Ms Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT-The Teachers’
Union, has written today to the Secretary of State for Education,
, calling for her to act as a
matter of urgency to suspend any discretionary application of the
School Teachers’ Review Body pay recommendations in the Report
which has been submitted to her and to confirm immediately,
alongside the publication of that Report, a new remit for the
Review Body requiring them to produce, free from the constraints of
the public sector pay cap and pressure from the Treasury, a further
report on teachers’ pay before the end of the Autumn Term 2017.
Chris Keates said:
“The call made by the Secretary of State for the Environment over
the weekend for ministers to accept the recommendations of the
public sector pay review bodies is disingenuous and a blatant
attempt to mislead the public. All relevant government
departments, including the DfE, are already in receipt of those
reports. Ministers already know what they contain and have known
for some time.
“Those reports have been produced by the review bodies in a
context where, since 2011, the Government has sought to
compromise the independence of the review bodies, both in terms
of the remit ministers have given to them and the correspondence
the chairs of those bodies have received from the Treasury prior
to starting their deliberations.
“Despite this unacceptable pressure from government and the
constraints imposed by the public sector pay cap, the School
Teachers’ Review Body has been highly critical of
the government’s stance on teachers’ pay and made clear that
there is a case for exceeding the pay cap.
“In its last report it stated that ‘there is a case for an
uplift higher than 1% to the national pay framework to strengthen
the competitive position of the teaching profession. It
went on to say ‘If recruitment and retention pressures
continue at their current levels, we expect that an uplift
significantly higher than 1% will be required.’
“If ministers are committed to lifting the pay cap, giving
teachers the higher pay they deserve and addressing the crisis in
recruitment and retention, then the Secretary of State must
allow the School Teachers’ Review Body, as a matter of urgency,
to produce a further report, free from not only the constraints
of the pay cap, but also from pressure from ministers and the
Treasury.”
