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

It seems to be increasingly obvious that jobs that require working out of the home, particularly graduate jobs, will need to have some sort of 'premium' attached to pay for that.

It seems that WFH is a massively attractive job perk.

Yes, but WHY are they leaving?
Again, appreciate that strikes are legally allowed to be only about pay, but since this has become a general discussion.
The sort of people who choose to go into teaching generally
a) value work/life balance.
b) love to teach.

From what I've read on here and see with my own eyes both of those things are dead in the water. Teachers spend most of their time on behaviour management, acting as prison guards/therapists/social workers/substitute parents rather than actually teaching.
And then they have all the other stuff like marking, lesson planning etc.

1. Decent pay is needed to attract and retain.
2. Teacher training should be funded. Then there’s no excuse for anyone who thinks it’s a cushy number to not jump onto a training course.
3. A normal working week is needed 8.15-4.15 and this means leaving the teachers to teach. Teach, mark and plan. Nothing else. Anything else needs to be paid as overtime or in classroom release time. Get rid of the 1265 hours nonsense. Just a normal contract with set working hours, sept working weeks, designated annual leave weeks and the others as unpaid weeks (teachers are only paid for the statutory minimum holidays so the contract should spell this out for the benefit of those who think teachers are paid for all 12 weeks).
4. Proper funding for SEN is needed.

I left. Not because my pay was rubbish. But because my pay was rubbish for the workload. Simple as that. I was paid enough to do the job many people think teachers do. I was not paid enough for the actual job I was doing. I was a good teacher and I enjoyed it. I’m paid a bit more in the private sector for doing an awful lot less now. I don’t have to deal with violent children (whilst trying to teach maths to 29 other children) amongst so very many other things that should not be part of the job.

I’ve just posted that my new job is slightly more pay than teaching. I should have added it’s WFH and flexible. Definitely a bigger draw for me over even the school holidays (during which I would work anyway!)

They have come in at half a percentage lower than my bet.

As a reminder, on top of the Teacher rise in September, the recent support staff increases were not funded in April.

Seeing as politicians always accept their large recommended pay rises they should most definitely agree to this.
There is a terrible recruitment problem with teachers; plus they find loads of things for the classroom out of their own pockets (rather than claim expenses like MPs). Also teachers perform an actual useful job to society whereas politicians just seem to be on it to line their, or their mate’s, pockets.

I left. Not because my pay was rubbish. But because my pay was rubbish for the workload.

Yep-it’s pay and workload together.

If the government think that (much of the pointless bollocks) teacher workload is essential and teachers should work 55/60 hours, then the pay should reflect that and be much higher.

If they don’t, then large amounts of (specific named) tasks should be culled.

news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-says-public-sector-pay-rises-will-fuel-inflation-economists-say-they-wont-12779761

www.ascl.org.uk/News/Blog/February-2023/It%E2%80%99s-time-to-end-the-myth-that-public-sector-pay-i

A couple of links about inflation.

Rishi, is that you?

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/does-public-sector-pay-drive-inflation/#:~:text=The%20correlation%20between%20public%20sector,true%20for%20private%20sector%20pay.

Here’s some more reading about public sector pay and inflation.

Must be area dependent. Definitely a surplus here - friend went for an interview for a primary teaching job and there were fourteen candidates, which is ridiculous but that’s another story.

Meanwhile my subject has surprisingly few vacancies for the time of year. Be interesting to see it broken down for location if anyone has that info.

I've tried and failed to find it for another thread - but have had little success.
From a common sense perspective it's not surprising.
In areas with few options higher than NMW a teacher's salary is excellent. This has changed a bit with remote working, but many jobs are still 'hybrid' rather than 'fully remote'.

Even somewhere like Manchester, 30K is an 'ok' salary enabling you to afford a family home with a partner on the same. 20 mins into the city by car/public transport.

But this is impossible in areas like London and the rest of the SE. Especially as you need to commute in every day, the uplift for London is a couple of grand a year and certainly not enough to afford houses which are at least 3 times more expensive than the rest of the England, generally speaking.

I know, but that’s not a new issue (I know you aren’t suggesting it is, just pondering out loud!) Since the early 2000s, London and the SE have been beyond an average teachers salary. I know London has its own pay scale but it doesn’t even begin to make up for the deficit. Then you have areas like Bucks, Cambridge, Surrey, which won’t have their own pay scales but are still crippling in housing costs.

Although housing costs are starting to be a bit of an issue everywhere. So maybe it will level up in time; who knows.

I’ll see how many jobs are out in my area now …

@Intotheriver
In the London schools I know the majority of teachers fall into 2 groups - those that commute in from outside London, and those who are 'subsidised' by their partners who earn the big London money.
The supply of both groups is finite.

So there are 1190 English teaching jobs in the whole of the uk at the moment. But loads and loads are ones asking for casual tutors and not ‘proper’ teaching posts.

London is 245, the rest of SE england 202. So 447 altogether, 133 of which are freelance tutor positions or similar. So school based English jobs are 314, and there are a lot of maternity covers in that. This is probably the peak time jobs wise as well, so not as many as I thought. Be interesting to compare to previous years but I don’t have the data.

How many schools have classrooms to accommodate 60 pupils?!
Bloody ridiculous suggestion
I know of some newer build schools where the classrooms are 2-3 classrooms but one of the walls is actually a folding panel divide so the room can be opened into one big space.

It's useful for training sessions or open evenings, but hearing this announcement makes me wonder whether someone somewhere could see that collapsing classes was going to become a reality as when open they can sit 60-90 students.

These pay rises have to be funded though. My large comprehensive school is in a relatively good financial state right now but we'll go bust in two years if the gov don't fund pay rises. I'm genuinely terrified that might happen. It's a way to pit headteacher's against staff as I can imagine the gov saying 'yes -have a pay rise' but heads saying 'sorry - there's no money'. I wouldn't put this kind of dirty tactic past the Tories!

I don't "think" anything, I'm just repeating what my friend has said.

I've got nothing against teachers, and think more pay and less workload is reasonable. But my friend has a point, workload won't decrease till there are more teachers. Scaring student teachers away won't help the cause.

5%-6% pay increase seems reasonable and in line with what most businesses are offering in the private sector too. I work for a not for profit and got 3%, but in real terms my pay is down by 13%. No chance I'd get 3% and I'm grateful for anything, but I also have a decent work life balance. I'm paid till 5pm and most days (not all) i do finish at 5pm and don't work weekends/evenings. So I do recognise the difference.

Maybe stop attacking people who are not the enemy, might be a good place to start. Just a thought

No chance I'd get 13%

I would love more ppa time at least 20 percent.

PE notoriously overrecruits. And yet we've just advertised 3 posts to no interest. It's not just maths anymore.

Maybe stop attacking people who are not the enemy, might be a good place to start. Just a thought

I disagreed with you. That is not an 'attack'.

I think more PPA would be a massive help.

In my ideal world, no lunch duties (I know, we shouldn’t be doing them anyway) no registration time or admin relating to that .

I sometimes wonder about parents evenings. I know parents like them but I don’t know that they are a particularly good use of time.

Are you in the North East? They're doing ok for teachers.

Rest of the country though...not so good.

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/revealed-what-are-vacancies-your-region

More PPA requires more staff