The ballot is the union's response to the three year pay deal announced by the government in January. The government's offer is an increase fixed at a level below the true rate of inflation. This offer follows from previous below-inflation pay deals which teachers have had since 2005. Since that time and over the next three years teachers are facing, in real terms, an effective pay cut and a continual drop in their living standards.

The actual offer for September 2008 is an increase of 2.45%, which is then followed in September 2009 and September 2010, with further increases of 2.3%.

The announcement of the pay deal was cynically presented as a generous offer by Ed Balls the current New Labour Education Secretary as being at the same rate as inflation. This is part of the government's con-trick which uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This way of measuring inflation was introduced by Gordon Brown in December 2003. However, it is conveniently below the old measure which uses the Retail Price Index (RPI). The CPI does not include several items that affect the living standards of working people, such as mortgages. The reality is that the current level of the RPI (which does include mortgages) is 4 per cent, while that of the official CPI is only 2.1 per cent.

The New Labour spin machine attempts to present the pay offers as generous and the likes of Ed Balls thinks that an easy headline will hide the reality of people's experience on the ground. This is not the case. Teachers with other public sector workers are increasingly angry at the attacks on their living standards. The NUT has worked out that from 2005 to the end of next year, teachers at the top of the pay scale will be more the £4,000 worst off in real terms - than if pay had been kept in line with inflation - that's some pay cut!

This squeezing of teachers' pay comes alongside other changes in the pay structure which are reducing responsibility payments for thousands of teachers, at the same time workloads are increasing.