Published this week, Bridget Phillipson’s remit letter to the School Teachers’ Review Body is astonishing, and not just in comparison to those of previous incumbents. It is evidence of someone who is on top of her brief and set on genuine change.
Among the issues the letter raises are three on which WomenEd has campaigned since 2015. They are inter-related, but let’s take each in turn.
Closing the pay gap
First, and most obviously, pay overall is a key issue, and especially for women.
In Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Education: A Leadership Imperative (2022), the collaboration between ASCL, NAHT, nga and WomenEd undoubtedly established two facts: there is a gender pay gap for women leaders in schools and trusts, and it increases each year.
The Department of Education’s advice in the 2022 School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) cited this report when it stated that ‘during the period from 2010 to 2020, there was a pay gap between male and female teachers once leadership grades were included in the analysis’.
I appreciate that funding is tight. However, clear signals about reducing the pernicious gender pay gap in schools in the next STPCD will give women leaders faith that they should stay and can progress in the profession.
Encouragingly, the first among a list of considerations Phillipson has set before the STRB is the potential equalities impacts of their recommendations. Meanwhile, her focus on raising the status of the profession and improving recruitment and retention can only be positive.
Equitable conditions
Next, and perhaps most notably, Phillipson specifically asks the STRB for “an assessment of any changes to flexibilities around TLR payments, concerning the existing pro-rata rule”.
This pro-rata rule means that part-time colleagues who take on a Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) – the majority of whom are women – are regularly expected to carry out the full workload of a TLR while being paid less than a full-time colleague with the same responsibility.
In 2023, Flex Teach Talent conducted a poll asking how part-time TLRs worked: 54 per cent said they were responsible for the whole role but for only a proportion of the pay.This has been a contributory factor to the sector’s gender pay gap and hindered the career progression of too many women.
As part of the DfE’s Flexible Working Advisory Group, we have continually raised this inequity, which stems from wording in the STPCD. Wales amended their equivalent document in 2022 to say TLR payments “may be determined to be paid in full” for part-time teachers, so we are certainly overdue a change.
Equitable pay is a benefit in itself, but it would also increase flexibility in the school workforce in three key ways:
First, clarity would encourage more schools to offer TLRs to part-time staff.
Second, more colleagues would be able to take on part-time or flexible roles.
And third, more women, mothers, older teachers and those with health issues would be able to continue their career and leadership development rather than to become part of the largest group leaving schools workforce.
Protected Characteristics
Finally, Phillipson references the need for more frequent and detailed equality, diversity and inclusion data at a national level, committing to open and transparent “publication of pay and progression data by protected characteristics”. This is certainly refreshing, and very welcome.
The gender pay gap report cited above also calls for data on pay for global-majority educators, so including all protected characteristics would be significant. Age, pregnancy, maternity, marital status and sex all remain determinants of place and success in the workplace for every woman.
Teaching, where women make up 75 per cent of the workforce, is no different. Actions to increase representation of women, attract and keep teachers from diverse backgrounds, implement flexible working and reduce pay gaps are crucial to solving the recruitment and retention crisis.
There is a great deal of work to do to. But letters like this week’s from Bridget Phillipson give hope that the work of change has indeed begun.
Disruptive Women: A WomenEd Guide to Equitable Action in Education is published this month by Corwin
