Teachers and school leaders need pay rises “significantly above” inflation over the next five years to restore pay to 2010 levels and “repair the damage done to recruitment and retention”, unions have said.
Leadership unions ASCL and the NAHT and teaching unions the NEU, NASUWT and Community have issued a joint response to the government’s decision to accept the recommendation of a 5.5 per cent pay rise for this September.
The rise was announced by the new government in late July, and a formal consultation has run. Schools will receive around £1.2 billion in extra funding to cover the increase.
5.5% rise ‘first in a series of steps’ needed
In their response, all five unions welcomed the rise and funding.
But they said they were “clear that this must be just the first in a series of urgent steps to repair the damage to teacher pay, and therefore to the restore the ability of the profession to compete effectively in the graduate labour market”.
Schools “should not be expected to carry on trying to cope with the problems caused by policy failure and historic underinvestment”, they added.
Union leaders pointed out the government had a “mandate for change and this includes addressing the problems faced by teachers and school leaders”.
Last week, Phillipson issued the STRB’s remit letter for 2025, asking for recommendations on teacher pay “at the earliest point”.
The new government has pledged to bring the pay-setting process forward. Last year’s remit letter was issued just days before Christmas.
In the letter, the education secretary warned about the government’s dire financial situation – pointing to £22 billion of wider funding pressures.
She said the STRB should consider the “cost pressures that schools are already facing and may face over the year (and how they affect individual schools)”, and the “need to ensure that any proposals are not too difficult or onerous for schools to implement”.
Pay rises must be above inflation
In their response, the unions pointed to this call, warning “recruitment and retention problems will not be solved without significant additional investment to reverse the pay cuts and reduce excessive and increasing workload”.
“Funding is a political choice for the government and the STRB should make the recommendations needed to solve the recruitment and retention crisis.”
They claimed that, even after this year’s pay uplift, “teacher and school leader pay is likely to be more than 20 per cent lower in real terms than in 2010”.
However, this calculation is based on RPI inflation, not CPI, which is used by organisations such as the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies.
That said, the IfS has estimated that even after this year’s pay rise, pay of experienced teachers will be around 9 per cent lower in real-terms than in 2010, with earlier career teachers less affected because of recent large increases to starting salaries.
The unions said “we are clear that, to restore the pay lost in real terms and repair the damage done to recruitment and retention, future pay increases in this Parliament must be significantly above RPI inflation”.
They have not said exactly what pay rise they would want to see each year, as reaching parity with 2010 in real-terms would depend on inflation in the coming years.
CPI currently stands at 2.2 per cent, while RPI, which factors in things like mortgage interest and council tax, stands at 3.5 per cent.
‘Don’t constrain STRB with inadequate funding’
The unions warned they had seen remits “seek to constrain the STRB to making recommendations within an inadequate funding envelope”. They called for “objective analysis of the improvements needed”.
“We urge you to ask the STRB to review all of the relevant evidence and to assess all of the solutions needed, without requiring it to work within existing inadequate funding levels.
“It must then be for the government to secure the investment needed to fund the improvements we need to teacher and school leader pay and conditions.”
The government is also proceeding with plans announced by the last administration to remove a requirement to use performance-related pay.
‘Make minimum pay points mandatory’
The unions said this should be replaced by a “fair and transparent national pay structure based on the key principle of equal pay for work of equal value, which offers portability and fair pay progression”.
National minimum pay points “should be mandatory for all teachers and school leaders”.
Alongside “competitive pay levels, such a national pay structure would support recruitment, retention and mobility across the school system”.
They also said their organisations were opposed to targeted pay “on the basis of location, subject or phase”
“We think there are other non-pay mechanisms that could be used to support retention/recruitment in response to local circumstances, some of which might fit with the government’s objectives for decentralisation.”
They said they did not believe “that some teachers should receive additional payments because they are, for example, physicists as they undertake the same duties as all other teachers”.
Unions also want the government to scrap a clause in teachers’ pay and conditions which states they must “work such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher’s professional duties”.
