Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister have repeatedly said that austerity is over, but austerity is ended in deeds – not words.
The proposed unfunded 2.8 per cent pay increase for September 2025 for teachers in England, as set out in the government’s evidence to the school teachers’ review body (STRB), falls well short of the urgent action needed.
This government committed to breaking with the past. It promised to do so at the last general election. Yet Sir Keir Starmer is setting himself up to be the first Labour prime minister since James Callaghan to tell schools to make cuts. That won’t do.
Fourteen years of funding cuts have left education on the brink, with a deep and severe recruitment and retention crisis that is causing wholescale damage to education provision.
We have the highest primary class sizes in Europe. We have the highest secondary class sizes on record. There are, scandalously, a million pupils taught in classes of 31 or more. Seventy per cent of schools in England have less funding in real terms than in 2010.
Despite this, and with a straight face, government is saying that an insufficient pay award can be funded through existing budgets. They obfuscate by calling them ‘efficiencies’.
This is a nonsense. It is a narrative and choice of words worthy of Gavin Williamson, not of a secretary of state that has worked so hard to reset the relationship with the profession.
There are simply no more ‘efficiencies’ to be made without further damaging education provision There is not a headteacher, teacher or parent in England who does not realise the impact of swingeing cuts to school budgets.
Fewer subject choices. SEND and pastoral support cut. Teacher training targets missed year after year. Posts remaining unfilled for teachers and support staff. Building repairs left undone. Classroom facilities, books and materials for teachin – all cut.
On top of this complete and utter running down of our education system, headteachers are now expected to find money for a 2.8 per cent pay increase that the government is unwilling to fund. It is unsustainable.
There are simply no more efficiencies to be made
In July, when the government inherited the most recent STRB report, it did the right thing. It saw a recommendation of 5.5 per cent and accepted it. Ministers knew this meant nothing if it wasn’t funded, so they funded it.
In response, the profession was clear that this was the first step on a road to gradual recovery from over a decade of real-terms pay cuts. An unfunded and insufficient pay award, which they now propose for 2025/26, simply won’t fly.
There is the wealth in this country to ensure public sector staff are paid fairly, but this is a question of political will. Look at Scotland, where teachers in their sixth year earn £6,500 a year more than in England. And guess what; there isn’t a deep crisis in retention. Pay is unquestionably a key driver.
When Bridget Phillipson took office, she rightly committed to securing the best life chances for every child and to recruiting 6,500 new teachers. These are admirable aspirations and teachers, headteachers and support staff believed those words. Many will have voted accordingly.
But neither objective is achievable without properly investing in our schools, colleges and the workforce.
Teacher pay has been cut by over one-fifth in real terms since 2010, hitting teacher living standards and damaging the competitive position of teaching against other graduate professions.
Along with sky-high workload, the pay cuts have resulted in a devastating recruitment and retention crisis. Teacher shortages across the school system affect pupils and parents too. The effects are visible on the ground, and on a daily basis.
We need an above-inflation increase as part of a series of urgent steps to achieve the major pay correction needed to restore the pay lost over many years, and to tackle teacher shortages.
A 2.8 per cent increase is likely to be below inflation, and average wage growth is expected to be much higher, so this pay award would further undermine the competitiveness of teacher salaries when compared to other graduate professions.
It would make teaching and other public sector jobs increasingly unattractive and exacerbate recruitment and retention. This will only deepen the crisis in education.
Instead of continuing with failed Conservative austerity, the government must fully fund the pay increases that are desperately needed to value, recruit and retain teachers and school leaders.
Our members care deeply about the education of our children and young people. We will not stand idly by.
