Teachers are to receive a 3.1 per cent pay rise following their “vital contribution” during the coronavirus outbreak, the chancellor will say today.

The headline increase for 2020-21 beats inflation and is also the biggest of the public sector pay hikes being announced by Rishi Sunak today - above those for doctors and dentists, the police, the armed forces, prison officers and judges, which are all less than 3 per cent.

However, the funding for the pay rise is expected to have to come from within schools’ existing budgets - which are already being hit by the expense of having to introduce Covid-19 safety measures.  

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And the chancellor’s broad-brush announcement raises as many questions as it answers, including whether all teachers will get a pay rise, whether they will all receive the same rate, and whether their schools will be able to afford to pay it.

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Mr Sunak said: “These past months have underlined what we always knew - that our public sector workers make a vital contribution to our country and that we can rely on them when we need them.

“It’s right, therefore, that we follow the recommendations of the independent pay bodies with this set of real-terms pay rises.”

The Treasury says the teacher pay rise - to come in from September - was the “headline” recommended by the School Teachers’ Review Body, which had been accepted by government.