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

This just isn't true - I need a computer science teacher and a French teacher... Not one application for either post. As of September I have no one to teach those timetables...

I feel like if there is only so much money available, rather than putting it all into pay rises, some of it would be better diverted to increasing SN education.

The teachers I know who have left talked about behavior and workload issues as their reasons for quitting, not pay, and said that inclusion has been taken way too far, as their jobs are impossible in part due to kids being kept in mainstream who really really cannot cope there.

The independent pay review body seems to think that pay is also an issue, otherwise they wouldn't have overridden the government recommendation.

The government pay offer of 4.5% which was rejected by the teaching unions also came with the offer of a workload taskforce to work towards reducing teacher workload by 5 hours per week. It is unclear what will happen there as the government appears to recognise that workload is an issue, but seems to think things like task forces to reduce it are presents to the unions rather than the serious work of government.

The teachers I know who have left talked about behavior and workload issues as their reasons for quitting, not pay

But recruitment is at a disastrous low, and pay definitely feeds into that.

It isn't just workload.
It isn't just pay.

It's this government's refusal to fund education properly. They refuse to acknowledge that the costs schools incur for energy have skyrocketed. There are schools in the UK that are so decrepit they are dangerous and should be condemned, but there is no funding for safe, functional buildings. There is no money for the staff needed to provide the support children with SEN need to keep them in school and learning. There is no money for equipment. Education funding has been gutted by the Tories in every aspect, but legally strikes are only allowed to be about pay. People need to read more widely and understand what is really going on.

I can't find the 2023 report - not sure if journalists get an advance copy, but looking at the blurb from previous years pay seems to be a major focus, and 'teacher recruitment' secondary.

They're both inextricably linked though. Presumably teachers leaving = better pay/conditions elsewhere.

Controlling for salary => there are loads of jobs paying a teacher wage with better working conditions, and even WFH.

There's a distinct lack of term-time only job however... which finish with the school day, which is the deal people THINK they get.

When people say they are underpaid - is it for the job they're doing, or the job they 'should' be doing?

Ultimately I think teachers should get a pay rise, but the amount needed to stop them leaving/deterring new joiners under current conditions would be too much. So even 6.5% won't help.

Surely the solution is to reduce the workload, rather than increase pay as a first step?

I would welcome this but there seems to be little genuine interest from anyone who actually has the power to make changes. I expect the ‘workload’ taskforce will suggest nuggets like, ‘just work smarter not harder’ and tell individual schools to use AI or pay into an expensive government-backed whole-school subscription to save time with planning, but it will be of little actual help.

For primary, I’d like to see free downloadable QCA-style units of work on the government website like we used to have.

I’d also like to see free downloadable phonics schemes like Letters and Sounds, rather than telling us that scheme was no good any more, and introducing a list of state-sanctioned programs which you can choose from instead-all of which cost thousands of pounds for each school (and your whole reading book scheme had to be changed to match it!). The list can change as well, so if you spend £6k on something which is then removed from the list, you are stuffed.

But free things like this don’t make any money for the government’s friends, so they won’t happen.

If only the teachers showed as much enthusiasm in the classroom as they do on the picket line.
😉😁😁

Reducing workload by 5 hours a week is just laughable.
@pointythings yes, the money should be going into other thing that enable teachers to do their jobs.

I suspect a lot of people made a lot of money out of L&S being scrapped. I don’t think it was so bad that its issues weren’t fixable.

Ultimately I think teachers should get a pay rise, but the amount needed to stop them leaving/deterring new joiners under current conditions would be too much. So even 6.5% won't help.

I think you are right, teacher recruitment for next year is so disastrous that there needs to be massive change to turn it around, particularly as the increasingly dire lack of teachers will create more workload for current teachers and lead to even more leaving.

However, the government have said that teachers are wrong to strike over pay, they said that 4.5% was a reasonable offer, so to have their own pay review body tell them that they are wrong is quite satisfying.

But one of the things creating workload is a lack of teachers.

I agree-we thought it was good.

Nothing is freely available-everything seems to require individual schools paying out huge amounts of money for the same things-White Rose maths, new phonics schemes, phonics play, Twinkl subscriptions, online PE schemes etc etc

It’s all done in the name of increasing choice for schools, but all it means is that we can’t afford the basics and means there are also people out there making a LOT of money out of schools. Having a central freely available bank of quality evidence-based resources that teachers can download/adapt/use how they want to, would be so much better. But that doesn’t make anyone any money, so won’t be introduced any time soon.

Meanwhile WTF is Gillian Keegan doing? Where is she?

Meanwhile WTF is Gillian Keegan doing? Where is she?

Japan. G7 Education Ministers meeting. I'm not sure what she'd have to contribute.

Not ignorant at all. I was a teacher for many years and definitely left for workload reasons. Honestly I wasn’t dissatisfied with my pay and the pension scheme was good plus good sick pay etc.

What made me fed up with the job was the constantly increasing demands of being expected to do extra (pointless) admin tasks, not being able to buy necessary resources due to budget cuts and losing support staff which meant I’d also have to do a lot of their role.

Being paid more wouldn’t have solved these issues, I would still have found it impossible even with the sweetener of a bit of extra money each month.

Surely it's not just about the current pay as to why there are not enough teachers though.

I would have thought the costs of university could be prohibitive so many who may want to train as well???

My daughter wants to be a high school teacher, we can't afford uni for her. So she is looking at teaching apprenticeships, or local uni possibly.

My friend is a HoY, Head of dept and teaches (obviously) and she says pay isn't the issue, convincing her A-Level students that teaching is a worthwhile career and not as awful as Twitter and the media would have you believe is the issue. They're hearing its a shit job, they don't care if it pays £100k, they don't want to do a job they keep being told is awful.

But it'll be awful until you tempt in more student teachers and salary is a small part of that. Workload won't improve until you can encourage kids into teaching. It's a vicious circle.

It makes total sense if you look at what state schools were set up to do, combined with who the tories are.

Tories are the grandchildren of Victorian tories. The people who wanted workhouses. Who opposed the NHS, universal suffrage, or indeed anything that improved the lot of the common man and made it possible for poor people to take an interest in how things are run. That took them out of survival mode. These are essentially the same people, raised the same way, just with smartphones and internet.

State schools were set up to provide a workforce that better met the needs of the wealthy elite. What was needed at the time was literacy, numeracy, and compliance. Look at the majority of entry level jobs now - what's needed? The same.

You can't run a country keeping yourself in charge if the masses have been given the tools to overthrow you and the mental space to see why that would benefit them.

It all works well for the people at the top. It's not broken from their perspective.

But how do you get them to stay in teaching if you’ve bugged up teaching and they get into their first placement or first job and discover all the stuff you haven’t been talking about.

Workload isn’t just going to be sorted by filling current vacancies. You either need to overstaff so there’s more non contact time or reduce the amount of work that has to be done.

I agree with this. Fully funding it is central. The primary school where I work is massively in deficit already and we are struggling to recruit teachers and TAs. Something has got change otherwise things are going to get even worse.

My friend is a HoY, Head of dept and teaches (obviously) and she says pay isn't the issue, convincing her A-Level students that teaching is a worthwhile career and not as awful as Twitter and the media would have you believe is the issue. They're hearing its a shit job, they don't care if it pays £100k, they don't want to do a job they keep being told is awful.

You seem to think that it's 'not as awful as Twitter and the media would have you believe' and yet a significant proportion of those who do go into teaching despite being told it's awful, and therefore you would think would be prepared for the reality, end up leaving within 5 years.

It's not 'talking down the profession' that's the issue.

This is also true. There is research to suggest that increasing public sector pay doesn't increase inflation in the same way increasing private sector pay as they aren't selling thing which they need to increase the price of.

It's all okay arguing that increasing teacher's salaries is worth doing despite contributing towards inflation.

But you really do have to be truly dense to argue that increasing wages doesn't contribute to inflation.

It does no favours to your agenda (however noble) if you spout idiocy on the same level as a flat-earther!

Eh? Where did I say anything about it being government money?

By what mechanism and are you more qualified than most economists and the LSE of you are going to call other posters dense.

I'll think you'll find a lot of public sector jobs do not enjoy the perks they once had. A lot of private sector vacancies are offering more money, more flexibility and good benefits and that is why people are leaving in droves.