Commenting on the announcement of Government for an expansion of
the Levelling Up payment scheme to teachers in schools and
further education in key stem and technical subjects as well as
early years education, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary
of the National Education Union, said:
“The Government continues with sticking plaster responses to a
systemic teacher recruitment and retention crisis in schools and
colleges. There are teacher shortages across the
curriculum.
‘Not only are teacher recruitment targets being missed by huge
amounts, but an unprecedented number of teachers are quitting the
profession prior to retirement. This scheme does nothing to
retain existing teachers.
‘The Government's underfunding of schools and colleges, cuts
to the value of teacher pay and sky-high workload have severely
damaged the ability of the profession to compete for new recruits
and retain existing staff.
‘Government attacks on teacher pay have resulted in huge real
terms pay cuts for those working in schools and colleges.
This has significantly damaged the ability of our education
service to compete with other graduate professions. It is clear
that the solution needed is the significant and fully funded
correction in pay for which the NEU is campaigning.
‘Instead, the Government has chosen to offer prescriptive
ideology, divisive pay incentives and half-baked recruitment
schemes. Teachers and leaders in schools and colleges, students
and parents deserve better”.
