School leaders are calling for a “double digit” pay rise for teachers days after the government said pay awards should “return to a more sustainable level”.
The NAHT school leaders’ union said new analysis shows that England currently has the highest number of unfilled teaching posts in over a decade, and one in seven schools in England have reported at least one vacancy.
At least a 10 per cent increase in all teaching salaries is needed to counter the “recruitment and retention crisis”, and the uplift must be higher than average pay settlements in other industries across the country, the NAHT said in its evidence submitted to the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), which makes pay recommendations in England.
Last week the government told the STRB that pay rises in 2022 and last July had been given during “two unprecedented years”, and that pay awards should now “return to a more sustainable level”.
The DfE’s submission to the STRB came after Tes revealed that the government would miss its first deadline in negotiations over this year’s teacher pay deal, despite pledging to ensure that talks stick to schedule following teacher strikes last year.
Teacher pay rise ‘must be above inflation’
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.
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman said the union’s evidence shows “the real-life impact of the government’s neglect of teaching staff over the last decade”.
“It could not be clearer that teachers and school leaders are reacting to eroded salaries and the cost-of-living crisis, as well as increasing workload, pressure and lack of wellbeing, and are leaving the profession,” he said.
Mr Whiteman added that the government needed “to send a clear signal to the workforce that change is coming - that starts with an urgent double digit pay uplift”.
Vacancies more than doubled between 2020 and 2022, from 1,098 to 2,334, NAHT analysis of DfE data shows .
And the NAHT discovered that one in four secondary schools have reported a vacant or temporary role.
Over half of schools in the outer boroughs of London had a job available.
The NAHT said it was calling for the fully funded double digit pay rise to retain and attract new staff by making teaching a more “competitive” profession in the job market.
It also aims to protect the real-terms value of salaries from future inflation, and move towards restoring teachers’ pay, which it says has “eroded” since 2010 because of uplifts that fell below inflation.
As well as superseding settlements across the whole economy, the teacher pay rise must be more than 7.3 per cent, which was the rate of inflation in 2023 recorded by the Consumer Price Index, the NAHT said.
Last July the government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5 per cent increase for teachers in England.
In 2022 the government announced a 5 per cent pay rise for experienced teachers, with the starting salary outside London rising by 8.9 per cent.
The NAHT represents more than 37,500 headteachers, executive heads, chief executives, deputy and assistant heads, vice-principals and school business leaders across the UK education sector.
A Department for Education spokesperson said that the government had delivered on its manifesto commitment to give every new teacher a starting salary of at least £30,000, and had delivered a 6.5 per cent pay award for this year.
