NEU evidence to the STRB December 2024 | National Education Union

The National Education Union (NEU) is the largest education union in the UK. The NEU evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) is grounded in the real lived experience of teachers and school leaders.
NEU members support our campaign for urgent corrections to teacher pay and improvements in teacher workload. They know that, without major improvements to pay and workload, the recruitment and retention crisis will not be solved. This evidence includes the voice of NEU members. We again provide direct and substantial evidence of the extent of the equal pay issues from our survey of members on pay and progression.
The new Government was elected on a mandate for change, with one of its five missions to: “Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage for every child.” The Secretary of State says in the remit letter to the STRB that the September 2024 pay increase was “a key step” to the achievement of this mission.
The Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB did not specifically recognise the need for a major pay correction to deliver the recruitment and retention improvements needed to achieve the Government’s aims. But the evidence is clear. The September 2024 pay increase must be only the first in a series of urgent steps to reverse the pay cuts inflicted on teachers and school leaders between 2010 and 2023. The joint union response to the consultation on the previous STRB report made clear that our view on this is shared across the profession.
NEU members are urging the Government to turn the page on fourteen years of failure under Conservative education policies. As they showed in 2023 and 2024, NEU members are willing to fight for our education service. School funding shortages, pay cuts, sky-high workload, and the dismantling of the national pay structure have caused huge damage which must be urgently repaired in the interests of teachers, school leaders, pupils, parents and local communities.
We set out below the clear evidence of the extent of the damage that has been done to the education service since 2010. Our evidence addresses the specific issues raised in the Secretary of State's remit letter, including the two issues remitted to the STRB for recommendation: the pay increase for 2025-26, and an assessment of any changes to flexibilities around TLR payments on the existing pro rata rule. We do not, however restrict ourselves to those issues. There are systemic problems and these require holistic solutions.
Pay, workload, recruitment, retention and funding problems are evident across the school system. All of those issues must be included in a comprehensive and objective analysis of the action needed to repair the education service.
We give details of the recruitment and retention crisis, which has been allowed to develop to the extent that recruitment targets have been missed by huge margins and record-breaking numbers of teachers have left the profession.
The causes of the recruitment and retention crisis can be found in the reality faced by teachers every day: the huge real terms pay cuts, the damaged living standards, the unfair pay outcomes, and the sky-high workload. It is clear that only urgent repair of the damage to teacher pay and conditions can provide the solutions to the recruitment and retention crisis.
This evidence is provided without prejudice to the NEU’s view that the review body system is unacceptable and that our right to collective bargaining has been unjustifiably denied. Over the decades since the imposition of the review body system on the profession, teacher pay has seen a marked decline in real terms relative to inflation and in relative terms compared to the wider labour market.
Pay comparability is absolutely essential to any analysis of pay, conditions and supply. Yet, time and again over the years, the STRB failed to effectively challenge Government pay freezes and below-inflation pay increases. The STRB helped to drive the disastrous dismantling of the national pay structure and imposition of performance-related pay (PRP) in the 2010s. A recruitment and retention crisis, driven by attacks on pay and conditions, has been allowed to develop and intensify despite the fact that ensuring healthy levels of recruitment and retention is a core part of the STRB’s remit.
Teachers and school leaders rightly have no confidence in the review body process. This year’s Institute of Employment Rights (IER) study “Pay review bodies: their past and their future” highlighted the impact of the review body system on trade union freedom and rights under ILO Conventions, the European Social Charter and the UN International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. The IER set out the clear case for a formal sectoral collective-bargaining system in the context of full freedom of association.
Negotiating rights for teachers and school leaders must be restored. Pay parity across education from early years to post-16 and a national contract based on a collectively agreed package of fully funded improvements to pay and conditions are essential. We note in this context Labour’s promise of “new ways of partnership working with unions and employers” as set out in Secretary of State’s remit letter.
In the meantime, we again call on the STRB to make the recommendations that are clearly needed to repair the damage done to teacher pay, workload and supply.
The NEU’s evidence will not be constrained by the current inadequate school funding envelope, within which the changes needed cannot be made. We must instead look at the evidence of what is needed to fix the problems. It is then for the Government to take the political choice and responsibility for the investment needed. The STRB’s job is to reflect in its recommendations the clear evidence, including the overwhelming case for the improvements needed to teacher pay and conditions.
The urgent improvements needed to pay and conditions, and thereby to teacher supply, require significant additional investment in our education service. Our evidence shows how this investment will be repaid many times over, by ensuring that we develop the skills and potential of our young people to secure economic prosperity. Investing in education is therefore in the interests of parents, pupils, and the country, as well as of teachers and school leaders.
The evidence has been clear for some time. Teachers and school leaders are not paid enough to reflect the demands of the job or to ensure that the profession can compete effectively in the graduate labour market. Fragmented pay arrangements do not provide the fairness and transparency that would enable the profession to offer current and potential teachers a clear career path. Workload, work intensity, the lack of flexible working options and excessive accountability all contribute further to the recruitment and retention problems.
The problems are clear and so are the solutions needed to solve those problems. A major pay correction applied equally across the profession is required, to make clear that all teachers and school leaders will be properly valued. A fair national pay structure, mandatory in all publicly funded schools, is needed. Pay progression must be quicker and must be guaranteed with no link of appraisal to pay and no threshold between the Main and Upper Pay Ranges, to properly value experience gained as a teacher. Effective action must be taken to tackle equal pay issues. This must include the restoration of pay portability, proper payment for additional responsibilities and appropriate access to promotion opportunities. Effective action to tackle sky-high workload and ensure access to flexible working must be taken.
This is the extent of the challenge. There must be no more discussion of the damaging “targeted” pay approach put forward by the STRB. There must be no artificial restriction of discussion to the insufficient actions possible within the existing inadequate funding levels. The new Government must fulfil its promise of change in education, by ensuring that we value, support, recruit and retain the teachers and school leaders needed to deliver the education our young people deserve.