By Gavin Mackintosh-
The School Teacher’s review Board have criticised the Department Of Education’s confirmed pay rise arrangements from September that will leave schools to fund most of the pay rise from existing budgets.
Ministers performed a U turn on last years School Teacher’s Review Board (STRB) calls for a 3.5 per cent rise across the board, accepting the full STRB’s recommendations in full this year.
The new pay rise of 2.75 per cent applies right across the board to unqualified, main, upper and leadership. Pay rises for teachers at both end of the spectrum range will apply only to state schools, not academies or privately run institutions. The downside of the news is that the pay rise will not apply to every single teacher, but will be allocated according to the professional discretion of individual schools. Add to that the fact that schools themselves will have to pay for the first 2%, and the increase appears to be a shadow of what it is made out to be.
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The STRB say the rise will not adequately address the ongoing issues of teacher retention, the ever-growing crisis in teacher supply and say the increases signify a relative improvement which is still not sufficient to sustain the hiring and best commitment of teachers in Uk schools. They have warned of “a number of structural issues with the current pay framework” which need to be addressed, and says it wants to sit down with Damian Hinds to discuss them.
The newly announced pay rise will not cater for teacher assistants who are useful in supporting the demanding tasks of teachers and providing extra academic help to puzzled students, as well as helping collect test papers after tests or keeping badly behaved children in check. The STRB said:
“Failing to prioritise teacher supply through an investment in pay may lead to financial savings in the short term, but these are likely to be outweighed by additional costs and reduced productivity across the education system in the longer term,” the report warned.
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Schools will have to pay for the first two percentage points of the announced today, and the government claims they will already have budgeted for this because it’s what they said would be “affordable” in their STRB submission. In the analysis and consideration for the STRB’s 9th report published in July 2019, they say ”the evidence shows that the teacher supply situation has continued to deteriorate particularly for secondary schools.
This, they say, has affected teachers at all stages of their careers: They also say the Government’s target for recruitment to postgraduate Initial Teacher Training (ITT) was missed in 2018/19 for the seventh successive year. There has also been a marked decline in the number of overseas teachers being awarded Qualified Teacher They also say retention rates for teachers in the early years of their careers has continued to shows consistent trend of deterioration. The STRB has stressed the importance of investing in teachers. They say:
”An effective education system that delivers excellent pupil outcomes depends on having high quality teachers and school leaders. The national pay framework must therefore support initial teacher recruitment, motivate and retain experienced teachers, and provide a career pathway with incentives to progress into leadership roles. Our role is to position the national pay framework within the graduate and wider labour market to achieve these objectives”.
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