Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the teachers' pay settlement on staff recruitment and retention.

Pay awards this year reflect a careful balance between recognising the vital importance of teachers, whilst also delivering value for the taxpayer, not increasing the country’s debt further, and being careful not to drive even higher prices in the future.

The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), as an independent body, has recommended what it believes are the appropriate pay awards for teachers this year. When setting the pay award, the STRB was asked to have regard to the evidence of the national state of teacher and school leader supply, including rates of recruitment and retention.

We have accepted in full the STRB’s recommendations for 2022/23 pay awards and remain on track to deliver our manifesto commitment of a £30,000 starting salary. These recommendations rightly target the highest uplifts at early career teachers, where we know pay has the most impact for recruitment and retention, whilst still providing a significant uplift of 5% to experienced teachers and leaders, which is the highest uplift in 30 years.

The department is addressing a range of factors that influence retention, including, teacher workload. An Education Development Trust report shows that policies such as the department’s school workload reduction toolkit are already having a real impact. The report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-teacher-workload-education-development-trust-report.