Looking at your school’s pay policy
Your first step is to be familiar with your school pay policy’s pay progression criteria and its pay appeals procedure. Here, you will find further steps to take if you decide that the policy itself should be challenged, rather than decisions made under the policy.
In Wales, performance-related pay has been abolished in favour of experience- related pay progression and national pay scales for Wales have been implemented. The advice below relates to the position in England where performance-related pay has not yet been abolished. Members in Wales should refer to the separate teacher pay arrangements in Wales STPCD. All teachers below the maximum of the main or upper pay range are entitled to be considered for pay progression every year – it is not an application process.
Checking the policy’s progression criteria
There are no longer any statutory and nationally-applicable criteria which governing bodies must follow when taking pay progression decisions. The STPCD provides is that pay progression decisions should be based on appraisal outcomes and that the school pay policy should set the criteria to be achieved for progression.
Para 19.2 says that the governing body decides how pay progression will be determined, subject to the following requirements:
"the decision whether or not to award pay progression must be related to the teacher’s performance" as assessed through appraisal;
a written pay recommendation must be made as part of the appraisal report and the governing body "must have regard to this recommendation"; and
"continued good performance as defined by an individual school’s pay policy should give [a teacher] an expectation of progression to the top of their respective pay range".
Para 19.3 requires the governing body to set out clearly in the school’s pay policy how pay progression will be determined.
Schools are therefore allowed to set their own criteria subject only to the requirements in para 19.2 set out above. No statutory national criteria or guidance exist for reference. This makes it harder to argue that pay progression criteria are being incorrectly applied, or that they are incompatible with the STPCD, excessive or otherwise inappropriate.
Criteria must, however, be fair, transparent and objective in order to meet the standards proposed by the DfE’s pay advice that “ “arrangements ... can be applied consistently and pay decisions can be objectively justified” (page 9 column 2).
Criteria which do not meet these requirements should be challenged through collective challenge or pay appeals. Equally obviously, any unfair or inappropriate interpretation of criteria should be challenged as well.
Checking the procedure for taking decisions and making appeals In most schools, the decision on pay will be made by a governors’ committee, which must “have regard” to the reviewer’s pay recommendation and may also seek the views of the head teacher as well. It is possible for governing bodies to delegate pay decisions to head teachers alone – but the NEU and other teacher unions advise strongly against this.
The DfE’s pay advice says that if head teachers think teachers should not progress, they should allow those teachers to attend the governors’ decision meeting (with the right to have a union representative) and present their views before the decision is taken. This is welcome – it is easier to stop decisions being taken than to get them overturned. The NEU believes that this should apply in all schools as part of their pay procedures.
The NEU believes that this should apply in all schools as part of their pay procedures. Regardless of whether the teacher was allowed to be present when the decision was taken, however, there is a formal right of appeal against any decision to deny pay progression. With regard to pay appeals, the DfE’s pay advice identifies a range of possible grounds for appeal (this is not an exhaustive list):
“Teachers have the right to raise formal appeals against pay determinations if, for example, they believe that the person or committee by whom the decision was made:
- incorrectly applied the school’s pay policy;
- incorrectly applied any provision of the STPCD;
- failed to have proper regard to statutory guidance;
- failed to take proper account of relevant evidence;
- took account of irrelevant or inaccurate evidence;
- was biased; or
- unlawfully discriminated against the teacher.”
Pay appeals can be pursued on any of the above grounds, covering situations where teachers are deemed not to have met the required criteria or standards, and can also be pursued on the following grounds as well:
the criteria should be set aside because experience shows that they are excessively or unfairly demanding in practice to an unintended extent (in particular if they do not in practice guarantee progression for “continued good performance”); or the criteria should be set aside because they are irrational or potentially discriminatory.
The NEU’s preferred criteria for pay progression
The NEU argues that all teachers who have had successful appraisal reviews should receive pay progression and that appraisal reviews should be deemed successful unless significant concerns about performance were raised in writing with the teacher during the appraisal cycle and were not sufficiently addressed through support from the school by the conclusion of that process.
The NEU has negotiated pay policies on this basis with many LAs and academy chains and with many individual schools and academies. Pay policies drawn up on this basis will support fair pay progression.
What to do if you decide your policy is unfair or in conflict with NEU policy
If your school’s pay policy sets unfairly high demands for progression or includes criteria which disadvantage teachers in certain groups or with certain protected characteristics (eg older women), it is not too late to organise to secure a different policy. You could use examples of members being treated unfairly in previous years to strengthen the case for changing the policy.
Tackling matters collectively will be a far better approach than trying to deal with problems as individual pieces of casework. Denial of progression to one or two teachers this year will be followed by an ever increasing number of teachers losing out as time goes by if it is the result of unfair demands or inappropriate/discriminatory criteria.