Commenting on the announcement by the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, that the Government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) pay recommendations for 2024/25, Joana Cardim Dias, Senior Researcher for School Workforce at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), said:
“A decade of declining pay competitiveness has contributed to continuing struggles to recruit and retain teachers. Today’s announcement, which follows a 6.5% pay award for in 2023-24, is a positive step towards restoring the pay competitiveness of the teaching profession. Importantly, the pay award is supported by a £1.1bn grant to schools.
“We also welcome the government’s decision to allocate this new grant based on a combination of a per-pupil allocation, a lump sum and a considerable weighting for disadvantaged pupils. The previous Teacher Pay Grant did not acknowledge the extra staffing costs often faced by schools with more disadvantaged pupils, and so this is an important correction.
“Nevertheless, this grant is only for 2024-25 and the government has rightly acknowledged that it will not cover the full years cost of the teacher pay award. In order to support schools to plan effectively, the government needs to provide them with a longer-term funding settlement.”
