Moved by
That this House regrets that the School Teachers’ Pay and
Conditions (England) Order 2021 (SI 2021/1101) represents a real
terms pay cut for the vast majority of teachers; further regrets
that it has been made following a consultation process which took
place over the summer holidays; notes that this created
significant problems for consultation and planning for schools;
and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to commit to holding future
consultations on the pay and employment conditions of teachers
who are employed in local authority-maintained schools in England
during term-time.
Relevant documents: 15th Report from the Secondary Legislation
Scrutiny Committee
(Lab)
My Lords, the wording of this regret Motion is self-explanatory.
When inflation is taken into account, this order amounts to a
reduction in pay for all but a very few teachers at the lowest
levels of the pay scale. Even there, the increase of £250 is
measured against the increase to the national minimum wage. Is
that really an appropriate yardstick of the respect which the
Government accord to our teachers? It would appear so.
Government policy on teacher pay since 2010 has created
significant problems, and the current policy—which is, in effect,
a pay freeze—will create further problems. Concerns on the key
pay issues for teachers are reflected across the profession, as
seen in the joint union response to the School Teachers’ Review
Body report, to which the STRB draws attention.
A month ago, the Chancellor’s spending review offered a historic
opportunity to demonstrate that this Government value education
and educators. Despite his rhetoric, he failed to do so, as does
this order.
The aspiration of “levelling up” is a worthy one but government
policy on education is achieving the opposite. As the Public
Accounts Committee noted in October, education funding policy is
actually driving resources away from areas with greater relative
need, and the spending review announcements will not address
those inequalities.
The Minister may have noticed that yesterday the Institute for
Fiscal Studies published a report which showed that the most
deprived fifth of secondary schools have seen their funding cut
by 14% in the decade to 2019 compared to a drop of 9% in the
least deprived. If the Minister, or indeed anyone else on behalf
of the Government, can offer a justification of those figures, I
am sure that I would not be alone in being very interested to
hear it. For what it is worth, the Institute for Fiscal Studies
also says in its report that a teacher’s starting salary of
£30,000 and a 3% increase for teachers across the board are
“affordable”.
It was with some incredulity that I and many others heard the
Chancellor boast in the spending review about restoring school
spending to 2010 levels—when Labour was in government. I thank
the Minister for the endorsement—however belatedly—by her
Government of our Government’s understanding of the level of
funding necessary for education. However, the admission that a
decade of cuts to education was a mistake went only so far: those
2010 levels of spending will not be restored until 2024. I
suggest that that should be a matter not of pride for any
Government—more one of embarrassment.
Teacher pay has been eroded in real terms by successive
Conservative Governments, increasing the numbers of recently
qualified teachers leaving in their first five years. The
Government are not obliged to accept the recommendations of the
STRB, so it is at least welcome that they have done so on this
occasion. However, any additional costs resulting must be fully
funded so that school leaders are able to properly reward and
retain all their staff.
We cannot understand why the Chancellor and the Government as a
whole do not share our view that pay rises are an investment in
public services and in ensuring that we have the teachers we need
in front of classes. Public sector workers support the economy
with their spending on the high street, which they are less able
to do if they are struggling to make ends meet. The era of
real-terms pay cuts—there has been a 15% reduction since 2010—and
an alarming exodus of recently qualified teachers has been wholly
destructive and should now end.
According to the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies this
order, the DfE says that, while the majority of teachers will not
receive a headline pay uplift, teachers earning below the maximum
of their pay range may still be eligible for performance-related
pay progression. The department says that it remains committed to
increasing the teacher starting salary to £30,000—a 2019
manifesto commitment, it should be said—and that while pay
restraint in 2021-22 will slow progress towards this commitment,
steps taken in recent years, including a 5.5% uplift to starting
pay in September 2020, have made
“a substantial difference to the competitiveness of the early
career pay offer”.
However, I regret to say that that claim is not substantiated by
evidence.
In its report, the STRB warned of a “severe negative impact” on
the retention and recruitment of teachers if the pay uplift pause
for teachers continued beyond the 2021-22 academic year. That
caused it to urge the Government to allow it to make
recommendations on pay uplifts for all teachers and school
leaders in 2022-23. The Government effectively rebuffed the STRB,
merely committing in its response to “reassessing” the pay award
position ahead of the 2022-23 pay round. From experience, I
suggest that neither teachers nor school leaders will be holding
their breath in anticipation of a positive outcome to such a
reassessment.
The Government have not only imposed a pay freeze on virtually
all teachers in England, they have prevented the STRB from fully
considering the impact of that and proposing alternatives. That
demonstrates both the weakness of the Government’s case and
undermines the role of the STRB. The STRB’s remit is regularly
restricted to specific areas of government policy. The teaching
unions continue to call for an objective, evidence-based
assessment of all the key issues on teacher pay, such as: pay
losses against inflation; the impact of pay cuts on teacher
supply; and the need for a fair national pay structure, including
better pay levels and progression based on experience without the
restrictions imposed by performance-related pay.
The national teacher pay structure has been dismantled over
recent years, with schools given significant discretion on
teacher pay. This pay “flexibility” has not worked, as evidenced
by the development of serious teacher supply problems over the
past decade. With teachers and school leaders having been denied
the pay progression they deserve as they acquire experience and
expertise in their roles, I believe the case for a return to a
national pay structure to protect the fairness of pay
arrangements is a strong one.
Ministers appear to believe that levels of remuneration for
teachers are not a big issue because their pay is significantly
higher than average. Yes, the average teacher salary in 2020-21
was £38,400, although that figure was lower in the nursery and
primary sectors. But the profession needs to be able to compete
with other graduate professions, so comparing teacher pay with
average pay across the whole economy is not only misleading but
does not serve any meaningful purpose. As the STRB has pointed
out, the position of teacher pay in the graduate labour market
has declined significantly, and the decline correlates with the
real-terms cuts to teacher pay since 2010 and with the
development of serious teacher supply problems over that
period.
I will not enter into any detail on performance-related pay other
than to say that the case against it is clear and it is opposed
across the teaching profession by teachers and school leaders. It
is being dropped by an increasing number of multi-academy trusts
and the Welsh Government have dropped it from teacher pay.
The second part of this regret Motion refers to the consultation
process taking place over the school summer holidays. The
Minister will be familiar with this issue because I have raised
it with her twice already in relation to other consultations in
the short time since she took up her post. I may be wrong, but I
sensed on those occasions that she did not disagree with me.
Four consultees on this order concluded in a joint submission
that the timing of the consultation had created significant
problems for consulting meaningfully and with regard to planning
at school level. It seems that only the Government have failed to
notice that most people take their main holidays between mid-July
and mid-September.
I note the excuse offered by the DfE in response to the Secondary
Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House. In its
report on this order, the committee recalls that it has
previously expressed concerns about the timing of the
consultation on teachers’ pay. Asked why the consultation had
again taken place over the summer, the DfE told the committee
that, as with the situation over the past four years, HM Treasury
and No. 10 now insist that all review body reports and
consultations should be launched on the same day. In a mea culpa,
the DfE then went on to state:
“So, although we would have been ready and happy to publish much
earlier than we did, we were subject to the decision from HMT and
No10.”
If that is indeed the case, the remedy is quite straightforward
and surely not onerous: the Government should alter the date on
which all review body reports and consultations are launched.
They could be brought forward from October, but even if they went
beyond that month it would matter not, as the provisions of these
orders are currently made retrospective, with September being the
month from which they apply.
I suggest that what needs to be applied here is common sense.
Again, I have a suspicion that the Minister may be sympathetic to
the case that I am advancing, so will she give me an assurance
that she will discuss this with fellow Ministers in her
department with a view to the DfE taking the lead in injecting
that shot of common sense? After all, the summer holidays are
more of an issue within her department than any other, and, as we
know from its own words, the DfE is ready and happy to publish
much earlier. So I say to the Minister: over to you. I beg to
move.
(LD)
My Lords, there is a wonderful expression that infant teachers
often use: I am sad in my heart. I am sad in my heart that
teachers in maintained schools are in this position and
effectively having a pay cut. If we have a system where we
consult on pay and conditions, surely the hallmarks of good
consultation are, first, that it should be at a time when we can
maximise that consultation and not at the tail end of the summer
period—as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson—and,
secondly, that we really listen to the views of those people who
know what they are talking about. In the last education debate in
this Chamber, we all extolled the virtues of teachers and how
important they were to young lives. We spoke of how we should
value them, reward them and consider their worth. And yet this
happens, so, yes, I am sad in my heart.
Let us understand what all the teacher associations or teacher
unions have said. All have had the same reaction: that this will
undermine our attempts to stem the constant haemorrhaging of
teachers. Geoff Barton, the General Secretary of the Association
of School and College Leaders, has said:
“Teacher and leader salaries have already failed to keep pace
with inflation over the course of the past decade and the
imposition of what is effectively another pay cut undermines
retention of existing staff and makes salaries less
competitive.”
The national teachers’ union described the Government as being
“out of touch”. Its joint General Secretary, Kevin Courtney,
said:
“The government’s pay freeze for teachers is demoralising”
and causes
“recruitment difficulties as we come out of the pandemic.”
It was interesting that he should use the word “pandemic”,
because, at the time of the pandemic, the Government said how
important teachers were and how much we valued them. Then we hear
from the head teachers’ union, NAHT, which says the same thing:
that this will be challenging in retaining and recruiting
teaching staff, particularly for senior positions, and, again,
that it is seen as
“eroding leadership supply, and risks prompting an exodus of
leaders when the pandemic finally lifts”.
Finally, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women
Teachers carried out a survey in which 94% of teachers said they
disagreed with the pause on pay uplifts, with 83% saying that it
would have a negative impact on the recruitment and retention of
teachers.
So I would be interested to hear what the Minister says. I have
one cheeky, direct question for her: if it is all right for Peers
to have their allowance updated for inflation, why is it not all
right for teachers in the maintained sector?
(Lab)
My Lords, I fully endorse the remarks of my noble friend . The figures on
teachers’ pay make depressing reading. Since 2010, teachers’
salaries have been in serious decline in real terms—we have heard
the figures from the noble Lord, . Teachers on main scale 6,
which is where they can get to before going through the
threshold, would need an increase of 17% to make up for the loss
against inflation since 2010. That is not even to get an
increase; it is to make up for the loss since 2010. On the other
pay spine, an increase of 21% would be needed, and the same
figure holds good for the leadership group of teachers.
The School Teachers’ Review Body notes that teachers’ pay has
worsened in the graduate labour market, as we have already heard.
Is that not ironic, since, without teachers, there would be no
graduates?
But worse, some would say, even than the overall level of
remuneration is the lack of any coherence in the pay structure,
bringing with it inherent unfairness and injustices.
Performance-related pay, which was largely anathema to the
profession when it was imposed, has failed on its own terms, with
many teachers and school leaders seeing pay progression blocked
even when they have met or even exceeded the objectives that have
been set for them. This simply cannot be right, and it brings the
system categorically into disrepute.
The NEU, the National Education Union—for which I worked in its
predecessor form of the National Union of Teachers, the NUT—is
very clear in calling for a national pay structure, with
appropriate pay levels and pay progression to embed competitive
and fair pay with a rate for the job. There are obvious
advantages to such a system. It would assist teacher mobility and
career development, allowing teachers to move between schools in
the full knowledge of what their pay would be. As a young teacher
and even a somewhat older teacher, I benefited from the national
pay scales. Teachers, I am bound to say, were not well paid, but
at least they knew what they could expect to be paid, both when
they began teaching and as they progressed through their
career.
It seems no coincidence that both teacher recruitment and
retention are suffering under the present system of incoherence
and pay cuts in real terms. The National Education Union and
other unions have called for a fundamental review of issues
relating to teachers’ pay. Performance-related pay certainly
needs to be reviewed and revised. As my noble friend Lord Watson
said, the Welsh Government and an increasing number of
multi-academy trusts have already dropped it from any
consideration of salaries of teachers whom they employ.
A coherent and fair pay structure would certainly render teaching
much more attractive than it is now. While it is not an STRB
matter, a root-and-branch reform of Ofsted, whose inspections are
leading to an increased exodus from the profession, is also long
overdue.
Finally, on timing and consultation for STRB reports in relation
to teachers’ pay and conditions, these really should be held in
term time. I hope that the Minister will agree, given her and
other Ministers’ often repeated respect for and gratitude to our
teachers.
(Lab)
My Lords, I support what my noble friends Lady Blower and Lord
Watson, and the noble Lord, , have said.
Among the great casualties of the pandemic over the last couple
of years have been millions of schoolchildren —the consequences
for them have been enormous. I know that we all agree with that;
we will have seen it in our own families, among our friends and
so on. To be fair about it, the resilience of children, often
quite young children, in the face of really quite staggering
difficulty and challenge has been amazing, and they deserve
credit for that, as do their families. Alongside that, when they
have returned to school, sometimes intermittently, the work of
teachers and schools to support them has been phenomenal.
Clearly, over the next year or two and beyond, the work of
teachers and teaching staff, those supporting schools in the area
of special needs, and educational psychologists and so on will be
phenomenal. They are fundamental to the recovery plan of the
Government.
All of us want that recovery plan to work, so I do not want to
get into whether it should be this billion or that billion. But
one thing that will be central to it is the status and morale of
teachers, and how they feel their Government are respecting them
and dealing with them.
As my noble friend Lady Blower said, we can argue whether it
should be 3% or 4%, but I would have thought that a standstill,
in real terms, for all teachers, is the very least that teachers
could expect as we, hopefully, come out of the pandemic. As I
say, morale is important. It is those indefinable things that
make such a difference. What I find incredible is that I think
the Minister probably agrees, and the vast majority of the
Government probably agree, yet it does not happen. To be fair,
when I was a Minister I found a disconnect between the public
policy outcome and the desire to deliver certain things.
Sometimes it just does not seem to happen.
20:00:00
The Minister will have to get up and say, “I totally agree with
the regret Motion”. The regret Motion in the name of my noble
friend Lord Watson is absolutely right, because her own
department has written to the delegated committee saying, as my
noble friend quoted, that it
“would have been ready and happy to publish much earlier than we
did”
but was overruled by the Treasury and No.10. That is ridiculous.
The Department for Education is saying that it should have
published this earlier and that the Treasury and No. 10—the Prime
Minister—turned round and said no. It beggars belief. So my noble
friend Lord Watson is absolutely right: the Minister cannot do
anything other than get up and say she totally agrees with the
regret Motion. Or does she disagree with the evidence given by
her own department to that committee? It has to be one or the
other. So I say to her, “We totally agree with what the
Department for Education wants to do and therefore we look
forward to the Government supporting the regret Motion”.
We will join the Department for Education in taking on the
Treasury and the Prime Minister and saying, as the department
has, “We totally respect our teachers and understand that to have
a consultation taking place within their six weeks’ holiday is
absolutely ridiculous. Most of the teachers were on holiday. We
want them to help us come out of the pandemic; their morale and
status needs to be respected. They need a decent pay award and
we’re not going to do it at a time when they’re on holiday”.
Whatever the outcome, what the vast majority of people want to
see is fair play. They want to see people respected and treated
properly. That is what the Department for Education wanted and it
was overruled.
I was not going to stay and contribute, but when I read the
letter I just could not believe that something as stark as that
would have been signed off by a Minister. A Minister will have
signed that letter off as evidence, or somebody—a senior civil
servant—would have signed it off. I have never seen it put as
starkly as that. It is not the Department for Education to blame
for the teachers’ pay award or the consultation process that we
have seen; it is the Prime Minister and the Treasury.
Unbelievably, they have overruled their own education department.
I am sorry to go on about it, but it is absolutely unbelievable,
shocking and disrespectful to the department. The Minister will
not be able to do this but, being fair, in all honesty she will
agree with the regret Motion—the second part of it, if not the
first—and regret that it took place over the holiday because that
is what her own department’s evidence said to the Secondary
Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short
debate, in particular the noble Lord opposite, the noble Lord,
Lord Watson, for tabling the debate. I also thank the Secondary
Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its consideration of this
order, which came into force this October without objection from
either House.
Our priority has always been to ensure that the pay and
conditions framework for teachers supports schools to continue to
attract, retain and develop the high-quality teachers needed to
inspire the next generation. As all noble Lords have noted
tonight, I join them in paying tribute to all school staff who
have worked incredibly hard, particularly through the pandemic,
in enabling schools to remain open and supporting pupils with
remote education. I was lucky enough to visit two schools today
and was struck by how quickly, seamlessly and calmly they have
adjusted to the new challenges of the omicron variant.
As noble Lords may be aware, this order gives effect to the
national pay and conditions framework. This follows a
well-established annual process of evidence gathering and the
independent School Teachers’ Review Body making recommendations
to the Government, which we then consult on and implement through
the statutory instrument. Noble Lords will also know that the
review body for teachers is one of a number of similar review
bodies reporting on public sector pay to the Government. For
example, there are review bodies for NHS staff, the Armed Forces
and the police.
Turning the first of the key points that the noble Lord, Lord
Watson, raised, I would like to address concerns about the 2021
pay award. As my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the
Exchequer set out in his spending review of November last year,
in the face of huge uncertainty and the unprecedented impact that
Covid-19 had on the economy, the Government took the difficult
decision to pause public sector pay rises temporarily for most
public sector workforces in the current financial year. This
helped protect jobs at a time of crisis and ensured the fairness
that the noble Lord, , referred to between the
private and public sectors.
The pause on pay applied only to headline pay uplifts, and
teachers earning below the maximum of their pay range were still
able to receive a performance-related pay rise. We estimate that
as many as half of all teachers may have benefited from this, and
the lowest-paid unqualified teachers were also protected by a
£250 pay rise. Furthermore, I reassure the House that, as the
Chancellor announced in his spending review last month, all
public sector workers, including teachers, will see pay rises
over the next three years as the recovery in the economy and the
labour market allows a return to a normal pay-setting
process.
As part of that recovery, schools will receive an additional £4.7
billion in core funding in 2024-25, building on spending plans
from the 2019 spending review, which provided the largest funding
increase in a decade. This additional funding will help us
deliver the £30,000 starting salary commitment for all new
teachers. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, rightly raised the point
about teaching being an attractive profession for graduates. He
will be aware from our recent exchanges that we consulted
extensively on the £30,000 entry point and felt that it would be
truly competitive with other graduate salaries. He also rightly
talked about the importance of investing in the profession. We
are doing that not only in terms of that commitment to the
starting salary but in continuing professional development for
teachers both as they enter the profession and throughout their
career as they progress into leadership positions.
I heard loud and clear the concerns expressed by the noble
Baroness, Lady Blower, about levels of pay and the strong message
from the noble Lord, , about the importance of the
signal the Government send to the teaching profession. I would
like to think that, more broadly than the Government, there are
few families in this country who do not hold teachers in higher
esteem at the end of the pandemic than they might have done at
the beginning, having attempted to educate their children at
home, albeit with support from their local school. In relation to
the Government, in 2020-21 schoolteachers received the highest
headline pay award of all PRB workforces at 3.1% when inflation
was less than 1%, and that came after two years of real-terms pay
increases.
We recently debated recruitment and retention in this House, an
issue that was raised by the noble Lord, . The number of teachers remains
high, at 461,000 across the country, over 20,000 more than in
2010. Some 41,000 new trainee teachers were recruited to start
training in 2020-21, a 23% increase on the previous year. The
noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the STRB report and
criticisms that the Secretary of State had constrained the STRB.
As I have tried to set out, the teachers’ pay process, to which
noble Lords referred, is part of a much wider process of public
sector pay awards, and for the September 2021 pay award, as I
said, difficult decisions had to be taken. However, from
September 2022 the STRB will be able to consider pay rises over
the next three years as the recovery in the economy and labour
market continues. The Government are responding to some of the
recommendations in the STRB report, particularly on equalities
and teacher well-being and workload.
The other area of concern for noble Lords was the timing of the
pay award consultation. As I mentioned, the pay award process
forms part of the wider public sector pay review process and, as
such, it was necessary for the Government to take a holistic
approach to all the pay review body processes and reports, and
for each to be considered within the context of the wider public
sector pay strategy. In addition, the 2020 spending round delayed
the start of the process for the 2021-22 pay round, as the
Secretary of State was unable to issue his remit letter to the
School Teachers Review Body before the public sector pay policy
was announced. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, it is crucial
that the annual pay round timetable allows sufficient time for
employers, government departments and unions to give evidence to
the pay review bodies and for those bodies to carefully consider
their recommendations. For 2021-22, this resulted in a summer
announcement.
The Government do of course understand the difficulties this
imposes on schools in particular, and we will continue to work
across government to try to mitigate this in further pay rounds.
I am happy to go back and talk to colleagues in the department,
as the noble Lord opposite requested.
In closing, I thank all those who have contributed to today’s
debate. I hope I have gone some little way to reassuring the
House that, while difficult decisions have had to be made in
respect of public sector pay, the Government are committed to
ensuring that the pay and conditions framework continues to help
make teaching an attractive career option for graduates and
beyond.
(Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response; the tone she
adopted was helpful. There are some points I would like to pick
up, if I may. I think the Minister and I are the only
contributors to this debate who were not previously
schoolteachers, so the contributions of those who were carry
particular weight. I would not disagree with anything that the
noble Lord, , and my noble friends Lady
Blower and said, with one exception. The
noble Lord, , said that the pay cut affects
teachers in maintained schools but in fact, the impact is wider
than that. As the Explanatory Notes say, most academies and free
schools have the same pay and conditions, so the effect on
teachers is quite widely felt.
My noble friend Lady Blower talked about respect and gratitude
for our teachers, and the Minister and my noble friend echoed that. That is almost a
given, which raises the question of why the gargantuan efforts
made by teachers to keep education going when children were
unable to go to school are not reflected in the pay and
conditions review of this year.
20:15:00
The Minister said that the pay pause, as the official government
terminology goes, was driven by the need not to disturb the
balance of pay levels between the public and private sectors. I
can understand that on one level; well, I cannot understand why
it would be an issue, but I can understand why it would be an
argument. However, most public sector workers continued working
during lockdown—I am generalising—and most private sector workers
were furloughed. There was no equality there, and I do not think
that that would necessarily mean that rewarding public sector
workers, who continued to do their jobs in extremely difficult
circumstances—and they were often jobs that could not be done
from home, almost by definition—would not be justified.
The Minister also said that a £30,000 starting salary was
competitive with other professional salaries and was the result
of consultation. Yes, it is not uncompetitive for a starting
salary, but where is it? As I said, the general election was two
years ago this month and it was in the manifesto, but it has not
started yet. It is not competitive until it starts to take effect
and that is not happening.
On the timing, I am pleased that the Minister will take a lead
within her department on changing the date, as I requested, not
necessarily putting other pay awards out of kilter, but just
moving the date, so that the summer is not in the middle of it.
That is positive and we await the result.
This has been a useful airing of a number of issues that are
deeply and seriously felt by teachers. The teachers I talk to do
not feel sufficiently valued. My noble friend talked about morale and this
obviously eats away at morale, which is not good for the
children, who the teachers are there to educate.
I would like to test the opinion of the House. I said that just
to see the ashen faces of the Whips on both sides, because I am
not going to. I think we would probably win it 6:4 if it went to
a vote. But I think it is important that the huge contribution
that teachers make is properly acknowledged and rewarded, and
many teachers do not feel that that is the case just now. Having
aired those issues and heard the Minister’s response, I beg leave
to withdraw my Motion.
Motion withdrawn.
