Independent pay review body recommends 6.5% pay rise for teachers

[noblegiraffe]

In recognition of the terrible state of teacher recruitment and retention, and against the government input that suggested teachers should get 3%, the teachers' independent pay review body has recommended a 6.5% pay rise for teachers from September.

This is far higher than the 4.5% offered to teachers by the government as a result of recent strikes, and which was rejected by all teaching unions.

After that offer was rejected, Gillian Keegan said that the matter now rested with the independent pay review body.

Now that they have made a far higher recommendation, will the government accept it? The Treasury will be absolutely furious if they are asked to shell out more money for schools, and they have argued that a higher pay offer would fuel inflation - teachers getting 6.5% would also bolster strike action in other public sector jobs.

If the government do accept it then given that they made a lot of fuss about the 4.5% offer being funded although only 0.5% was new money, they would be hard pressed to argue that they shouldn't at least fund the extra 2% with new money.

All four teaching unions are currently balloting for strike action in an argument about whether the 4.5% offer was affordable to schools (even the government admitted that many schools couldn't afford it), so will strikes continue if the government accept the 6.5% recommendation but only fund 2.5% with new money?

And would teachers accept 6.5% next year but nothing extra for this year?

Cat among the pigeons.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/75a3316c-f735-11ed-8aec-1014d109ef78?shareToken=b7505a1ee17a27ba5362b0c1f5a12f89

Crying that is what a school leader is proposing. I imagine that they would very much prefer to have teachers teaching in classrooms.

Teaching in halls is what they do for drama and PE, so concerns about assemblies or whatever will have already been dealt with here.

Nillynomates, ask your rep about the hardship fund?

Are there enough large spaces in schools for combined classes? I know for a fact that many classrooms in my son's school (built during Gove years) barely fit 30 plus the teacher.
His school seem to be constantly advertising for science teachers and you can't make a science lab bigger.

I like the notion that anyone would care about the niceties of whether a teaching space is 'acoustically challenging'. We have had kids in rooms that don't even have desks, never mind ensuring the acoustics are Albert Hall standard!

Mary Bousted of the NEU has reported on twitter that the government are "very, very unhappy" about this recommendation being leaked. Excellent news.

There are plenty of economists who don't agree that pay rises fuel inflation. Just not the ones the government listens to, or wants you to hear.

One wonders, if public sector pay rises fuel inflation, how inflation is so high now after 13 years of public sector pay cuts?

It's like there's something else involved.

Hopefully the 6.5% will be implemented, although wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a subsequent pay freeze.

I think there’s a low birth rate from 2018 onwards (iirc) will take a while to hit secondary schools though.

Problem with the ‘do you want your kids to have a teacher’ argument is it’s only really secondary maths and some science subjects. Many other subjects / stages have a surplus of teachers.

The idea that public sector (and other) pay rises fuel inflation is just another economic theory. It isn't a universal gospel truth and gold plated certainty - that's just what the peddlers of austerity politics want you to believe.

They really don't. The only secondary subjects that are on track to hit the government's own trainee recruitment targets for September are History, PE and Classics.

Primary teaching will also fail to meet its target.

Public sector pay rises don’t cause inflation. Private sector one do but public sector ones don’t cause an increase in no costs for the consumer. They also result in an increase in tax income for the government and depending on the income level involved could result in lower welfare payments e.g. UC.

Science isn't always taught in a lab anymore ... barely any money for practicals, the rest can be taught in a normal classroom

Here's the data for @Intotheriver

So, if you're worried about your kid not having a teacher, you need to be worried about practically every subject and stage.

That is entirely untrue.

Good. I hope we get it. Surely they have to accept this and fully fund it as its from the independent review body.

We are in a good primary school in a nice area and can’t get teachers-we have several vacancies for September that nobody is applying to. I think it’s naive to think this is just a maths/science teacher any more.

The head is talking about using a TA (would be saying they are an HLTA which means they get an extra pound an hour, but they have no additional qualifications and haven’t been called an HLTA up until this point!) and supply teachers together as a ‘jobshare’.

The thing is, anyone who says “well they can’t do X, Y and Z because…” is nearly always wrong because when it comes to schools, you HAVE to have the certain number of students in the school and they HAVE to have a certain amount of hours of teaching and so everything else - everything - takes a back seat. Hence during covid - “they can’t make people work in unheated rooms with windows open” - yes they can! Can’t teach maths to 60 kids in the hall? I mean, in the sense that you can’t have a meaningful, well-organised maths lesson to 60 kids in a hall that is true. But you can sit 60 kids on the floor with a worksheet/watching a YouTube video on the projector and so that is what will sometime happen. Can’t have TAs/cover supervisors having responsibility not just for looking after a class but being in charge of them - again, no you can’t if you want them to be properly taught but if you desperately need an adult in the room then yeah you can.

And so stuff experienced teachers like myself might have thought you’d never seen becomes utterly commonplace and even expected. A level classes of 25+, kids who’ve never had a subject specialist in your subject until they reach sixth form (and maybe not even then), unqualified staff used left, right and centre to fill gaps…these things don’t even raise an eyebrow now. They would have been unthinkable when I started 20 years ago.

Even if 'it's only maths' were true, that's quite a take.

Maths, after all, isn't important, I guess??

For now. My large primary is losing 10 temp support staff at the end of this year. All down to budget cuts.

Not really the point but I’m surprised pay varies so much. HLTAs earn 3 pound an hour more than a TA in my school.

😂

They absolutely don't want to accept this and in no way do the government want to fund it.

So what they're going to do about it is absolutely fascinating.

Are they recommending 6.5% for all teachers or is it skewed towards new teachers with experienced teachers getting a lot less, like previously?

NASUWT here - no ballot has arrived yet.

Sorry if I sound ignorant but from a lot of the threads on here ... the main issue seems to be workload, rather than pay?
Many people go into teaching because the hours are family friendly on paper but when you count marking, paperwork etc you have teachers working 60 hour weeks?
Surely the solution is to reduce the workload, rather than increase pay as a first step?

No idea, the figure was leaked, the report isn't public.