School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions (England) Order 2021

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the wording of this regret Motion is self-explanatory. When inflation is taken into account, this order amounts to a reduction in pay for all but a very few teachers at the lowest levels of the pay scale. Even there, the increase of £250 is measured against the increase to the national minimum wage. Is that really an appropriate yardstick of the respect which the Government accord to our teachers? It would appear so.

Government policy on teacher pay since 2010 has created significant problems, and the current policy—which is, in effect, a pay freeze—will create further problems. Concerns on the key pay issues for teachers are reflected across the profession, as seen in the joint union response to the School Teachers’ Review Body report, to which the STRB draws attention.

A month ago, the Chancellor’s spending review offered a historic opportunity to demonstrate that this Government value education and educators. Despite his rhetoric, he failed to do so, as does this order.

The aspiration of “levelling up” is a worthy one but government policy on education is achieving the opposite. As the Public Accounts Committee noted in October, education funding policy is actually driving resources away from areas with greater relative need, and the spending review announcements will not address those inequalities.

The Minister may have noticed that yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report which showed that the most deprived fifth of secondary schools have seen their funding cut by 14% in the decade to 2019 compared to a drop of 9% in the least deprived. If the Minister, or indeed anyone else on behalf of the Government, can offer a justification of those figures, I am sure that I would not be alone in being very interested to hear it. For what it is worth, the Institute for Fiscal Studies also says in its report that a teacher’s starting salary of £30,000 and a 3% increase for teachers across the board are “affordable”.

It was with some incredulity that I and many others heard the Chancellor boast in the spending review about restoring school spending to 2010 levels—when Labour was in government. I thank the Minister for the endorsement—however belatedly—by her Government of our Government’s understanding of the level of funding necessary for education. However, the admission that a decade of cuts to education was a mistake went only so far: those 2010 levels of spending will not be restored until 2024. I suggest that that should be a matter not of pride for any Government—more one of embarrassment.

Teacher pay has been eroded in real terms by successive Conservative Governments, increasing the numbers of recently qualified teachers leaving in their first five years. The Government are not obliged to accept the recommendations of the STRB, so it is at least welcome that they have done so on this occasion. However, any additional costs resulting must be fully funded so that school leaders are able to properly reward and retain all their staff.

We cannot understand why the Chancellor and the Government as a whole do not share our view that pay rises are an investment in public services and in ensuring that we have the teachers we need in front of classes. Public sector workers support the economy with their spending on the high street, which they are less able to do if they are struggling to make ends meet. The era of real-terms pay cuts—there has been a 15% reduction since 2010—and an alarming exodus of recently qualified teachers has been wholly destructive and should now end.

According to the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies this order, the DfE says that, while the majority of teachers will not receive a headline pay uplift, teachers earning below the maximum of their pay range may still be eligible for performance-related pay progression. The department says that it remains committed to increasing the teacher starting salary to £30,000—a 2019 manifesto commitment, it should be said—and that while pay restraint in 2021-22 will slow progress towards this commitment, steps taken in recent years, including a 5.5% uplift to starting pay in September 2020, have made

“a substantial difference to the competitiveness of the early career pay offer”.

However, I regret to say that that claim is not substantiated by evidence.

In its report, the STRB warned of a “severe negative impact” on the retention and recruitment of teachers if the pay uplift pause for teachers continued beyond the 2021-22 academic year. That caused it to urge the Government to allow it to make recommendations on pay uplifts for all teachers and school leaders in 2022-23. The Government effectively rebuffed the STRB, merely committing in its response to “reassessing” the pay award position ahead of the 2022-23 pay round. From experience, I suggest that neither teachers nor school leaders will be holding their breath in anticipation of a positive outcome to such a reassessment.

The Government have not only imposed a pay freeze on virtually all teachers in England, they have prevented the STRB from fully considering the impact of that and proposing alternatives. That demonstrates both the weakness of the Government’s case and undermines the role of the STRB. The STRB’s remit is regularly restricted to specific areas of government policy. The teaching unions continue to call for an objective, evidence-based assessment of all the key issues on teacher pay, such as: pay losses against inflation; the impact of pay cuts on teacher supply; and the need for a fair national pay structure, including better pay levels and progression based on experience without the restrictions imposed by performance-related pay.

The national teacher pay structure has been dismantled over recent years, with schools given significant discretion on teacher pay. This pay “flexibility” has not worked, as evidenced by the development of serious teacher supply problems over the past decade. With teachers and school leaders having been denied the pay progression they deserve as they acquire experience and expertise in their roles, I believe the case for a return to a national pay structure to protect the fairness of pay arrangements is a strong one.

Ministers appear to believe that levels of remuneration for teachers are not a big issue because their pay is significantly higher than average. Yes, the average teacher salary in 2020-21 was £38,400, although that figure was lower in the nursery and primary sectors. But the profession needs to be able to compete with other graduate professions, so comparing teacher pay with average pay across the whole economy is not only misleading but does not serve any meaningful purpose. As the STRB has pointed out, the position of teacher pay in the graduate labour market has declined significantly, and the decline correlates with the real-terms cuts to teacher pay since 2010 and with the development of serious teacher supply problems over that period.

I will not enter into any detail on performance-related pay other than to say that the case against it is clear and it is opposed across the teaching profession by teachers and school leaders. It is being dropped by an increasing number of multi-academy trusts and the Welsh Government have dropped it from teacher pay.

The second part of this regret Motion refers to the consultation process taking place over the school summer holidays. The Minister will be familiar with this issue because I have raised it with her twice already in relation to other consultations in the short time since she took up her post. I may be wrong, but I sensed on those occasions that she did not disagree with me.

Four consultees on this order concluded in a joint submission that the timing of the consultation had created significant problems for consulting meaningfully and with regard to planning at school level. It seems that only the Government have failed to notice that most people take their main holidays between mid-July and mid-September.

I note the excuse offered by the DfE in response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House. In its report on this order, the committee recalls that it has previously expressed concerns about the timing of the consultation on teachers’ pay. Asked why the consultation had again taken place over the summer, the DfE told the committee that, as with the situation over the past four years, HM Treasury and No. 10 now insist that all review body reports and consultations should be launched on the same day. In a mea culpa, the DfE then went on to state:

“So, although we would have been ready and happy to publish much earlier than we did, we were subject to the decision from HMT and No10.”


If that is indeed the case, the remedy is quite straightforward and surely not onerous: the Government should alter the date on which all review body reports and consultations are launched. They could be brought forward from October, but even if they went beyond that month it would matter not, as the provisions of these orders are currently made retrospective, with September being the month from which they apply.

I suggest that what needs to be applied here is common sense. Again, I have a suspicion that the Minister may be sympathetic to the case that I am advancing, so will she give me an assurance that she will discuss this with fellow Ministers in her department with a view to the DfE taking the lead in injecting that shot of common sense? After all, the summer holidays are more of an issue within her department than any other, and, as we know from its own words, the DfE is ready and happy to publish much earlier. So I say to the Minister: over to you. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, there is a wonderful expression that infant teachers often use: I am sad in my heart. I am sad in my heart that teachers in maintained schools are in this position and effectively having a pay cut. If we have a system where we consult on pay and conditions, surely the hallmarks of good consultation are, first, that it should be at a time when we can maximise that consultation and not at the tail end of the summer period—as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson—and, secondly, that we really listen to the views of those people who know what they are talking about. In the last education debate in this Chamber, we all extolled the virtues of teachers and how important they were to young lives. We spoke of how we should value them, reward them and consider their worth. And yet this happens, so, yes, I am sad in my heart.

Let us understand what all the teacher associations or teacher unions have said. All have had the same reaction: that this will undermine our attempts to stem the constant haemorrhaging of teachers. Geoff Barton, the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said:

“Teacher and leader salaries have already failed to keep pace with inflation over the course of the past decade and the imposition of what is effectively another pay cut undermines retention of existing staff and makes salaries less competitive.”


The national teachers’ union described the Government as being “out of touch”. Its joint General Secretary, Kevin Courtney, said:

“The government’s pay freeze for teachers is demoralising”


and causes

“recruitment difficulties as we come out of the pandemic.”

It was interesting that he should use the word “pandemic”, because, at the time of the pandemic, the Government said how important teachers were and how much we valued them. Then we hear from the head teachers’ union, NAHT, which says the same thing: that this will be challenging in retaining and recruiting teaching staff, particularly for senior positions, and, again, that it is seen as

“eroding leadership supply, and risks prompting an exodus of leaders when the pandemic finally lifts”.

Finally, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers carried out a survey in which 94% of teachers said they disagreed with the pause on pay uplifts, with 83% saying that it would have a negative impact on the recruitment and retention of teachers.

So I would be interested to hear what the Minister says. I have one cheeky, direct question for her: if it is all right for Peers to have their allowance updated for inflation, why is it not all right for teachers in the maintained sector?

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I fully endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The figures on teachers’ pay make depressing reading. Since 2010, teachers’ salaries have been in serious decline in real terms—we have heard the figures from the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Teachers on main scale 6, which is where they can get to before going through the threshold, would need an increase of 17% to make up for the loss against inflation since 2010. That is not even to get an increase; it is to make up for the loss since 2010. On the other pay spine, an increase of 21% would be needed, and the same figure holds good for the leadership group of teachers.

The School Teachers’ Review Body notes that teachers’ pay has worsened in the graduate labour market, as we have already heard. Is that not ironic, since, without teachers, there would be no graduates?

But worse, some would say, even than the overall level of remuneration is the lack of any coherence in the pay structure, bringing with it inherent unfairness and injustices. Performance-related pay, which was largely anathema to the profession when it was imposed, has failed on its own terms, with many teachers and school leaders seeing pay progression blocked even when they have met or even exceeded the objectives that have been set for them. This simply cannot be right, and it brings the system categorically into disrepute.

The NEU, the National Education Union—for which I worked in its predecessor form of the National Union of Teachers, the NUT—is very clear in calling for a national pay structure, with appropriate pay levels and pay progression to embed competitive and fair pay with a rate for the job. There are obvious advantages to such a system. It would assist teacher mobility and career development, allowing teachers to move between schools in the full knowledge of what their pay would be. As a young teacher and even a somewhat older teacher, I benefited from the national pay scales. Teachers, I am bound to say, were not well paid, but at least they knew what they could expect to be paid, both when they began teaching and as they progressed through their career.

It seems no coincidence that both teacher recruitment and retention are suffering under the present system of incoherence and pay cuts in real terms. The National Education Union and other unions have called for a fundamental review of issues relating to teachers’ pay. Performance-related pay certainly needs to be reviewed and revised. As my noble friend Lord Watson said, the Welsh Government and an increasing number of multi-academy trusts have already dropped it from any consideration of salaries of teachers whom they employ.

A coherent and fair pay structure would certainly render teaching much more attractive than it is now. While it is not an STRB matter, a root-and-branch reform of Ofsted, whose inspections are leading to an increased exodus from the profession, is also long overdue.

Finally, on timing and consultation for STRB reports in relation to teachers’ pay and conditions, these really should be held in term time. I hope that the Minister will agree, given her and other Ministers’ often repeated respect for and gratitude to our teachers.