Teachers and schools are still waiting to hear what teacher pay rise will be awarded for 2024 and whether it will be fully-funded.
It means leaders will have had to set budgets based on their own estimate of what will happen to teacher pay from September, and staff will have begun their summer holiday without clarity on what they will be paid from next year.
But the government has promised a decision soon. Here is what schools need to know about the current situation.
1. How does the process work?
Every year, the government tasks the School Teachers’ Review Body with making recommendations on teacher pay. This process is kick-started when the education secretary sent the STRB its remit letter.
The government and unions then submit evidence to the STRB, and then it passes its report and recommendations back to government in the spring. A final decision is usually announced in July.
2. Aren’t things supposed to happen earlier?
Yes. Ministers had pledged to speed up the pay-setting process, with announcements having come right at the end of the summer term in recent years, throwing school budget-setting into turmoil.
But the STRB remit letter was sent just days before Christmas last year, and the DfE’s own evidence was submitted late.
The government then kicked the decision down the road when it called the election, though unions have pointed out that ministers could have published their decision before the poll was announced.
3. What have ministers said about timescales?
Bridget Phillipson, the new education secretary, told a webinar for school staff last week that there would be no decision on teacher pay before last Friday, the end of term for most schools.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BBC over the weekend that announcements on teacher pay will be made “later this month”, adding that sector workers “won’t have long to wait”.
4. How big is the recommendation likely to be?
The Times reported over the weekend that the STRB had recommended a pay rise of around 5.5 per cent, which it said was significantly more than the 3 per cent budgeted-for by the new government.
It is also much higher than the roughly 2 per cent rise that analysis by the previous government suggested would be affordable to schools, meaning ministers would need to find funding of at least £1 billion if they approved a 5.5 per cent rise.
5. What does the chancellor say?
Reeves was quizzed about the report of a 5.5 per cent recommendation by the BBC over the weekend.
She did not deny the figure, but said her team was “looking at those pay review body recommendations, doing the analysis”.
“We will work with public sector workers on that. And later this month, we will make announcements around public sector pay when we do that full analysis of the public finances and public spending.”
But she acknowledged there was a “cost to not settling, a cost of further industrial action, a cost in terms of the challenge we face in recruiting, retaining doctors and nurses and teachers as well. But we’ll do it in a proper way, and make sure that the sums add up.”
6. Public finances ‘a mess’
Reeves also told the BBC she would be “honest with people.I think people know that things are a mess”.
She also accused the Conservatives of “running away” from tough decisions, like that of teacher pay.
“The Conservative former education secretary, she had the pay review body recommendation for teachers on her desk when she was in office.
“She didn’t do anything about it. She didn’t publish it. She didn’t say how she was going to respond to it. They called an election. They didn’t make the tough decisions. They ran away from them. And now it’s up to us to fix it and to pick up the pieces.”
7. Could Reeves ignore STRB recommendation?
The chancellor was asked directly if she was willing to ignore the STRB recommendations. Doing so is unusual, but not unprecedented. The Conservative government did so in 2018.
In response, Reeves said “we’ll set that all out later this month”.
She added: “We are in a position where the previous government gave a mandate to the pay review bodies but they haven’t properly factored in the cost of it.
“That is what this review will be about, looking at the state of the public services, the state of the public finances. But there is also a cost of not settling.”
