Union leaders are demanding to know whether schools will have to wait until after the summer holidays for a government decision on teachers’ pay.
The heads of three major teaching unions have written to education secretary Damian Hinds to express dismay that no announcement has been made as schools break up for the summer.
They also fear that if no decision is announced by Tuesday then school leaders will be forced to wait until September.
“We want to express our dismay at the continuing lack of a decision over teachers’ pay,” the letter from the Association of School and College Leaders, the NAHT headteachers’ union and the NEU teaching union general secretaries reads.
“As you are aware, today is the last day of the school term for most. In fact, schools in some areas finished term last week.
“This means that schools and teachers will have begun the summer holidays with no idea of the pay award that is supposed to be operative from September, and with headteachers having had no opportunity to prepare anything other than notional budgets.”
And the union leaders fear the situation could become even worse. “We are concerned that the House of Commons rises next Tuesday for the summer recess,” their letter says.
“If this happens without a pay announcement, we want to ask whether this will mean no decision will be forthcoming during the recess and that the earliest we will be able to expect anything is the beginning of September?
“This would, of course, remove the opportunity for any preparatory work before the start of the new term.”
When Tes asked the Department for Education the same question, a spokesperson would only say that the pay announcement would be made “in due course”.
The school sector has been waiting for weeks for the DfE to announce and respond to the findings of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations on pay for the next academic year.
The STRB is expected to recommend a pay rise but there are mounting concerns about whether this will be funded.
It is understood that the DfE is battling with the Treasury over how a pay rise will be paid for.
Earlier this week, ASCL’s general secretary Geoff Barton told Tes that an unfunded pay rise would force schools to set deficit budgets and risk them becoming insolvent.
Now Mr Barton, Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the NAHT and the joint general secretaries of the NEU, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, have written to Hinds demanding answers.
Their letter says the delay “would be particularly problematic at any time, but is especially so given the significant financial pressures under which they are operating as a result of real-term cuts to school funding”.
The DfE has said that it is considering the STRB recommendation and will make an announcement in due course.
Six weeks ago, schools minister Nick Gibb said that a decision on the STRB recommendation would be published as soon as possible.
