School leaders have warned that the government failing to make a decision on teacher pay before the general election leaves schools with no way of planning budgets for September.
Union and multi-academy trust leaders have reacted with dismay after Gillian Keegan has confirmed that the government will not be publishing its response to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations for teacher pay until after the election.
In a letter sent to union leaders on Friday, seen by Tes, the education secretary said: “All government decisions, including a response to the STRB’s recommendations, will need to be carefully considered in the light of the sensitivity of the pre-election period, which begins at 00:01 on 25 May 2024.”
“The government will publish its response in due course, but will not be able to do so during the pre-election period.”
It comes after prime minister Rishi Sunak called a snap general election for 4 July.
General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Pepe Di’Iasio, said that the response from the government was “extremely frustrating because it means a long delay before schools have any degree of certainty over their costs next year”.
He added that “schools just cannot plan their budgets under these circumstances”.
‘Next government must act quickly’
“The next government must act quickly on taking office to agree a pay award that addresses teacher recruitment and retention challenges and which is fully funded so that schools can afford it. And it must commit to making decisions in a much timelier manner in the future,” Mr Di’lasio said.
Leora Cruddas, the CEO of the Confederation of School Trusts said: “This is obviously destabilising for trust budget setting and is very frustrating. However, it is also clearly a matter that the new government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a view on”.
Jonny Uttley, the CEO of Yorkshire-based multi-academy trust The Education Alliance, said: “This is the final straw from a government that has failed time and again to do the most basic things to support schools and school leaders.”
“Every year they have held back pay decisions to the very last minute like a badly-organised sixth former with an essay deadline. Two years ago the pay rise was issued after trusts had to submit budgets, leaving us hundreds of thousands of pounds out. This year they have chosen to sit on this until after the election. This is a deliberate choice and again, it leaves schools no way of planning budgets for September.”
Tom Campbell, the CEO of E-Act multi-academy trust, agreed: “This additional delay to the announcement of STRB recommendations makes an already difficult budget-setting period for schools and trusts, impossible. To get to mid-July without knowing what we are paying staff in September, and whether any of it will be funded, really is a hospital pass to those of us leading trusts.
“This will undoubtedly impact decisions on what trusts are able to offer pupils next year, whatever the eventual announcement.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “Leaders and teachers deserve to know what the STRB recommended for this year’s pay award. It’s disrespectful to the profession to withhold this information, and the government should have published it before we entered the pre-election period.”
He added that school leaders and teachers “have endured” more than a decade of real-term pay cuts and said a “series of restorative pay rises” was needed to make teaching “an attractive profession once again in the graduate marketplace”.
‘A big early call for a new government’
The delay means that setting teacher pay for 2024-25 will now be at the top of the in-tray for the next government.
Sam Freedman, a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education told Tes: “It will be a big early call for a new government, trying to balance the difficult trade-offs in the public finances with the need to get the profession onside”.
Union leaders said earlier this month - before the election was called - that the DfE had received the STRB report with its recommendations for pay for 2024-25 and urged the department to publish its response.
This was amid warnings from academy trust leaders that any teacher pay rise above 2-3 per cent will be “unaffordable” for many schools this year.
Some school leaders have said that the decision being delayed until after the election may end up benefitting schools.
Co-principal of Passmores Academy in Harlow, Vic Goddard, said: “It is so late already that a delay so the decision can be made by someone that has the best interests of schools and children at heart might not be a bad thing.”
Last year, the government accepted the pay body’s recommendation that teachers receive a 6.5 per cent pay rise from September 2023. The deal came after a long-running dispute over pay and months of strike action by teachers.
In 2022-23, experienced teachers received a 5 per cent pay rise.
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