Education secretary Nicky Morgan has promised to produce “detailed evidence” to support the case for continued pay restraint for teachers in England and Wales.
Her comments have sparked warnings that the recruitment and retention crisis will only be made worse by capping pay rises and depriving others of any pay rises at all.
It comes as Ms Morgan last week wrote to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) asking for its recommendations on how to apply the one per cent public sector pay award for 2016/17.
The rise was set out by chancellor George Osborne in the Summer Budget and continues five years of pay restraint for teachers. A two-year public sector pay freeze was followed by one per cent rises across the board in September 2013 and 2014.
This September saw another one per cent increase, except for the upper end of the main teachers’ pay scale where a two per cent increase was implemented in a bid to tackle recruitment and retention problems.
It means that the current main pay range for 2015/16 is £22,244 to £32,831, while the upper pay range is £35,218 to £37,871.
However, since the introduction of performance-related pay, the Department for Education has stopped publishing pay scale points, meaning it is for schools to decide how to apply the annual increases.
This, combined with the on-going funding crisis in schools, means that not all teachers have seen pay rises in recent years.
For example, research by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) shows that only 43.9 per cent of teachers received the September 2014 rise – with women more likely to have lost out. A similar survey by the NASUWT found that, by December 2014, 51 per cent of their members had not received the rise.
Fears were furthered heightened last month when the chief secretary to the Treasury, Greg Hands, wrote to the STRB suggesting that not every worker should receive the one per cent uplift in 2016/17.
He said: “The government expects pay awards to be applied in a targeted manner to support the delivery of public services, and to address recruitment and retention pressures.
“This may mean that some workers could receive more than one per cent, while others could receive less; there should not be an expectation that every worker will receive a one per cent award.”
Mr Morgan echoed this sentiment in her letter to STRB chair Patricia Hodgson and pledged to submit evidence to the STRB’s review supporting further pay restraint.
She wrote: “In accordance with the chief secretary’s letter, you will want to consider how the pay award should be applied and, in doing so, may wish to consider his comments on recruitment and retention issues; progression pay; the modernisation of terms and conditions; and the continued need for pay restraint.
“I intend to submit for your consideration written evidence that there remains a strong case for continued pay restraint in the public sector. My evidence will provide a detailed account of the teacher labour market based on the latest recruitment and retention data and will contend that the recent pay reforms mean that schools are now best placed to decide how pay awards can be targeted to meet their specific local recruitment and retention needs.”
Ms Morgan has also asked the STRB to consider “additional flexibilities” that might support schools, such as “allowing teachers to move down from the upper pay range to the main pay range”.
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the government’s remit to the STRB “completely ignored the mounting evidence of teacher shortages”.
She continued: “We are already failing to meet our targets for recruiting new teachers. Retention is also in crisis, with more than half of teachers thinking of leaving teaching according to our recent YouGov survey.
“The government’s response is to threaten more pay restraint, pegging pay increases at a maximum of one per cent and depriving many teachers of any pay rise at all. Unless the government changes course on teachers’ pay, it is going to make the teacher recruitment and retention crisis even worse.
“Nicky Morgan is also threatening to introduce changes allowing teachers to be forced to move down the pay scale. We know from experience that changes like this will be used disproportionately against older women teachers and teachers from ethnic communities.”
In September, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said that the Greg Hands letter had compromised the independence of the STRB. She added: “The letter promotes even deeper cuts to teachers’ pay, arrogantly ignoring the evidence of a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching, in which a key driving factor is the decline in teachers’ pay in comparison to other graduate professions. Government policy is rendering the profession unattractive and uncompetitive.”
The STRB has been asked to report back by the end of April 2016.