5.5% funded pay rise for teachers and binning performance related pay

[noblegiraffe]

Good news for teachers and schools as the govt accept the independent pay body review recommendation of a 5.5% pay rise across all pay points, and pledge enough extra funding to schools to pay for it.

In addition, they are scrapping performance related pay and allowing PPA to be taken at home.

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-07-29/hcws35

If it’s not performance related then how would it not be automatic?

Learning styles?
What are they?

If all lessons are easy to understand then the pupils will never learn to engage with complex ideas and work things out for themselves. For example a lesson that requires students to solve problems or work out a concept for themselves could be excellent even if some or all of the students do not leave the lesson fully understanding.

Same here but doubtful.

Seems Labour are getting all the good news stuff out there first. Reeves has already said the books are in a dire state, but obviously not too dire to pledge all this money to doctors and teachers. Let’s see what the bad news is. Teachers will get their increase, but then are the predicted increased taxes going to wipe out that rise within a couple of years? We will see…

Are MPs and ministers on performance related pay? There are a fair few from the last parliament who I would suggest would not be getting paid at all.

For example my former MP, tried to visit his constituency once a month if he had time.

@noblegiraffe they have, I still don't think it means they shouldn't have the opportunity for higher pay rises if they perform excellently in their roles. I don't know, maybe I'm too used to the private sector but that's how it works in my job. I can get the standard pay rise which most get or if I've had a great performance year I could get a higher pay rise. Things I've done to earn that previously are things like being a good mentor and helping others, volunteering to run cpd sessions, joining professional committees and running events, doing extra for clients above what's expected such as helping them out outside of usual office hours if they need it. Not sure what swimming classes have to do with anything.

Above and beyond is usually another way of slt expecting more and more to be completed outside of core working hours.

Teaching is already jam packed with feelings and suggestions of 'you should do more'.

Yes so in teaching the performance related pay is linked to the 'standard pay rise' that you're referring to. In teaching it would be very rare to get a higher pay rise anyway.
If you pass performance management, you go up the pay scale. When you get to the top, you don't get any pay rises.

One year I didn't get moved up the scale because one of my targets was to fully resource the new Spanish curriculum. Then they dropped Spanish from the curriculum model, so I fully resourced the French curriculum. This wasn't my target though, so I didn't get a pay rise that year. I think that was M3-M4.
That's the sort of crap I'd like to see done away with.

are things like being a good mentor

Well, at the moment, being an ECT/student mentor is expected to be done unpaid and in your own time which is leading schools to refuse to take students altogether as the workload is just too much on top of everything else. Adding some additional pay to mentors would be a good thing.

Will I have fewer lessons to teach, so that I can mentor someone, or plan and run cpd sessions?

@absquatulize I don't have less work to fit in those things, I do them as well as because I want to excel and I want to have higher pay. As I said, I know of a few teachers who'd like that opportunity, but obviously as shown on here not every teacher shares that view. Not everyone will want the same things.

How do those extra fit in my working hours, or are you suggesting that I should work unpaid?

I think perhaps you missed my earlier question, how many weekends have you worked unpaid this year?

@absquatulize I do some work most weekends but I haven't counted the number I've done full days as it's just part and parcel of my role. I've also not had a holiday in years that I haven't done some work in (including holidays abroad), and I only get 25 days leave anyway, and often work int he evenings too as again it's needed for my role. I choose to do the additional things on top of the extra work of my normal job because I want the higher pay rises, it's ok if others don't want to.

And the maximum you can be paid in your role is £46,000?

@absquatulize no it isn't, similar to teachers theres opportunities in my profession to earn higher salaries if someone is willing to take on more responsibilities and management roles. I chose to go for that in my company so earn a higher salary, others chose not to as they didn't want management roles and their pay isn't dissimilar to a standard teacher salary (but without the longer holidays and better pension). I have some friends who are teachers who chose to go for management roles and are earning similar to me as teachers. I think that's the same in lots of jobs that you can get higher salaries if you want to go down the management route but can get a bit stuck on the lower salaries if you don't. I'm not sure this is overly relevant to this thread though.

I think you are saying that only those in management in teaching should be needing to work in the evenings and at weekends.

I shall see how that goes next year.

That's really not what I said, and also not the experience in my own job. I'm not against sorting out teachers workloads though, I agree they are too high. As I said before I also support the teachers above inflation pay rise as pay is too low, it's just the performance pay rises I was questioning.

Yes, it should definitely be a paid role, or at the minimum have time allocated. They are really going to struggle to find placements for students next year.

But suggesting that it should be linked to a higher pay rise than other teachers is silly. Because you'd then just need to mentor a PGCE student for a year, or run the CPD session, bag the 'higher pay rise' and then put your feet up...they can't take the pay rise away from you! This is why we have TLRs. I don't think the PP understands how it works in teaching.

Running CPD and the other suggested 'above and beyond' stuff are the sorts of things an ambitious classroom teacher might do because they want to be considered for a promoted post.

I'd love to have more CPD on learning styles!

I'm sure I've still got my notes on it somewhere, along with Brain Gym and De Bono's Thinking Hats.

I have a colleague who still loves the hats.

Ha ha

Whaaat why not for FE?

Public sector workers have not had automatic increments and some now just get paid a flat rate for the job with no performance increases.

Scrapping performance related pay is well-understood in teaching to just mean ditching the policy Michael Gove introduced of schools being able to prevent teachers moving up the pay scale. Nothing more than that.