Commenting on the Education Secretary’s evidence to the School
Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) about teacher pay awards for 2022
and 2023, Julie McCulloch, Director of Policy at the Association
of School and College Leaders, said:
“While we welcome the government’s recommendation to raise the
starting salaries of teachers to £30,000 over the next two years,
there are several aspects of this proposed settlement which are
very unsatisfactory.
“First, it is regrettable that it comes in the shadow of the
completely unnecessary imposition of a pay freeze this year which
has made recruitment and retention even harder.
“Second, it is unacceptable that the government is not only
proposing to flatten the pay structure so that more experienced
teachers and leaders will see a lower uplift but also not
applying the same uplift to early career teachers in the London
pay areas as for the rest of England. It does not seem to
understand how fed up people are with the significant erosion of
salaries that has taken place over the past decade and that
retaining our experienced staff is just as important as
recruiting new teachers into the profession.
“Third, the government almost casually suggests that this is all
affordable within the existing funding settlement for schools
when this is patently not the case and will put huge pressure on
budgets which are already stretched to the limit and beyond. This
adds up to a completely unrealistic picture of how to fix the
ongoing problem of teacher shortages, while adding to the
financial pressure on schools.
“We once again call upon the School Teachers’ Review Body to
assert its independence, recommend a significant across-the-board
increase for teachers and leaders that begins to repair the
damage of the last decade, and for the government to put its
money where its mouth is and ensure that schools have sufficient
money to pay their wages.”
