Updated July 17, 2026 — 5:12pm,first published July 17, 2026 — 7:51amA teacher strike remains on the cards for next week despite an eleventh-hour pay offer from the state government because the militant faction that encouraged the no vote over the last offer will be pushing members to reject it.The Australian Education Union’s joint primary and secondary sector council met on Friday and resolved to put the state government’s revised pay offer of 28.3 per cent over the next four years to a ballot of union members.The vote will determine whether teachers accept the offer or proceed with a strike planned for Thursday. Voting opened on Friday night and will continue until Tuesday afternoon.AEU Victorian president Justin Mullaly said this would ensure every member could have their say.“In bypassing the union and going straight to employees with the offer, the state government have behaved in a fashion no Labor government should behave,” Mullaly said after the government emailed the offer to teachers on Friday morning.“It’s union members who decide.”The Fight the Crisis group of the union met in Brunswick earlier on Friday and said its members would urge teachers to walk off the job on Thursday if the state government did not make an improved offer.Victorian state school teachers rally at the steps of parliament in March.Joe Armao“I expect that members will vote down this offer and walk off the job if there is no satisfactory offer from the government between now and Thursday,” said Lucy Honan, a spokesperson for Fight the Crisis.“We will organise to make sure that all the people burning with rage are out on the streets on Thursday.”On Friday morning, Victorian teachers, principals and education support staff were offered what the state government called a “watershed” pay rise over the next four years, as Labor tried to avoid strikes planned for every government school in the state next week.The offer would align support-staff pay increases with those of teachers and includes an increase of 12.75 per cent for all by October 2026.The revised offer to teachers is a slight advance on the government’s previous position of a 28 per cent increase over four years, but less than the 35 per cent over three years sought by union members.Education Minister Ben Carroll, who is also deputy premier, said going straight to the workforce was key after a previous union-endorsed offer was rejected in a vote of rank-and-file teachers.“I signed an agreement with the Australian Education Union last time, an agreement that they themselves described as being really good,” Carroll said on Friday.“What I’ve decided this time is, having met with the union and having put the offer to them, that I directed the secretary to also email the offer to every single government teacher that’s out there.“This is a watershed agreement ... when I talk to teachers, they told me. They don’t want to go on strike. They want another offer, and this is what I’m doing.”Under the revised offer, teachers would have required meeting hours halved from 80 to 40 hours a year, and teachers at the top of the pay scale would be given an annual lump-sum payment.The Allan government is hoping the revised offer can stave off a mass walk-off that would disrupt hundreds of government schools on July 23.School staff voted for the 24-hour statewide strike and a ban on working unpaid overtime during a meeting of more than 100 union representatives this week.AEU state president Justin Mullaly says the Allan government shouldn’t have gone directly to teachers.Luis Enrique AscuiOne of the key issues the left faction is fighting for is stronger language in the agreement that class sizes be set at a maximum of 25 students from when the deal commences. They are also pushing for class sizes to be reduced further over the course of the agreement. Honan said the language on class sizes in Friday’s offer was too weak.Education Minister Ben Carroll on Friday urged teachers not to strike.Ruby AlexanderA separate union group, the Keilor Downs College sub-branch, organised a rally outside Carroll’s office in Niddrie on Thursday.George Pattichis, the president of the AEU sub-branch at Keilor Downs College, said the rally was called because members “were tired of waiting for our union leaders to act”.“Our leaders called off strike action in term 2 to come up with a completely inadequate agreement. We rejected that deal because it did nothing to address our unbearable workloads and left education support staff further behind,” Pattichis said.Mullaly refused to be drawn on whether the group was undermining his work on getting a pay deal through for members.Up to 35,000 teachers, principals and education support workers walked off the job for a day in March in pursuit of a better deal on pay and conditions, taking to the streets of Melbourne’s CBD in the state’s first mass teachers’ strike in 13 years.Teachers had been planning to stop work again in May, but the rolling strikes were called off after the union reached an in-principle agreement with the government.Keilor Downs College humanities teacher Liz Walsh said Thursday’s rally should send a message to the government.“They are not only negotiating with the union leadership; they are negotiating with rank-and-file unionists, and we are in no mood to settle for a marginally better deal that fails to meet the needs of all school staff: teachers and education support workers alike,” Walsh said.Carroll said the government was urging union leadership to put the revised offer to members and call off the strike.“Students should be in classrooms and parents shouldn’t be left scrambling for childcare or losing a day’s pay,” he said. “Let’s keep kids in school next Thursday.”Get alerts on breaking news as it happens. 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