While I’m not that keen on weather metaphors, the swirling snow that has enveloped much of the country over the past couple of days seems apposite for the state of the talks with the government - or lack of them - over teacher pay.

Today, our union, the Association of School and College Leaders, opens our annual conference in Birmingham with one important figure missing - Gillian Keegan MP, secretary of state for education.

This is, I believe, the first non-attendance by an education secretary since 2006.

The reason we were given by Department for Education officials last week was that she hoped to be focused at this time on intensive talks over the industrial dispute.

No talks, no progress

Predictably, no talks are taking place, and the government has rejected calls from education unions, including ASCL, to bring in the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) to arbitrate in an attempt to break the deadlock.

To recap, the deadlock is as follows. Talks between the education unions and the government had been taking place until the government decided upon a new tactic which was to call off further talks (with all the education unions) until the NEU agreed to suspend strike action.

The government wants the NEU to do this without there being any offer on the table, or indeed any hint of an offer.

Unsurprisingly, the NEU has rejected this demand.

The government is cross about the NEU stance and has been busily putting out communications venting righteous indignation.

God knows how this is meant to help achieve a resolution to the dispute.

This leaves us with the stark fact that there is still no settlement and that further strike action, barring a last-minute miracle, will take place across the country next Wednesday and Thursday.

A bleak reality

Let’s remind ourselves of the grim circumstances that have led to this situation.

The dispute was sparked by a pay award for this academic year (2022-23) that was significantly below inflation and followed a pay freeze the previous year. Indeed, since 2010, salaries have been substantially eroded by pay awards that have fallen behind the rate of inflation.

Calculating that real-term decrease depends on which measure of inflation you use, but in the spirit of scrupulous objectivity let’s turn to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a highly-respected independent think tank, and what it says:

“Salaries for more experienced and senior teachers have fallen by 13 per cent in real terms since 2010. Teachers in the middle of the salary scale have experienced cuts of 9-10 per cent since 2010. Starting salaries have fallen by 5 per cent in real terms. This smaller real-terms cut to starting salaries mostly reflects faster increases for new teachers in recent years as part of a deliberate effort to increase starting salaries to £30,000.”

Teacher and leader workload also continues to be a massive problem.

Again, let’s turn to an independent body, this time the National Foundation for Educational Research, in its 2022 annual report. It says that for a brief period during the spring 2020 lockdown, when teachers were mostly working from home, their working hours were at a similar level to similar professionals.

“However, in the 2020-21 academic year - including during the second period of school closures in January and February 2021 - full-time teachers’ working hours rose back to their pre-pandemic level, at around 46 hours per week. This was significantly more hours on average than the 41 reported by full-time similar professionals during the same period.”

And it concludes: “Workload is the reason most cited by ex-teachers for why they left teaching, which means ensuring teachers’ workloads are manageable is an important part of a strategy to reduce the numbers of teachers leaving.”

This is clearly a problem at a system level and the reasons are not hard to identify.

Per-pupil funding cuts

Between 2010 and 2020 school funding per pupil fell by 9 per cent in real terms - the largest cut in over 40 years. Even after the money announced in last year’s Autumn Statement, school funding will not return to 2010 levels until 2024-25, representing 14 years without real-terms growth.

And the situation is worse still in post-16 education where, even after announcements in recent years of extra money, per-student funding in colleges in 2024-25 will still be around 5 per cent less than in 2010, and 22 per cent less in school sixth forms.

At the same time, there has been no let-up in expectations and pressures on schools and colleges, including an accountability system of performance tables and Ofsted inspections that is harsh and disproportionate.

So, teachers and leaders are literally being asked to do more work for less money. It is therefore not surprising that nearly a third of teachers leave teaching within five years of qualifying, and that targets for recruiting initial teacher trainees are repeatedly missed, and disastrously so last year. The majority of schools and colleges are facing difficulties in both recruiting and retaining teachers.

And today, ASCL has published the results of a survey showing a substantial hidden pressure on schools, colleges and the workforce caused by the erosion of local support services for children over the past decade, which has left teachers and leaders desperately endeavouring to fill these gaps.

End the soundbites 

I have set all this out in painstaking fashion for a reason. These are objective, established, well-sourced facts. They are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is the government’s lacklustre response to this bleak situation. Ministers cannot really think that real-terms pay cuts will address this situation. They know that action has to be taken over workload.

They are aware of all the information in this article and more. They have an army of civil servants advising them.

This is why, in my speech to our annual conference in Birmingham today, I call on the education secretary to stop trading fatuous soundbites. Teachers, leaders, families, communities and especially the nation’s children and young people all need this matter settled.

Schools and colleges need to be able to recruit and retain great teachers and leaders in a way that is not happening. No target or aspiration for education is achievable without this being addressed.

The facts are not in dispute. And the solution should not be in dispute either.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders