The education secretary has said that a decision on next year’s teacher pay award will not be announced this week.
Speaking in a live broadcast to school staff today, Bridget Phillipson said that she wants to be “honest and upfront” with the sector.
The move means that any decision over teacher pay will be announced during the holidays or next term. Most schools are set to break up for the summer holidays this Friday.
During the event, Ms Phillipson also said that while the previous government did some work on workload, she wants to “look afresh” at the problem.
On the teacher pay decision, Ms Phillipson said: “We know there is an urgency around that and we are working across government to act as quickly as we can.”
Ms Phillipson said that she would be writing to local authorities and trusts to confirm this tomorrow.
She added that the government would not be able to provide indicative school and high-needs national funding area allocations for 2025-26 to the usual time scales.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said the organisation has requested an urgent meeting with the DfE to discuss the implications of the timing of the pay announcement on trusts.
She said that while it was “obviously frustrating for trust leaders...it is important to acknowledge that this is a very unusual situation”.
“The secretary of state has said they’ve inherited the toughest fiscal environment since the Second World War,” Ms Cruddas added.
Unions willing to wait for pay decision
Headteachers’ unions had told the new government that they were willing to wait for a decision on teacher pay if funding still needed to be found, Tes understands.
But clarity on timelines is needed “as soon as possible”, according to the NAHT school leaders’ union and the Association of School and College Leaders.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, told Tes: “We have said that if a delay is desirable to find funding, that might be acceptable - but they need to let us know as soon as possible.”
And Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of ASCL, said: “Our members would prefer some certainty if we are not going to hear this side of summer.
“And if that gives the new government time to work with people across the government to find out how best they can fund any recommendations from the pay review body, then I am sure our members would understand that if we are going to hear the news in September.”
However, Tom Campbell, chief executive officer of academy trust E-ACT, which has 29 schools across the country, said: “It is unacceptable to delay the STRB recommendation any longer.”
While the sector “appreciates the challenges the new government is facing”, the decision is “an absolute priority”, he said, adding that the sector needed urgent clarity.
Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of Harris Federation - a 54-school trust based in London - said that he could wait until autumn for a pay decision but “the key issue is whether the eventual rise is fully funded”.
If the rise was not fully funded, and exceeded the 3 per cent that the trust has budgeted for, Sir Dan said that “the longer the DfE delays the decision, the larger the restructure that might be needed to balance budgets”.
He added that he would hope to know the pay rise “by the end of September [at the] latest”.
The former education secretary, Gillian Keegan, confirmed in May that a decision on teacher pay would not be made until after the general election.
At the time, school leaders warned that the decision would leave schools with no way of planning budgets for September.
Last year, teachers received a 6.5 per cent pay rise after a months-long dispute between unions and the previous government.
Teachers are expecting a lower pay rise for September 2024, after the DfE’s evidence to the STRB published in February recommended the teacher pay rise should return to “a more sustainable level”.
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