The Department for Education has urged a national pay body to recommend the starting salary for teachers reaches £30,000 by 2023 and admitted that a “significant” pay rise is needed to recruit and retain staff to the profession.
The DfE published its submission to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) today, as the deadline for recommendations closed.
In the submission, the department sets out a “roadmap” to reach a £30,000 starting salary for teachers, alongside evidence to support the STRB’s consideration of the 2022 and 2023 pay awards for teachers, headteachers and other teachers in leadership positions.
In order to reach the £30,000 starting salary ambition, it has proposed an 8.9 per cent uplift to the statutory minimum (M1) for qualified teachers outside of London in 2022-23.
It has then recommended this be followed by a 7.1 per cent increase in 2023-24 to reach £30,000 within two years.
However, it is also proposing smaller increases of around 5 per cent over two years for more experienced teachers on upper pay ranges.
Union leaders warn that this could mean a real-terms pay cut for most teachers.
It comes as five unions called on the pay review body to reverse the “devastating impact of the attacks on teacher and school leader pay levels”, as members face “huge rises in energy costs and the National Insurance increase”, with teacher supply already “teetering on the brink”.
The DfE has said a £30,000 starting salary would be “memorable and impactful” and was the best way to support teacher “recruitment and retention overall”.
Its submission to the STRB adds: “To best support teacher recruitment, retention and quality ambitions, a significant uplift in the starting salary of classroom teachers, and overall improvement to the early career pay offer, is needed.”
In December 2021, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi wrote to the STRB to ask for a two-year pay plan to reach a £30,000 starting salary target.
In 2019, the government had pledged to reach a starting salary of £30,000 by September 2022, however, this was pushed back as a pay freeze was imposed across much of the public sector.
In the submission, the DfE says the early career stage is particularly challenging for teachers, as they are “constantly on show and in demand from multiple directions in each lesson”.
The DfE has said that for teachers on the upper pay range and in leadership ranges, it proposes a 3 per cent pay award in 2022-23 followed by another 2 per cent the following year.
Unions criticise pay plans ‘for most teachers’
This has been strongly criticised by heads’ and teachers’ leaders.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: ”While we welcome the government’s recommendation to raise the starting salaries of teachers to £30,000 over the next two years, there are several aspects of this proposed settlement that are very unsatisfactory.
“First, it is regrettable that it comes in the shadow of the completely unnecessary imposition of a pay freeze this year, which has made recruitment and retention even harder.
“Second, it is unacceptable that the government is not only proposing to flatten the pay structure so that more experienced teachers and leaders will see a lower uplift but also not applying the same uplift to early career teachers in the London pay areas as for the rest of England.
“It does not seem to understand how fed up people are with the significant erosion of salaries that has taken place over the past decade, and that retaining our experienced staff is just as important as recruiting new teachers into the profession.”
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “The increases to starting pay that are proposed in the government’s evidence to the STRB must be accompanied by equivalent increases in pay for all teachers and school leaders.
“Imposing lower increases for more experienced teachers and headteachers is deeply unfair, will damage morale and will actually increase the retention problems already facing the profession.
“With inflation climbing ever higher, the government’s proposals would not only be divisive but would result in yet another significant real-terms pay cut for most teachers.”
The STRB will now make recommendations on teacher pay, having gathered evidence, but the final decision rests with the government.
Last month, Tes revealed that senior leadership or management style in schools was most likely to push teachers out of the profession.
In the academic year 2019-2020, initial teacher training (ITT) applications soared. However, government data shows these have now fallen below pre-pandemic levels.
