We urge teachers in other EC schools to join too. If we value “the collaborative environment we strive to maintain”, we won’t be divided against our colleagues who are taking action but will stand together for a real living wage.

Notes:Basic rate for a teacher with CELTA + 2 years experience is £19.72 an hour. A teacher with 22.5 hours teaching per week—the highest rate at EC—receives:£19.72 X 22.5 (hours) X 52 (weeks) = £23,072.40For comparison, the full time annual minimum wage for 2025-26 is £25,396. To earn this, a teacher would have to teach an average of 25 hours of contact time a week.

TEFL WORKERS UNION