Five teaching and school staff unions have issued a call to the education secretary to set out “urgent proposals” to fix teacher and school leader pay erosion.
In a letter sent to Gillian Keegan today, the unions set out how the pay increase of 6.5 per cent from September 2023 must be “only the first step” to repair the “damage to teacher pay” since 2010.
The letter was sent by the NAHT school leaders’ unions and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), and teaching unions the NEU, the NASUWT and Community, to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in England and Gillian Keegan today, alongside a separate call for the government to urgently replace performance-related pay (PRP).
In July, the Department for Education announced that it would award teachers and leaders a 6.5 per cent pay rise from this month, with unions later accepting the offer.
The rise was almost double the rise the DfE had originally proposed in February (3.5 per cent), but was in line with the recommendations from the STRB, and lower than the “fully funded, inflation-plus pay increase” demanded by teaching unions.
In today’s letter to Ms Keegan, the unions said that they welcomed the STRB’s recognition that evidence of the decline of teachers’ and school leaders’ pay in real and relative terms “is unquestionably a key cause of the ongoing supply crisis”.
In its most recent report, the STRB claimed that a failure to invest to “proactively manage the worsening recruitment position and declining competitiveness of teacher pay” would impact the quality of education.
The unions claim that it is clear from government submissions to the STRB that it has failed to “grasp and tackle this root cause of under-recruitment, and teacher and leader wastage”.
“We are therefore absolutely clear that the pay increase for September 2023 must be only the first step in a programme of urgent steps to repair the damage to teacher pay caused by government political choices since 2010,” the unions write.
They add that the “anger” that drove the 2023 disputes with the government over pay “will remain until the damage done to teacher and school leader pay is repaired”.
The letter emphasises that it is clear that “the threats to the competitive position of teaching remain and are set to intensify”, and pinpoints the deterioration of teacher pay against other graduate professions and pay cuts against inflation as “critical issues”.
PRP should be replaced ‘urgently’
The unions have also sent Ms Keegan a separate letter today calling on the government to immediately remove the obligation on schools to operate performance-related pay progression.
The letter calls on the government to “urgently replace PRP” with fair pay progression and a fair national pay structure “to recognise experience and expertise”.
The STRB recommended earlier this year that “the existing obligation on schools to operate PRP progression should be withdrawn, pending further work”.
PRP aims to create a direct link between teacher pay and performance. Submissions to the STRB in past years have raised concerns over PRP creating “significant equalities concerns”.
