Bridget Phillipson must amend the children’s wellbeing and schools bill to guarantee a restrictive “ceiling” is not placed on academy pay freedoms, sector leaders and MPs have warned.
The Confederation of School Trusts (CST) said extending “restrictive and prescriptive pay and conditions” to academies “might undermine schools’ and trusts’ ability to attract staff to schools serving disadvantaged communities and/or in need of turnaround”.
It comes as MPs prepare to scrutinise and amend the bill at a public committee, with hearings due to begin next week in Parliament.
Schools Week understands that several high-profile trust bosses are being lined up by the Conservatives to give evidence.
Much of the concern of trust leaders has centred on a move to subject academies to national pay and conditions for teachers via the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) process, which they fear will stop them paying above national scales.
Phillipson said this week that “all schools will have full flexibility to innovate with a floor and no ceiling”.
The education secretary added that she wanted “that innovation, that flexibility, that excellence – much of which we have seen within the academy system – I want to be available to all schools”.
Conflict between bill and minister comments
This is a departure from the wording of the bill, which is described as “allowing the secretary of state to determine academy teacher remuneration and conditions”.
“This will largely mirror the provisions that currently exist in the maintained school sector,” it added.
The CST welcomed the clarification, but cautioned: “As laid, the provisions do not reflect this direction of travel and will need to be amended.”
It is calling for an amendment to the draft laws to state that employers “should have regard” to any pay rules, rather than be “constrained by them”.
“This would mean flexible national frameworks which might protect a minimum pay threshold but would allow innovations in both pay and conditions that are responsive to local contexts.”
Labour is facing calls from other quarters to amend the bill, which does not at present explicitly guarantee there will be no “ceiling” on pay.
Currently, national pay scales also do have a maximum salary for different school roles and pay levels.
Government accused of ‘u-turn’
Shadow education secretary Laura Trott called the admission a “U-turn”, adding: “If that really is [Phillipson’s] intention, why does the bill not make that clear?”
Patrick Spencer, a former DfE adviser and now a Conservative MP, told Schools Week there was “no provision” for what Phillipson had introduced and “a huge amount of ambiguity because she is saying one thing while the bill says another”.
He added that “we need to see clarity because the drafting is not that comprehensive. They certainly do not use language of floors and ceilings. So my question is, are you going to amend the bill? Or are you going to amend the framework that governs the STRB?”
Tom Richmond, another former DfE adviser, said developments this week “underline how little clarity there has been about what problem the government is trying to solve”.
“The department is talking about wanting more ‘innovation’, but it is not clear what that means in practice or what issues are being caused by an apparent lack of innovation at present.”
Trusts want relaxation of curriculum requirement
The schools bill will also extend to academies a requirement to follow the national curriculum.
The CST instead suggested that a “high-level national framework that protects the ability of schools and trusts to deliver the ‘enacted’ curriculum in a flexible and responsive way, would not necessarily undermine or constrain the ability of schools and trusts to continue to innovate and become centres of curriculum excellence”.
The bill gives councils the power to direct academies to admit pupils, but the CST warned that, “while local authorities still maintain schools, they cannot reasonably operate in a regulatory space, such as directing providers to admit pupils”.
And a plan to give the Office of the School’s Adjudicator power to set schools’ capacity “places the adjudicator in a commissioning space”.
“We accept current arrangements are fractured: introducing the schools adjudicator worsens rather than improves this.”
The CST is also seeking legal advice about how the bill might be “improved” in its section granting the education secretary the power to direct academies to comply with their legal duties.
“We are concerned that the definitions of the ‘relevant duty’ and ‘relevant power’ of academies which will be subject to that direction making power are too broad and do not achieve that equivalence with maintained schools.”
