Because, dear hearts, the government, when they offered us a pay rise of 4.5%, mostly unfunded for next September and all 4 teaching unions thoroughly rejected it, Gillian Keegan said that teachers would then have to take their chances with the independent pay review body and that there would be no further negotiations.
So teachers did. And the independent pay review body, who seem to have rather more of a handle on the current crisis in teaching than the government, recommended that teachers should get a 6.5% pay rise to introduce some stability into the system.
We only know this because the independent pay review body findings have not been published, but this figure was leaked.
Calls for the government to publish the report have been ignored. Most recently, a freedom of information act request to the DfE for the report was rejected, because the DfE says it's "not in the public interest".
Why is it not in the public interest to know what the independent pay review body has recommended? This report is published every year.
In the meantime, Rishi is briefing the press that he will reject the independent pay review body's recommendations, after making a huge fuss about how he always accepts independent pay review body recommendations.
Why should this matter to parents? Because headteachers are currently trying to write their budgets for September. The end of term is approaching. This job is currently impossible because headteachers don't know how much more they are expected to pay teachers next year, (6.5%? 5?% 4.5%?) and they have no idea how much extra money their school will be given to account for the pay rise (all? some? None??). This makes a massive difference as staffing costs account for the vast majority of school budgets. Should they be planning to cut GCSE subjects? Make staff redundant? Or will they actually be able to plan in some literacy support? That they don't know is intolerable.
A senior government advisor said that school budgets last year weren't worth the paper they were written on because of this same issue, and that it shouldn't be allowed to happen again.
Yet here we are.
The government are trying to drag this out to the summer before they make their pay announcement because then they'll be on their holidays and the 4 teaching unions' ballots will have closed.