Joint union pay advice 2024-25

Joint union advice on school teachers’ pay in England 2024-25.

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The Government has accepted in full all of the recommendations of the STRB report, which includes a 5.5% pay increase from 1 September to all school teacher pay points and allowances in England.  The increase is fully funded at a national level by the Government. Schools, early years and post-16 settings will receive an additional £1.2 billion in the 2024-25 financial year.  The Government has committed to meeting the costs of the pay increase falling in the 2024-25 financial year. 

Additional funding has been based on the government’s calculation that schools will have already budgeted for an uplift of approximately 2% (for 2024-25) and is designed to cover the 3.5% difference between that and the 5.5% award. We also understand that approximately £300m of the additional £1.2 billion has been allocated to support schools with the forthcoming support staff pay award costs. The additional funding to each school is delivered using formula factors, not actual staffing costs.

The unions welcome the Government’s decision and recognise that the 5.5% increase is a significant step towards restoring the pay lost by teachers and school leaders in real terms due to pay cuts against inflation of some 25% between 2010 and 2023.  The new Government has signalled its intention to invest in teachers and school leaders.  The unions are clear, however, that this investment must continue.  The September 2024 pay increase must be followed by a series of further steps to urgently restore the real value of teacher pay and to repair the competitive position of teaching in the graduate labour market.

The increase of 5.5% to all pay points and allowances is effective from 1 September 2024.  These proposals are subject to formal consultation ending on 7 October, with all pay increases backdated to 1 September.  

This is our joint advice on the pay scales to be adopted for the school year 2024-25.

Consultation on pay policies 

Formal consultation should take place with teachers and their union representatives before pay policies and pay scales for September 2024 are finalised. This should happen at the start of the new academic year, as soon as the pay proposals are formally confirmed, in order to comply with the requirement for meaningful consultation. 

We believe that it would be helpful for local authorities, school governing bodies and academy employers to announce as soon as possible whether or not they intend to adopt the advice set out here.

Pay scales for 2024-25

The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) continues to permit the adoption of fixed pay scale points as the basis for teachers’ pay and progression. 

The STPCD includes advisory pay scale points for the main and upper pay ranges and unqualified teacher pay range.  These were restored to the STPCD in 2020 (main and upper pay ranges) and 2021 (unqualified teacher pay range) and reflect the values of the long-standing advisory pay points published jointly by our unions.

The recommended pay scale points set out in this advice are the advisory pay points in the STPCD plus in addition recommended pay points for the leadership pay range. 

The decision to restore advisory pay points to the STPCD and align their values with those recommended in joint union advice underlines the appropriateness and importance of using the pay scales set out in this and previous editions of this joint pay advice. 

In previous years teachers and school leaders should, as they have been in many schools, have been paid at least at the pay levels set out in the union advice.  Where schools are still paying below the pay points in this advice, pay for teachers and school leaders in those schools should therefore be moved to the value of the next highest point.

The pay levels set out below should be a minimum, so where schools are paying above the value of the relevant point the teacher should be paid on the next highest point above the teacher’s current pay level.  This should be uprated in future years in line with the relevant pay increase.

The principles supporting the use of national pay points for the main and upper pay ranges apply equally to the pay points for leaders set out in this advice.  We will continue to call for the restoration of the national pay structure with the mandatory pay points as a minimum entitlement.

Pay progression for 2024-25 and beyond

Political choices made by successive administrations between 2010 and 2023 have included the imposition of performance-related progression (PRP).  

PRP is fundamentally unfair, contributes to the existing recruitment and retention problems and damages morale.  There is no evidence that PRP impacts positively on pupil outcomes, and growing evidence that it has a negative impact on retention and workload.  Recent research suggests that PRP does not work in schools in the same way that it does in business.  Linking pay to performance, which is difficult to effectively and accurately measure in an increasingly subjective accountability system, can actually demotivate teachers.  In addition, the bureaucracy involved in linking performance to pay impacts negatively on workload for both the school leaders operating the system, and the staff being appraised.

The unions are pleased that the new Government has confirmed the removal of the obligation to use PRP and urges all schools and academies to drop PRP immediately.

The decision to remove the requirement to operate PRP makes it even more important that pay progression is the norm and default position.  All eligible teachers and leaders must benefit from this decision and they should all receive pay progression.

The 2024 STPCD Guidance will continue to provide at Section 3 that "schools must determine – in accordance with their own pay policy – how to take account of the uplift to the national framework in making individual pay progression decisions."  Even where schools decide to continue with PRP, this would not preclude pay increases which are made as a result of the implementation of annual uplifts of pay scales set out in the school’s pay policy. 

All of our organisations believe that PRP is damaging and should be removed, with pay progression for eligible teachers and school leaders as the norm and default position, and applied separately and in addition to pay increases arising from the revalorisation of pay scales for cost of living purposes.  This is the only way to ensure that the profession returns to a competitive position in the graduate market place.

 

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