Teachers Pay Award

Following the governments acceptance in full of the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), The National Education Union’s (NEU) executive has recommended that its members accept the offer of a 5.5 per cent pay rise for teachers and leaders.

The STRB report called for increases to teachers’ pay of 5.5 per cent at all grades, and a 5.5 per cent increase to all allowance ranges. The 5.5 per cent award will apply from 1 September 2024 and applies to maintained schools, noting that academies have more autonomy over pay, but could choose to implement it.

This will equate to an increase of more than £2,500 for the average teacher, taking the median salary for 2024-25 to over £49,000 according to government analysis.

The union has said that this is a significant first, but not last step towards a long-term correction in teacher pay but stressed that more needs to be done to remedy teacher pay, workload and the recruitment and retention crisis, whilst warning that ministers should be under no illusion that a single pay deal is an end to the matter.

The deal will cost in the region of £1.65 billion over a whole school year. The DfE are reported as saying that schools will receive almost £1.2 billion in additional funding to cover their costs in the 2024-25 financial year.

Whilst the DfE have said that it would “fully fund” both the rise for teachers and leaders and a proposed increase for support staff, there may well be an expectation that schools will also be expected to use “headroom” in their budgets identified by the previous government earlier this year.