Teacher salaries will be “levelled up” to coincide with a rise of £6,000 in starting salaries for new teachers, education secretary Gavin Williamson has revealed.

As announced by the government last week, NQTs outside London will start on £30,000 per year from 2022 in a bid to make the teaching profession more attractive to graduates.

In an exclusive interview with Tes, Mr Williamson was asked whether this could lead to scenarios whereby a new teacher in their first year could be on more than a colleague who had been in the job for two or three years.

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But he said the salaries of classroom teachers further up the scale would also rise alongside that of NQTs in increments, which the School Teachers’ Review Body would be asked to decide upon.

Teacher pay increases

Mr Williamson said: “We’ll be writing to the pay review board [STRB], setting out what we’re hoping they’ll be able to come forward with in their recommendations.

“What we’ve asked them to do is look at teacher salaries in the round, because obviously you’re not going to be in a situation where you have a newly-qualified teacher getting paid more than someone who’s been teaching for two years. That is not going to happen. You will have a levelling up of the money that teachers will be paid.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said the increments further up the scale would be less than £6,000, adding “everybody will get more but the big lift will be at the bottom end”.

The spokesperson said the starting salary for new teachers in London could be around £36,000 from 2022, adding that research had shown that starting salaries were the main factor in attracting graduates.

Last week, the government announced a £7.1 billion extra funding package for schools between 2020 and 2023.