Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Smith of Malvern on 16 December 2025 (HL Deb col 645), whether the 6.5 per cent pay increase over three years that they recommended to the School Teachers’ Review Body will be met through existing budgets or whether cost savings will be required.

We expect that pay awards over the next three years will be covered through a combination of the funding announced at the Spending Review and from schools making a sustained contribution using the support we are making available to maximise value from their budgets.

This is a shared endeavour. We know that the government has a role to play to tackle systemic challenges at a national level, and we have established the Maximising Value for Pupils programme to help schools and groups. The new programme will provide an expanded level of support in the form of benchmark data, toolkits, commercial offers, capability building, case studies, and investment in areas such as technology.