School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, they might be found by, for example, schools being able to take the opportunity of the national energy contract that the DfE has entered into. We have already seen that schools that take part in that save considerable amounts of money. They might be found in other ways by thinking about the procurement that schools are doing. To emphasise the point I made earlier, we are not asking schools to do this alone, not least given the enormous pressures that we know there are on head teachers; we are standing alongside schools to support them with a wide range of advice and practical things, such as the energy contract, to be able to achieve this.

It is not unreasonable, at a time when we are asking organisations across the public sector to find efficiencies, that a small part of the contribution to the teachers’ pay award should come from efficiency. On top of that, of course, is the considerable investment of £615 million that this Government are making in teachers through the teachers’ pay award.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned bursaries, but art and design and music lag a long way behind science subjects. Do the Government have any intention of increasing those? Science subjects get a considerably higher amount of bursaries than art and design and music do.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

This pay award means that all teachers will now be receiving about a 10% increase, which this Government have been able to deliver. When we are then thinking about specific bursaries and retention incentives, we need to think about those areas where there have been particular difficulties with recruitment as well as those areas that are particularly important for delivering on the Government’s growth objectives. That has been the thinking behind where those additional incentives have gone. However, I reiterate that the basic pay for teachers now means that median or average pay for a teacher is now over £50,000, which strikes me as being the sort of amount of money that we should be willing to provide for those people who are making such a fundamental—the most important—difference in school to our children’s futures.