Teachers will get an average pay rise of £2,500 from September after ministers accepted a recommended 5.5% pay rise.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told parliament today that she had accepted the teacher assessment body’s recommendations “in full”.
The STRB report, released today, calls for “a 5.5% increase in teacher salaries at all levels. In addition, a 5.5% increase in all allowance brackets.”
This equates to a rise of more than £2,500 for the average teacher, taking the median salary for 2024-25 to more than £49,000, according to government analysis.
£1.2bn extra for schools
Schools will receive “nearly £1.2 billion in additional funding to cover their costs” in the 2024-25 financial year.
The Department for Education said it would “fully fund” the increase for teachers and leaders announced today as well as a proposed increase for support staff.
However Schools Week It is understood schools will also have to use £600m of “wiggle room” in their budgets identified by the previous government earlier this year.
Each percentage point increase in teachers’ pay costs around £270m. So the cost of a 5.5% increase in teachers’ pay alone would be almost £1.5bn, before taking into account the pay of support staff.
But negotiations over pay for support staff, who were offered increases of at least £1,290 earlier this year, are still ongoing.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told parliament today that the new Labour government had discovered a “£22 billion hole in the public finances”.
She said the government would be “open about what decisions are needed and what action we take. That starts with fully accepting the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies, and the details of those awards are being published today.”
Chancellor considers reforms to STRB timetable
“This is the right decision for working people and, importantly, for the people who use our public services, giving hard-working staff the pay rises they deserve, while ensuring we can recruit and retain the people we need.”
But she warned: “It should not have taken this long to make these decisions, and I do not want to find myself in that situation again, so I will be exploring options to reform the timing of responses to pay review bodies in the future.”
A budget will be presented on October 30 and Reeves also launched a three-year spending review today.
Today’s decision is likely to avoid an early clash between the new government and unions after a series of strikes last year.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said the 5.5% rise was a “necessary first step to reversing the real-terms pay cuts inflicted on teachers and school leaders during the Tories’ premiership”.
“It is clear that there is still some way to go to restore what teachers and school leaders have lost since 2010 and we hope that this issue will be resolved in the upcoming pay negotiations.”
But he said the announcement was a “strong signal to the profession about a new direction in education.”
“The £1.2 billion investment to fund this pay bonus will be welcome news for school leaders juggling stretched budgets resulting from years of cuts.”
The NEU executive committee will meet next week to “formally consider the offer and make a recommendation for members to vote on in September”.
SEND schools ‘will feel the impact’
Paul Whiteman, head of the NAHT executives’ union, welcomed the increase and extra funding.
He warned, however, that “as the government has recognised, schools will feel the impact of this increase differently depending on their particular circumstances”.
The Department for Education’s assumptions about the affordability of the pay rise are based on national averages and, as previously revealed, ignore the financial situation faced by some schools, particularly special schools which have more staff per pupil.
Last year the government announced a £40m “help fund” but this has proven to be far from enough, with most schools in need not receiving it.
“It will be important that those already under the greatest financial pressure, such as special educational needs schools, small schools and alternative settings, get additional support where needed,” Whiteman added.
