Bridget Phillipson's remit letter to the School Teachers' Review Body

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The Government has today published its remit letter to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) for the 2025-26 teacher pay round. (1) 

The remit letter rightly highlights the central and critical issue of the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. The Government must, however, recognise that a significant pay correction to reverse the huge real terms pay cuts since 2010 is essential to restore the competitiveness of teacher pay and solve the recruitment and retention problems.  

The remit letter highlights the Government’s desire to raise the status of the profession and support teachers, including by promoting flexible working. This is welcome, but the NEU will be pressing the Government for the significant additional investment needed to effectively tackle sky-high workload and work intensity.    

The commitments on better national equalities data and pro rating TLR payments are welcome, but the Government needs to go much further. Teachers need a fair national pay structure including the removal of performance-related pay in all schools, pay progression to recognise the acquisition of experience, and pay portability when teachers move schools. 

The remit letter sets out the Secretary of State’s view that further consideration and detailed sector engagement are needed before any decisions are made on so-called ‘targeted’ pay. We are clear that pay ‘targeting’ is unfair, divisive and creates rather than solves recruitment and retention problems. It should be taken off the agenda altogether. 

Late issuing of the remit under the Conservatives meant teachers having to wait until November to get the pay increase due on 1 September, so we hope that this year’s earlier remit means they will get their 2025-26 increase on time. 

The NEU will continue to press the Government for a major correction in pay and significant improvements in workload. We will also continue to press for the additional Government investment in education needed to improve teacher pay and conditions. The Budget must provide this additional investment as a matter of urgency. Fully funded improvements to pay and conditions are in the interests of parents and pupils as well as of teachers themselves, because teacher shortages and sky-high workload are damaging our educations ervice.     

Commenting on the remit letter, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:  

“The earlier publication of the remit is a welcome early signal that the new Government will give teacher pay the urgent attention it deserves.  Asking the STRB to focus its considerations on widening teacher access to flexible-working options, increasing the flexibility of teaching and learning responsibility payments and committing to publishing pay and equality data addresses long-standing concerns raised by the NEU. 

“The Secretary of State is also right to highlight the need to raise the status of the profession and tackle recruitment and retention – a marked contrast to the head-in-sand approach of successive Tory predecessors.   

“But without a clear recognition of the need for further corrections in pay, teacher pay will remain uncompetitive, teacher shortages will persist and the Government will not achieve its aims.”  

Editor’s Note  

Secretary of State’s letter to Mike Aldred, Chair, STRB: 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-review-body-remit-letter-for-2025 

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