Best Practice

Pay and conditions: Passing the threshold

Teachers who have passed the threshold and moved onto the upper pay range should be making ‘substantial and sustained’ contributions to their schools. Brian Rossiter looks at how the threshold system should work and some of the related challenges facing schools

The introduction of the upper pay range (UPR) in 2000 has had a long a chequered history. It is only recently that the errors of its introduction are coming home to roost.

Access to UPR has always been on the basis “that the teacher’s achievements and contribution to an educational setting or settings are substantial and sustained”.

This progression criterion has never been defined in regulation (School Teachers’ Pay & Conditions Document – STPCD) and left schools defining their own understanding of the wording. Neither has the second criterion for access been defined, i.e. “that the teacher is highly competent in all elements of the relevant standards”.

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