Responding to the press release and report from the TaxPayers’
Alliance on teachers’ pay and school funding, Geoff Barton,
General Secretary of the Association of School and College
Leaders, said:
“It is important that the public realises that teachers’ pay has
fallen well behind inflation because it has been capped or
frozen since 2010 and this has led to salary levels falling in
real terms. This is part of the reason that we have a teacher
recruitment and retention crisis in our schools.
“The highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that
schools are facing real-terms cuts of almost 5% over four years
to 2019, and that there has been a 15-20% real-terms cut in
funding for school sixth forms and further education since
2010.
“Young people’s education has been significantly affected as
schools have had to cut back on curriculum options, student
support services and enrichment activities.
“Teachers deserve to be fairly paid for their commitment and
professionalism, and we believe that the erosion of pay levels is
extremely unfair. The government must show it values teachers by
addressing this issue, and it must provide funding to schools so
they can afford the cost of a decent pay rise, rather than
landing them with yet another unfunded cost.”
