Thank you for contacting me about teachers' strike action.
The Secretary of State for Education continues to work with Cabinet colleagues to seek a fair and reasonable resolution to the pay dispute with teachers. Teachers in England have rejected a pay offer from the Government that would have seen salaries rise by 4.5 per cent on average next year, alongside a one-off payment of £1,000 for this year. The offer was funded, including major new investment of over half a billion pounds, and helps tackle issues teachers are facing like workload.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) have voted to turn down the offer. Instead, the NEU will hold two more strike days in the summer term, causing further disruption for students and parents. The unions also rejected an offer to create a new taskforce to help reduce workload by an average of five hours a week for teachers and leaders. The decision is disappointing and means less money for teachers this year and possible disruption to students preparing for exams. Furthermore, it is extremely disappointing that the NEU are re-balloting for more strike action up until Christmas this year.
Teacher pay for next year will now go through an independent pay review process as usual. The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) makes recommendations on the pay of teachers in England and reports to the Secretary of State for Education and the Prime Minister. As is normal, the STRB will look only at pay for next year, meaning teachers will not receive a one-off payment for this year (2022 to 2023).
Teachers’ Pay
I understand the pressures many teachers, like the rest of society, are facing now due to the challenge of high inflation. Teachers do a job that is essential to our society, and they do it brilliantly. The Government is clear that their pay should reflect that, which is why the pay rise teachers are receiving this year is the highest in a generation.
Last year, the Government accepted the recommendations of the Independent Pay Review Body to provide the highest pay increases for 30 years, with teachers seeing pay rises of 5 to 8.9 per cent, and new teachers receiving the highest uplift. This will take teacher starting salaries to £28,000, which is significant progress towards this Government’s 2019 manifesto commitment of a £30,000 starting salary.
Most teachers early in their career and around 40 per cent of experienced teachers not already at the top of their pay scale will also get pay increases through progression or promotion, which in total could mean rises of up to 15.9 per cent this year.
Furthermore, teachers’ pensions are among the best and safest available – and they come with a 23.6 per cent employer pension contribution. By contrast, in the private sector 48 percent of employees receive an employer contribution of less than 4 per cent. Teacher contributions start from as little as 7.4 per cent and a maximum of 11.7 per cent.
Teachers’ Workload
The Government continues to work with the schools to reduce teacher workload and improve teacher wellbeing, and work with the profession to understand and address longstanding issues around marking, planning and data management. The school workload reduction toolkit, developed alongside school leaders, is a helpful resource for schools that can enable them to reduce workload.
Teacher Retention and Recruitment
The number of teachers remains high, with over 465,500 Full Time Equivalent teachers working in state funded schools across the country, including more rural parts of England. This is 24,000 more than in 2010.
The Department recognises there is more to do to ensure teaching remains an attractive, high status profession, and to recruit and retain teachers in key subjects. Reforms are aimed not only at increasing teacher recruitment through an attractive pay offer and financial incentives such as bursaries, but also at ensuring teachers stay and succeed in the profession.
The Department is making £181 million available in bursaries and scholarships to attract trainee teachers in high priority subjects for academic year 2023/24. This is a £52 million increase on the current academic year. As graduates in science technology, engineering, and mathematics attract the highest salaries outside teaching, the Department is offering a £27,000 tax-free bursary or a £29,000 tax-free scholarship in chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics. The Department is also offering a £20,000 tax-free bursary in design and technology.
The Department also offers a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools across England, including in rural areas and Education Investment Areas (EIAs). This will support recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in the subjects and in the schools and areas that need them most.
To make teaching here even more attractive to the best teachers from around the world, the Department plans to introduce a new relocation premium for overseas nationals coming here to train or teach languages and physics. This will help with visas and other expenses. The Department will also extend bursary and scholarship eligibility to international trainees in physics and languages.
The Department launched its new digital service, ‘Apply for teacher training’, in autumn 2021 to make it easier for people across the country to train to become teachers, particularly in shortage subjects.
In autumn 2022, the Department expanded the ‘Engineers Teach Physics’ initial teacher training programme with a national rollout. This course has been designed to support more engineers and material scientists to train to become physics teachers. The Department is working closely with sector experts, representative bodies and academic institutions such as the Institute of Physics, Engineering UK, University of Birmingham and the Gatsby Institute to ensure that the course reflects best practice and includes the most up to date industry knowledge.
These initiatives all support the work of the Department in creating a world-class teacher development system by transforming the support teachers and school leaders receive at every stage of their career. This begins with initial teacher training through to an Early Careers Framework based induction for early career teachers, and specialist and leadership National Professional Qualifications for more experienced teachers.
In the Event of Strike Action
In the event of strike action at a school, the school leaders or local authority that manages the school will take all reasonable steps to keep the school open for as many pupils as possible. The Government has produced updated guidance to help them do this and to minimise disruption to children and families.
If schools need to restrict attendance, the Government has asked that those schools prioritise vulnerable children, children of critical workers and pupils who are due to take public examinations (like GCSEs) and other formal assessments. Where schools are not able to provide face-to-face education for all pupils, the Government encourages them to provide remote education to ensure every child has access to learning.
Advice for Parents
If you would like to find out more about the strike action and what it means for you and your child, the Department for Education’s ‘Education Hub’ has useful information available here: educationhub.blog.gov.uk
School Funding
In the Autumn Statement 2022, the Chancellor confirmed that schools in England will receive an additional £2 billion of funding next year and the year after. This will be the highest real terms spending on schools in history, totalling £58.8 billion by 2024/25.
After two years of disrupted education due to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated measures, every single day spent in school with experienced teachers who know their students makes a difference to a child’s development. The Government’s priority will always be to keep schools open and to keep children in the classroom, and the Department for Education has issued guidance to school leaders to help with this process.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Craig Whittaker MP
May 2023