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

As people have said it must be expensive to use supply/bank staff and to have a high staff turn over so it may be financially more stable to look at pay to maintain current staff.

Depends on whether they are covered by the independent pay review body that recommended 5.5%? I've no idea.

Maybe get rid of academy trusts and paying ceos six figure salaries., oh and all the "head office" background staff who don't actually do anything worthwhile.. instant cash pot!

Schools cannot and should not be run like businesses because they are not.

Just to point out, Band 2 NHS staff do not get pay progression. Only Band 3 and up get this. So staff in the NHS on (pretty much) minimum wage remain on this.

@Mammyloveswine but that has been the direction of travel. No-one will take on the responsibility of a MAT without being paid a reasonable salary.

Schools are dealing with millions of pounds, someone has to have a grasp of the finances.

But we don't need to have expensive fancy training days! With branded notebooks and stationary and bunting.

Do we need a central office for 6 schools? Or can the business manager be placed at one and meetings happen at different schools within a 4 mile radius? Or virtually via teams or google meet?

Do schools need an "executive head" AND a head of school? Or job share headteachers each on 0.6 contracts instead of 0.5?

Savings can so easily be made!!! It's not rocket science!

Kier ,Angela and annielise were very vocal about NHS pay rise previously so fingers crossed

See, I doubt that will happen. Schools take on PGCEs (regardless of the ability of their staff to train them up) en masse in the hope to recruit the most able, or even those still breathing, at the end of it.

Often, MAT flagship schools will cream off the best of the lot straight out of training.

See also: millefeuille management structures.

When I first started teaching, schools had a Head and maybe two Deputy Heads, one academic and one pastoral (who would double up as DSL and/or SENCO).

Now schools have a Head, four Deputies and maybe half a dozen Assistant Heads with ridiculous titles like "Assistant Head in charge of Middle School Co-Curricular" or "Assistant Head in charge of Lower School Enrichment" or, yep, we have at my school an assistant head of Diversity and Inclusion.

Their only, only function is to make more work for ordinary class teachers. That's it. All they do is make more work for us to do, and they're paid substantially extra for it, and the kids don't benefit measurably at all.

@Mumoftwo1316 indeed!

Really? I find that fascinating and it makes sense but it's not my experience in primary at all. Many years there are no resignations so no recruitment needed. I've always worked with heads who have taken trainees because it's 'the right thing to do'. I guess because a lot of primary headteachers are often those sorts of people. The other reason is it is another warm body in the classroom for reading groups and the like. But where teachers used to happily go along with it and have a 30 minute meeting once a week with the trainee, lots of teachers don't have the capacity (or goodwill) for that any more.

Completely agree-this is my experience in Primary. We had a student a couple of years ago and it nearly finished our deputy (who was mentoring) off. It was hours and hours of extra work in her own time and she threatened to leave if she had to go through it again. We haven’t had a student since.

1.5 hours of expert mentoring required per week now.

MATs can't just take on trainees without suitable mentors.

There’s a massive chunk of change coming from the private school set isn’t there? That should pay something towards it?

That's already been allocated to other things like breakfast clubs.

They can and they do. My last two places, I had to fight for weeks in one case, and for months in another to get protected time for those expert meetings. One of the two places decided my protected time was after school because they wouldn't fit it into the regular timetable.

But as a TLR holder, and later a Lead Practitioner, it was just part of my pay without the actual time afforded, and it was expected I'd do the training in my own time, too. There was zero regard for my willingness to do the job or my lack of time; it was simply decided I was the person to do it. Thank god for the ability to play training videos on double speed.

I haven't worked in a secondary school that hasn't done similar, at least in core subjects, for many years - be that for SCITT, PGCE, School direct or ECT mentoring. I have known colleagues barely out of their own ECT years be used to mentor.

Band 2 NHS is currently 1p more than min wage so we'll def need a raise of some kind by next April. I wonder how much they'll put the min wage up next year.