Today (20 May 2021), The Education Policy Institute (EPI)
published its report “Local pay and teacher retention in
England”.
Commenting on EPI’s report, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of
school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “The increase in applications
to teacher training is no cause for complacency. After the 2007/8
financial crisis, new entrants to the profession soon melted away
as economic conditions improved; government should learn from
this previous experience.
“Teachers’ and leaders’ pay is still far below 2010 levels in
real terms. And as our recent report, The School Leadership
Supply Crisis showed, differentiated pay rises in favour of early
career teachers have served only to further undermine the supply
of school leaders. Less than half of leaders (47 per cent) would
recommend leadership as a career goal; almost half (46 per cent)
of assistant and deputy heads said they did not aspire to
headship; and over half (51 per cent) of leaders said their
aspiration to lead had been negatively affected by recent
differentiated pay awards that have reduced the premium for
leadership responsibility.
“And Covid has exacerbated matters – 46 percent of leaders tell
us that they are now less likely to stay in leadership for as
long as they had planned.
“NAHT is clear that the systemic pay problems of the teaching
profession cannot be resolved using sticking plaster solutions of
top-up payments, regional pay differentials, or so-called ‘pay
freedoms’. What’s needed is a root and branch review of the pay
structure. The first step is to immediately restore real pay to
2010 levels, reintroduce a national pay structure and pay
portability, and reinstate the salary differential for
leadership. Government should then mandate the STRB to work
collaboratively with teaching and leadership unions to devise a
new pay structure for the profession. Government should no longer
take the dedication of teachers and school leaders for granted.
