Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the effect of the public sector pay cap on the recruitment and retention of staff in schools.

The public sector pay cap is no longer in place and a more flexible approach to public sector pay has been adopted. The Department set out to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in their 2018 remit that they should utilise this flexibility to target the 2018 pay award towards promoting recruitment and retention. The STRB’s 28th report was published on 28 July. This, and the Government’s response to it, can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-review-body-28th-report-2018.

The Department has introduced changes to teachers’ pay that have been introduced over the last four years, following the STRB’s recommendations, to give greater autonomy to schools to decide how to reward their staff. This increased flexibility helps schools to attract and retain the best teachers and to target any school-level recruitment and retention problems they may have, including addressing teacher shortages in specific subjects. Research suggests that pay is not the main driver of teachers leaving, and teachers do not tend to leave for better paid jobs.