Five education unions have issued a joint call for a “fully-funded, inflation-plus and undifferentiated” pay increase for teachers today.
Writing to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the Community Trade Union, the NAHT school leaders’ union, and the NASUWT and NEU teaching unions said that the review body’s recommendations “must address the reality of pay cuts, sky-high workload and the recruitment and retention crisis”.
The unions have called on the STRB to reject “the government’s attempts to limit it to working within the existing inadequate school funding envelope”.
Addressing teacher workload
Last month the department’s submission to the STRB suggested that teachers’ pay rises should be lower than the past two years and return to “a more sustainable level” next year.
However, it did not spell out an explicit recommended pay rise percentage for 2024-25.
In today’s statement, the unions warned that the chancellor’s Spring Budget, which confirmed no additional funding for schools, will result in further cuts to pay, jobs and support for pupils.
The joint statement also called for significant improvements in workload for teachers. They add: “Repairing the damage to pay and conditions is essential to address teacher shortages so is in the interests of parents and pupils, as well as of teachers and school leaders.”
ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton said: “Fourteen years of pay erosion and workload pressures have caused an increasingly damaging teacher recruitment and retention crisis.
“Schools are often left struggling to put teachers in front of classes. The government must get a grip.”
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said: “Pay in schools has fallen off a cliff since 2010, and leaders are at their wits’ end trying to get the staff they need.
“The recruitment and retention crisis is fuelling a crushing workload - leaders are forced to make class sizes bigger, have no choice but to ask teachers to cover unfamiliar subjects and often have to cover lessons themselves.”
‘Country’s schools are in crisis’
NASUWT general secretary Dr Patrick Roach said: “The country’s schools are in crisis. There is a crisis of teacher supply and pay is a central factor.
”Unless and until the depth of this crisis is recognised, and a commitment made to use the pay mechanism to restore the status of teachers, schools will not be able to recruit the teachers and headteachers they need to meet the needs of all children and young people.”
NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “The evidence is clear - our education service needs urgent significant additional investment to secure a major correction in teacher pay and improvements to workload, so that we properly value teachers and school leaders and fix the recruitment and retention crisis.”
Teacher strikes
Last year, a dispute over pay led to the NEU holding a series of teacher strikes.
The NEU, NASUWT, ASCL and NAHT also announced their intention to coordinate future strike action as they prepared to hold ballots over pay.
The dispute with the unions was resolved when the Department for Education awarded teachers a 6.5 per cent pay rise from September 2023.
This was more than the DfE had originally proposed in February of 2023 (3.5 per cent) and was in line with recommendations from the STRB.
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