Independent pay review bodies recommend 5.5% pay rise for teachers and NHS

[noblegiraffe]

Well, this will be interesting.

There's no money available to fund a 5.5% teacher pay rise (1-2% was planned). The projected drop in pupil numbers has been downgraded from 6% to 3% so the wiggle room that would have brought is basically gone.

If the new Labour government don't honour the recommendations then they will be facing potential strike action.

https://x.com/steven_swinford/status/1814393887177200069?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

This is true- a symbiotic relationship. Hope labour change the terms of that relationship. Yes agreed- they might have walked into the middle of a shitshow bit they need to give HTs some clarity ASAP.

The same place they got the money for the Rwanda scheme maybe? Or what about the place where they got money for the Royal family's expenditures? From behind the sofa, which is where they find cash to pay MPs pay rises and vast expenses? Or how about that pot of money that is used to pay for the bloated House of Lords? There's always money somewhere to pay for all of the above. But when it comes to teachers, there's always an expectation that we should be martyrs.

This is a different government? 'They' cancelled the Rwanda scheme.

This. Retention is always cheaper, better and longer lasting than recruitment.

It costs a lot to train a new teacher, not just in terms of money but time and goodwill on the part of experienced teachers to mentor them. Then they overwhelmingly quit within 5 years.

Our schools are awash with inexperienced and underskilled teachers. We need to keep the skilled, experienced ones, for the sake of the children and the quality of their education. They might have higher salaries, but it's a false economy to keep churning through new recruits.

Every year from 1st April

What do people think will happen after Rachel Reeves’ comments this morning?

@Mumoftwo1316
Not to mention that because of the new framework for ITT all mentors need to complete 20 hours of training.

I've had students for the last few years but I've said no to 20 hours of (unpaid) training on top of the extra time and effort needed to mentor a student.

Surely they won't offer anything unfunded?
That would be an epic mistake.

@twinkletoesimnot
I'm not in teaching. Let me get this right. Your skills as an experienced teacher are needed or help train new teachers.
But in order to provide this, you are required to carry out 20 hours of training unpaid??

In many schools, training those teachers is also an unpaid role with no time allocated to do it. Meetings and coaching/feedback have to come out of your own time.

The amount of work and stress that my colleagues have had on their plate supporting ECTs in the last few years has been horrific and shocking.

@noblegiraffe
Good grief! I know in the NHS, health professionals often have students that they mentor but during work time. They usually have some training too but I believe that is during work time and therefore paid for. How on earth can they expect to overcome a shortage of teachers if the older generation of teachers are expected to take the hit in terms of money and time to train them?

I suspect that we will have a massive problem in September when PGCE training institutions realise that they are unable to find placements for their trainees.

@sleeptight1
Yes that's right.
And yes no extra time allowed. Mentor meetings are often after school or during a teacher's own PPA time.

I agree with you @noblegiraffe - we usually have 2 students every year. 3 across our small federation but there won't be any next year.

I also echo this.... wonder if it's because they accept unsuitable trainees just to get buns on seats and those £9000s for their course.

Anyway, don't want to derail the thread.... just another valuable contribution we make, that adds to our own workload for little benefit to ourselves.

I work for a big unitary local authority. There is money already set aside in the 2024-25 budget to pay a 5% rise in pay overall. Same in the budget for the academy school where I’m a governor. (All these finance documents are public, this info is freely available if you have a high enough boredom threshold to seek it out)

I would be hugely surprised if everyone hasn’t already budgeted for a 5% rise to the wage bill. And I’d put money on this new government stumping up the extra 0.5% as it’ll be a lot cheaper than industrial action in terms of overall impact on the national economy.

There are plenty of HTs on twitter saying that they haven't budgeted for 5%. I don't think people expected the independent pay review body to go against the conservative government when it specifically said that any pay rise above 1-2% would have to come from already stretched school budgets.

If I were the government, I’d be looking at all the money in the education budget that goes to pay the executives of all the academy trusts in the country, and calculating how that could be better used.

Even just bringing the executive pay back into local gov pay grading and scales would save serious amounts of money….

A lot of thr private schools pre empted this and gave staff 3%...

Is the government likely to make a decision on the pay rises and how they are to be funded before they break for the summer?

No.

They said a couple of weeks.

Or do you mean before government breaks for the summer, in which case, yes.

Will this include social workers etc?

Yes, that’s what I meant. Ok-thanks, will be interesting to see what happens.

Trusts I know have budgeted about 3%.

Didn’t RR say she would say something by end of July

Direction of travel for Trusts is to merge to make large Trusts which will reduce the number of CEOs. But the central costs in Trusts should really be more than the top slice and SLAs in state maintained schools. Problem is in areas where academisation is high the local councils don’t have the staff to provide the services they used to as all the personnel have transferred to Trusts