Full text of the letter
Dear Secretary of State
NEU Response to the consultation on the 35th STRB Report and Draft STPCD
Introduction
This is the NEU response to the consultation on the 35th School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) Report and the draft 2025 School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD). This response covers the issues raised by the consultation in detail, but it is also important to put those issues in the context of the overarching developments on teacher pay and conditions.
The NEU is also taking part in a joint union response that is being sent to you as part of the consultation. The separate NEU response below should be read alongside the joint union response.
As the joint union response to the consultation shows, there is consensus across the profession on the key teacher pay and conditions issues. The unions are united in their view that the huge real terms pay cuts, dismantling of the national pay structure and imposition of performance-related pay (PRP) under your Conservative predecessors were unjustified and damaging.
These developments contributed significantly to the recruitment and retention crisis which is still evident today. The recruitment and retention problems will continue until teachers are properly valued. Teacher shortages not only create additional workload problems for teachers; they also affect parents and pupils, because they damage our education service.
Pay correction needed
The 5.5% pay increase of September 2024 was a welcome start to the process of reversing the real terms cuts to teacher pay, but that increase still left pay around a fifth lower in real terms against RPI inflation compared to 2010. You said in your Parliamentary statement of 22 May that teacher pay has increased by 22% over the last four years, but the 2024 increase was the only one during that period that was above RPI inflation. The huge real terms cut to teacher pay is the core issue on teacher pay and unless the pay cuts are reversed the recruitment and retention crisis will continue.
The 4% pay increase for September 2025 will, according to the latest OBR forecasts, be below the RPI inflation level of 4.6% for the third quarter of 2025. The likelihood is that this year’s pay increase will mean yet another real terms cut against RPI inflation. This pay cut will be costly, because continuing deterioration of the value of teacher pay in real terms comes on top of pay losses that have been significantly greater than for other professions. Independent research commissioned by the NEU from Incomes Data Research earlier this year confirmed how poorly teacher pay compares to other professions.
The STRB confirms that the relative value of teacher pay has reduced further than earnings across the economy, the public sector and the wider economy. The STRB states that: “On a range of comparisons, the competitiveness of teachers’ average pay has reduced markedly.” The STRB’s benchmarking analysis underlines the concerns on the competitiveness of teacher pay.
With pay settlements in the wider economy averaging 4% according to the latest figures from the Labour Research Department and with average earnings increasing by over 5% according to the latest ONS data it is clear that not only is a 4% increase for teachers likely to be below inflation, but it also will not provide the significant improvement needed to the competitiveness of teacher pay.
The message from these developments is clear. A fully funded pay correction is needed to reverse the pay cuts and repair the damage to the competitive position of teacher pay. To sustain the pay correction started by the 2024 increase, we needed to see a pay increase this year that is also significantly above RPI inflation.
Additional investment needed
We calculate that schools’ costs for 2025-26 will rise by 4.1%, excluding the increase in National Insurance. Mainstream school funding will increase by just 2.8% or 3.4% per pupil; 75% of primary schools will not have a sufficient increase in funding to cover their costs; and the same is true of 92% of secondary schools. The Government needs to increase school funding by £600 million to ensure that all schools can cover their costs in 2025-26. After years of funding cuts, schools are facing immense financial pressure and cannot be expected to make significant efficiency savings. Without additional investment, there will be job cuts and narrowing of curriculum options.
Recruitment and retention
The STRB notes the severity of the recruitment and retention problems. The latest School Workforce Census, published in June, confirms that the recruitment and retention problems are still at a critical level. The number of newly qualified entrants hit a record low and a huge number of teachers are leaving the profession. A quarter leave within three years of qualifying and a third within five years.
The cumulative impact of years of missed recruitment targets and teacher shortages means huge damage to our education service. Repairing this damage is vital not just for teachers, but also for pupils, parents and the economy.
The Teaching Commission report “Shaping the Future of Education” was launched on 3 July. This report underlines the point that the poor competitive position of teacher pay drives recruitment and retention problems.
The NEU is very worried about the continuing loss of experienced teachers and how this affects schools' ability to support ECTs and trainee teachers, as well as the pipeline for future middle and senior leaders. Work needs to be done on retaining teachers 3-5 years in and onwards, particularly around flexible working and for those returning and staying after having children, as well as the professionalism of teachers to spend time on important learning-focused tasks, resisting attempts to automate teaching and learning, which are the areas of the job that give most job satisfaction. Children, especially disadvantaged and those with SEND, benefit most from the professional input of their teacher who knows them well, adapting teaching for an individualised approach.
The latest information on recruitment and retention supports the NEU position that a fully funded significant pay correction and improvements in workload are essential to tackling the recruitment and retention problems.
Pay structure issues
The dismantling of the national pay structure and fragmentation of the school system in the 2010s have undermined the key objectives of fairness and transparency in pay, and in so doing have contributed to the recruitment and retention problems. So-called pay flexibility is part of the problem, because it enables unfairness and inhibits teacher mobility and career development. We need a level playing field on pay, not the current unfair and opaque arrangements.
The STRB suggests a number of actions to improve equality and inclusion, but the key point is that action to implement the fair national pay structure for which the NEU has called for many years is central to improving equality and inclusion. This must be supported by detailed and accessible data on pay equality at the national and school levels, and a robust and comprehensive equality impact assessment on the dismantling of the national pay structure and imposition of PRP by your Conservative predecessors. We highlighted in our supplementary evidence to the STRB some gaps in the DfE publication “Teacher pay and progression: differences by teacher characteristics” and we look forward to engaging with DfE officials and the other unions on DfE production of appropriate pay data.
The STPCD includes advisory pay points for classroom teachers and unqualified teachers matching the pay values in the annual joint union pay advice. Most schools use the advisory points in the STPCD and adhere to the joint union advice on pay levels. Schools do so because they know the value of national pay levels in terms of both pay fairness and efficient teacher mobility across the school system. The NEU calls on you to restore mandatory pay points for all teachers and school leaders to the STPCD.
The national pay structure must apply on a mandatory basis to all maintained schools and academies, including supply teachers, and to all school and academy leaders. The national pay structure must also include pay arrangements for Executive Heads and academy CEOs.
In the context of the STRB’s suggestion that it or another body be required to undertake work on modernising teacher employment terms and conditions, and on career pathways, we must note the STRB’s track record of recommendations leading to the dismantling of the national pay structure and imposition of performance-related pay (PRP). These recommendations were made without any objective justification and in opposition to the consensus view across the profession. This shows that radical reform of the pay structure should not be a matter for the STRB. The need for a fair national pay structure, with mandatory national pay values, annual and automatic pay progression, and pay portability to reflect the acquisition of experience and expertise, must be the focus of pay structure reform. These reforms must be undertaken on the basis of direct negotiations between the Government and the unions.
We urge you to work with the unions on the development of a fair national pay structure. PRP must be replaced with supportive appraisal and automatic pay progression. Previous experience must be recognised by mandatory pay portability between schools and following career breaks – this would tackle the unfair impact of removing pay portability and would help with recruitment and retention. The implementation of a fair national pay structure must be the focus of discussions on terms and conditions, and career pathways.
Pay progression and PRP
One of the significant problems with teacher pay is the length of time it takes a teacher to progress from M1 to the maximum of the Upper Pay Range (UPR). The fact that it routinely takes a decade or even longer for a teacher to reach what is effectively the rate for the job is completely unjustifiable. It reduces the attractiveness of teaching to potential recruits and existing teachers. It is another example of how teachers are undervalued and how this damages recruitment and retention.
Progression becomes more difficult onto and on the UPR. The application requirement to be paid on the UPR represents an unacceptable barrier to the pay progression teachers deserve; we note that in Wales this requirement is being removed and as a step towards the fairer system we need this should be immediately replicated in England. Teachers on the UPR face unreasonable additional demands, simply because they are on the UPR. The UPR was originally conceived as a mechanism to value classroom teaching in its own right, but has evolved into something completely different.
The NEU’s demand for a mandatory six-point classroom teacher pay scale, with automatic progression and no artificial barrier to progress such as the current threshold, would properly value teachers’ acquisition of experience and expertise, and would support both recruitment and retention.
Last year we welcomed your decision to remove the obligation on schools to operate PRP – but we said at the time that this did not go far enough.
The provisions in the draft STPCD allow schools to use performance/capability as a reason to deny pay progression. In effect this gives schools an incentive to use unfair and discriminatory reasons to deny pay progression. The need for fairness supports the NEU’s case that pay progression should be automatic and annual, with separate fair and non-discriminatory capability policies.
The annual NEU Pay and Progression surveys have provided extensive evidence for many years of the unfairness caused by PRP. Teachers are graduate professionals who demand and deserve annual and automatic pay progression. No school or academy should be allowed to continue using PRP. All pay progression, for teachers and school leaders, should be automatic and annual.
Targeted pay
Despite the united opposition of the unions to such proposals, the STRB returns to the issue of so-called “targeted” pay. It suggests that it or another body be invited to work on this issue. We completely reject this suggestion and call on you to do likewise.
It is of course always possible to identify differences in recruitment and retention problems across the huge school system. The key point, however, is that teaching has a systemic recruitment and retention problem that is evident across the school system and can only be addressed by a fully funded, significant and undifferentiated pay correction applied equally to all teachers alongside improvements in workload for all teachers.
“Targeted” pay would add to, not solve, the systemic recruitment and retention problem. It would exacerbate the already significant problems of unfairness and lack of transparency in pay arrangements. It would rightly be seen as unfair by teachers. Previous “targeting” of pay at early career resulted in fury from experienced teachers and contributed to retention problems. The focus must be on properly valuing the job of teaching in itself, without differentiating between teachers.
Multi Year Awards
The STRB notes the potential benefits of multi-year awards. Any discussions on multi-year awards must include agreeing appropriate safeguards including on inflation and earnings increases during the period concerned.
School pay policies
From member feedback, we know that the STPCD statutory guidance on the review and transparency of school pay policies is not enough to support transparency on pay policy, pay structures and pay decisions in schools. The STPCD must include stronger prescription on appropriate negotiation with teachers and their union representatives including comprehensive and robust data on pay outcomes and decisions in the school. This is vital to support fairness and transparency in pay.
TLR Payments
It is important to recognise the major problems with wider TLR payment issues. Despite the statement in the STPCD that teachers cannot “be expected to take on the responsibility of, and accountability for, a subject area or to manage other teachers without appropriate additional payment. Responsibilities of this nature should be part of a post that is in the leadership group or linked to a post which attracts a TLR1 or TLR2,” many teachers are indeed pressured to undertake such responsibilities without the appropriate TLR payment – or indeed in some cases without any TLR payment at all.
Teachers in primary settings face particular obstacles to accessing TLR payments and this is also true of many secondary teachers. Many other teachers get a TLR payment that is too low to properly reflect the additional responsibilities concerned.
As with other elements of pay, TLR payments have been significantly cut in real terms since 2010. School funding pressures result in teachers being unfairly denied the TLR payments they deserve, undermining career development and contributing to recruitment and retention problems.
There is too much discretion for schools on allowances. As with other aspects of the pay structure, greater clarity is needed to support equitable pay decisions. Many teachers miss out on the TLRs or SEN allowances they should receive and teachers undertaking similar levels of additional responsibility receive different levels of TLR payment or SEN allowance. We continue to call for guaranteed and appropriate payments for additional responsibilities based on transparent and fair criteria within a mandatory national pay structure.
The NEU welcomes the removal of the STPCD provision that endorsed differential and detrimental treatment of part time teachers bearing the full responsibilities of a TLR1 or TLR2. The change should be mandatory for all schools from 1 September 2025, instead of allowing them to wait until 1 September 2026 before implementing the change.
The revision has highlighted flaws in the STPCD TLR arrangements. Revisions to the language in the draft STPCD will assist schools in making equitable pay decisions. Suggested revisions to the draft STPCD 2025 can be found in the separate Appendix attached to this response.
The consequences in schools of the current language in the STPCD include the following.
- Many primary schools avoid awarding TLRs, leading to inequalities and inconsistencies.
- Lack of transparency and standardisation: no consistent way to evaluate or justify TLRs.
- Discretionary and haphazard TLR allocation: Some significant responsibilities attract no payment.
- Workload vs Pay: Teachers are often given additional tasks framed as “career development” without a TLR payment.
- Some teachers are told they must accept additional responsibilities without TLRs to progress from M6 to the UPR.
- Women, overseas-trained, and disabled teachers are particularly vulnerable to being under-recognised or underpaid.
- There’s no established weighting system for TLR responsibilities, leading to inequity even among staff doing equivalent work.
Responsibilities versus duties
The objective of a TLR payment is to reward teachers for taking on additional responsibilities for which they are accountable (para 20.1 STPCD 2025). A responsibility will necessarily incorporate a number of duties but the concept of a responsibility is broader and deeper than simply a set of duties. Confusion has arisen because the text of STPCD suggests that the depth and breadth of a responsibility is measured only by duties. The confusion arising from the “duties-based” language has led to inconsistency, inequality and inequity. Emphasis should remain on responsibility rather than duties when allocating TLRs.
Responsibility versus progression
The distinction between pay progression and responsibility payments is often misunderstood, leading to inconsistency and potential unlawful pay decisions.
Pay progression is a pay award in recognition of a teacher’s accumulated/gained experience. This is distinct from a responsibility payment which is a pay award in recognition of a teacher assuming responsibility for ‘ensuring the continued delivery of high-quality teaching and learning’ and ‘for which the teacher is made accountable.’ Clearer guidance on this distinction would aid school leaders in devising staffing structures and school pay architecture.
Black teachers and TLRs
The NEU’s recent qualitative study on the experiences of Black teachers in England (not yet published) shows that there is a recurring theme of unequal recognition and reward for taking on additional responsibilities in schools and colleges. We highlight below the observations made in the report by Dr Zubaida Haque.
Participants said they were not compensated for pastoral and diversity work, which were often referred to as ‘passion projects’ by leadership. Instead, only colleagues who undertook roles traditionally associated with the award of teaching and learning responsibilities were appropriately remunerated.
Among the focus group participants, almost all took on additional responsibilities – several related to behaviour management or diversity initiatives – without appropriate financial compensation or acknowledgement: “I’m always asked to speak in assemblies during Black History Month. But never asked to lead CPD or curriculum development.” (Asma, 5 years of teaching, Asian, South West England.)
Almost all the Black participants spoke about instances in their career, including ongoing roles, where they were expected to carry out EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) work, on top of their normal roles, with minimal support and financial compensation.
In addition, TLR payments were often not given/withheld, replaced instead with inadequate time allowances, or frozen indefinitely over the next few years. One Black teacher spoke about repeatedly being promised remuneration for roles that never materialized. Another participant - Mila, a Head of Department, recounted being expected to take on multiple leadership roles without compensation: “I think twice in my career and in two different schools, I was expected to wear two hats. And without any compensation. So, I was supposed to be head of department and also head of year, and they would call it head of faculty. I would not get any compensation for the extra responsibilities. When I did ask, I was told that well there was no budget for it anyway.” (Mila, 10+ years of teaching, Head of Department, London.)
Other Black participants spoke about a sense of their contribution or labour being devalued – with important diversity work being trivialized and receiving time allowances for taking on leadership roles instead of appropriate remuneration. Nadia, a Phase Leader in London, explained:“Reading for Pleasure lead – it’s something I enjoy, but not compensated for.. Author visits were done in my own time.”
Uncompensated diversity work was a recurring theme, often referred to dismissively as “passion projects” by leadership.
It is clear that in addition to the amendment of STPCD arrangements for the pro-rating of TLR payments, there should also be a broader recognition of responsibilities that attract TLR payments.
Recruitment and retention incentives and benefits
In the draft STPCD, we request that paragraph 27.2 is amended as follows with the underlined text added: “Where the relevant body or, where it is the employer in the case of an unattached teacher, the authority, is making one or more such payment, or providing such financial assistance, support or benefits in one or more cases, the relevant body or authority must conduct a regular formal review (including an equal pay audit) of all such awards.”
Workload
Excessive workload, heightened intensity of work, and a lack of wellbeing are the key reasons teachers and leaders leave the profession, fuelling a recruitment and retention crisis. The School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) states that “unmanageable working hours negatively impact recruitment and retention.” Unless workload is reduced and teachers achieve a reasonable work/life balance, the retention crisis will persist, damaging the quality of education for young people. Significant efforts to reduce workload, enhance work/life balance, and offer flexible working options are essential for ensuring an adequate supply of teachers and school leaders.
The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report on the teacher labour market in England for 2025 highlights significant challenges the government faces in recruiting and retaining teachers. The NFER report strongly emphasises the necessity for more focused efforts to reduce teachers’ and leaders' working hours and overall workload to enhance retention, particularly in a competitive job market. Surveys repeatedly indicate that high workload and stress are the primary reasons education staff leave the profession. The NEU calls for effective workload reductions that positively impact staff retention, support the work of the Improving Education Together (IET) board, and for the funding needed to improve wellbeing and access to flexible working.
Reforms must acknowledge that teaching is predominantly a female profession, with high workload and inflexible hours disproportionately affecting those who have caregiving responsibilities, exacerbating the gender pay gap. Data shows that women in their 30s, often managing young children, leave the profession at higher rates than their peers. Therefore, all reforms should promote part-time and job-share career pathways while removing the stigma associated with part-time work and facilitating women’s progression into leadership roles. This includes eliminating obstacles for part-time work requests, ensuring TLR payments reflect appropriate responsibility levels, and making all leadership positions available on a job-share basis.
With approximately 76% of the teaching workforce female, workload pressures disproportionately impact women. The STRB indicates that a growing number of female teachers aged 30-39 are leaving the profession, highlighting that workload issues are gendered and influenced largely by childcare responsibilities.
The STRB’s call for “immediate and longer-term action… to make the teaching profession more attractive” is a priority echoed by the NEU. Addressing excessive workload is essential to prevent the further loss of experienced, often female, teachers.
Currently, the STPCD includes a clause requiring teachers to work unlimited "reasonable additional hours," leading to open-ended working hours. This clause should be abolished or strictly capped for teachers and leaders. The NEU calls for amendments to the STPCD, ensuring no teacher or leader is compelled to work beyond 1,265 directed hours (full-time) or the pro rata equivalent. Any additional duties should be voluntary or formally agreed upon and compensated, protecting work/life balance and aligning teaching with professions that guarantee maximum working hours.
Moreover, the STRB is right to advocate for a significant change in flexible working arrangements. The NEU supports the proposal that it should be mandatory for all schools to develop, publish, and implement their flexible working policies, with accountability assigned to senior leaders and governors. Such policies should include practices like remote PPA time, staggered start/end times, compressed or annualised hours, term-time leave, phased retirement options, and four-day work weeks. Actively promoting various flexible working methods at every level will broaden the talent pool, enhance recruitment and retention (especially for teachers who are parents and caregivers), and improve overall wellbeing. Successful flexible working practices should be shared across the sector for widespread implementation.
Workload reforms must include strong wellbeing support. The Staff Wellbeing Charter should be mandated in all schools and promote necessary measures like dedicated wellbeing time, senior roles for staff welfare, embedding mental health awareness into the STPCD as part of professional development, providing access to support services for staff, and ensuring union health and safety reps are plugged in. The clear link between staff wellbeing and retention demands funding for essential wellness initiatives.
Alongside the pay correction and improvements to pay structure we advocate, addressing excessive workload, improving work/life balance, and enhancing flexible working opportunities are necessary to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis in education. By focusing on these areas, we can create a more sustainable and supportive environment for educators, ultimately benefiting the quality of education students receive. Immediate and effective reforms are essential to retaining experienced staff, particularly female teachers, while fostering an inclusive and thriving teaching profession.
Supply Teachers
The STRB Report acknowledges legitimate concerns put forward by consultees regarding the use of commercial supply agencies, summarised as poor value for money, citing an estimated annual spend of £1.5 billion or 4.4% of the overall teacher paybill, together with issues around disproportionate profits, supply teachers’ pay and conditions and the wider impact on schools and pupils.
The report confirms that in oral evidence this year, STRB raised the concerns of consultees, highlighted to them over several years, with you and that you informed the STRB that officials are currently examining these issues. The STRB encouraged you to share your officials’ findings with them and other consultees when the work has been completed. We would welcome that and confirm our commitment to identifying solutions.
The STRB report suggests that a barrier to supply teachers being brought within the scope of the STPCD is their view that “the role of supply teachers is not always comparable to that of permanent members of staff who are obliged to carry out the full range of teachers’ professional duties.” There are nationally agreed contractual systems operating in Northern Ireland and Scotland for example, which deal with those matters and we would welcome the opportunity to develop elements of those alternatives to deliver improvements in England for all concerned.
Pensions flexibility
The NEU opposes a flexible benefits approach on pensions. Ultimately, calls for flexible benefits stem from the fact that pay has been cut by a fifth against RPI inflation since 2010. Teachers are being invited to get back to the pay level they should have had by trading their pension. The NEU can easily foresee a situation where trading pension is the ‘solution’ to any year where there is a pay freeze or pay rise below inflation. We believe pay and pension should be treated separately and that the pay losses against RPI inflation since 2010 must be urgently reversed.
In the event that pay was at the correct level, the NEU would still have severe reservations about a flexible benefits approach. Human beings tend to over-value current returns over future provision. There would always be the incentive for younger teachers to take the higher salary in the moment above future pension provision - and the relative youth of the teaching workforce in England means that these teachers may not have the opportunity to make up provision in future years. Pension provision is a good thing as it encourages a retirement free from poverty and allows maintenance of a standard of living close to that pertaining during working life. It should be encouraged, not subtly discouraged in order to offset poor pay increases.
The NEU supports greater use of flexible retirement (phased retirement in Teachers’ Pension Scheme parlance). Greater employee understanding of phased retirement would encourage take-up, but phased retirement is granted at the discretion of the employer. In order to have higher levels of phased retirement, employers must demonstrate willingness to accept greater flexibility in employment patterns. The alternative approach would be to change regulations to allow teachers the right to take phased retirement.
The further education teaching workforce
While it remains our view that the STRB should not seek to influence the outcome of further education or sixth form college pay recommendations - both of which are subject to the collective bargaining arrangements denied to school teachers - we nevertheless note with interest the brief findings of the STRB at s.3.5 of the report.
Pay for a sixth form college teacher on pay point 9 in a sixth form college has fallen by 22% since 2010 relative to RPI inflation. This state of affairs developed through the funding gap that opened up in the decade from 2010-2020, with cuts to the student funding rate and a restricted funding formula. While there have been some recent improvements to funding, 16-19 education needs a major funding injection to make good the losses of the past decade.
Further education teacher pay is significantly worse than in schools, as noted by the report. This is, as the report observes, due in part to the collapse in funding for 16-19 education noted above as well as wider cuts to adult education and skills provision. The detrimental effects of under-funding further education cannot be overstated and the sector urgently requires long-term, consistent funding at a far higher level than it currently receives.
The report elides somewhat the fragmentation of pay bargaining in further education, which as our submission detailed was a direct consequence of the removal of national terms and conditions (referred to as the 'Silver Book') for further education teachers in the early 1990s. Any response by government to address the effects of chronically low pay in further education on teacher recruitment and retention must actively facilitate the introduction of binding national bargaining in further education, covering terms and conditions as well as well pay. Our submission notes the success of similar arrangements in Scotland in particular: there is no reason for this not to be implemented in England.
Overseas trained teachers
We call for the following changes to the STPCD on these issues.
At “An unqualified teacher who becomes qualified” (page 24): we have received a lot of feedback from overseas trained members in the past few months. On each occasion, they have expressed irritation at being referred to as “unqualified teachers” when many are extremely experienced with many years of teaching practice behind them. We appreciate that this paragraph doesn’t apply only to overseas trained teachers, but it would be more considerate of their circumstances if the paragraph was renamed “Gaining Qualified Teacher Status” or “A teacher who gains Qualified Teacher Status.”
At “Allowance payable to unqualified teachers” (page 29): apart from changing the title to “Allowance payable to teachers without QTS” for the reasons mentioned earlier, we wish to reiterate the points we made to the STRB last year about OTTs, as follows.
“In its response to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) call for evidence, the NEU highlighted the pay inequalities arising from the lack of parity between teachers who qualified in the UK and teachers who qualified abroad. Overseas trained teachers (OTTs) are told their salaries before they arrive, but they are not told that they may be paid on average ten thousand pounds less than their colleagues to do the same work (i.e. because they are paid on the Unqualified Teacher Pay Scale despite being qualified and doing the work of a qualified teacher). They are not given the details of how hard/slow the route to qualified teacher status (QTS) is, and they are often promised that their schools will sponsor their route to QTS only to encounter excuses for delay once they are in the UK.
Arguably, the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD), which permits significant pay differences between teachers with and without UK QTS, embeds the less favourable treatment of teachers who qualified abroad.
The DfE’s ‘Managing Teachers Pay’ document says: ‘Schools are also free to recognise in salaries the international experience that teachers returning from overseas may have.’
Currently, not all teaching experience from abroad qualifies for QTS, which is a great disadvantage to overseas trained teachers who begin teaching at the bottom of the unqualified teacher pay scale. It would be helpful to this cohort, who are often ethnic minorities, if the international experience of teachers, not only returning from overseas, but also ‘coming from’ overseas, could be recognised when determining their remuneration package.”
Salary sacrifice arrangements
We continue to seek improvements to the existing limited STPCD arrangements are limited, which have not been changed for some time. We seek discussions with DfE officials on extending the scope of the salary sacrifice arrangements in the STPCD.
Yours sincerely
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary National Education Union
[1] STRB 35th Report, page 8.