The Department for Education has been urged to “urgently” re-start negotiations with education unions and publish the independent pay review recommendations for teacher pay.
It comes after the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendation that teachers should receive a 6.5 per cent pay increase for 2023-24 was leaked over the weekend.
Today, all four education unions - the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the NAHT school leaders’ union and the NEU and NASUWT teaching unions - have written to the secretary of state for education, Gillian Keegan, calling for the government to formally publish the recently leaked pay recommendation made by the STRB and to urgently re-start negotiations in the dispute over teacher and leader pay, and the funding of pay awards.
In the letter, the unions said: “It is only right that we, and the profession, receive confirmation on the accuracy, or otherwise, of the STRB recommendation on next year’s pay award.”
The general secretaries of the four unions also called for Ms Keegan to confirm whether the 6.5 per cent recommendation will be accepted by the government and if it will be “fully funded for every school” and implemented from September.
The letter also confirmed that all four unions remain in dispute with the DfE over this year’s pay award and called for further discussions on workload and inspection.
All four education unions are expected to ballot members over strike action this term, with the NEU and the NAHT currently conducting their ballots.
The letter states: “We continue to believe that progress on non-pay matters is vital if there is to be any chance of a halt in the precipitous decline in the number of graduates applying for teacher training and the increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession prematurely. The two, combined, are an escalating and imminent threat to the quality of education that schools are able to provide.”
The unions told Ms Keegan that there was still time to make progress and resolve the disputes: “The longer these discussions are delayed, the more difficult it will be to come to a successful resolution, which must, we are sure, be an aim we are all able to commit to.”
After a period of intensive talks in March, the DfE made all four teaching unions the offer of a £1,000 non-consolidated payment for 2022-23 and an average 4.5 per cent rise for 2023-24.
But school leaders voiced concerns about the affordability of the government offer after it was revealed that just 0.5 per cent of the overall 4.5 per cent pay award for next year, plus the £1,000 one-off payment for this year, would come through new funding.
On Sunday, following the leaking of the recommendations of the STRB, Geoff Barton, general secretary of ASCL, said that the 6.5 per cent figure was “only one half of the equation” and the “other crucial factor is that any pay award is fully funded by the government at an individual school level, so that every school has enough money to be able to afford the costs of paying their teachers without having to make cuts to education provision”.
A DfE spokesperson said: “As part of the normal process, the independent STRB has submitted its recommendations to government on teacher pay for 2023-24.
“We will be considering the recommendations and will publish our response in the usual way.”
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