Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by the Minister of State for Schools on 30 June (190680) stating that schools will be expected to manage the upcoming teacher pay award from within existing funding, how many schools they estimate have surpluses which would enable them to do so without affecting current spending commitments.

The government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations for 2023/24 teacher pay awards in full. This means that teachers and headteachers in maintained schools will receive an award of 6.5%, the highest STRB award in three decades. The department will be providing an additional £525 million to schools this year, to support schools with the teachers’ pay award, and £900 million in financial year 2024/25, and as the unions have agreed, this means that the award is properly funded.

This is on top of funding totals previously announced, meaning that school funding is rising by over £3.9 billion in the 2023/24 financial year alone, on top of a £4 billion cash increase last year. Combined, that represents a 16% increase in just two years. Next year, school funding will be over £59.6 billion, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil.

This additional funding will enable headteachers to continue to invest in the areas that positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most, as well as help schools to manage higher costs, including teacher pay awards.

Each year the department publishes an assessment of schools’ costs and funding, which informs what pay award we judge to be affordable for schools from within this existing funding. In March 2023, the department set out a calculation that schools, on average, could afford a pay award of 4% from within existing funding.

The department decided to fund the 2023 pay award from a lower affordability figure than that calculation, funding the costs of the pay award above 3.5%, on average, rather than above our 4% national affordability calculation. This is a more generous funding offer than in March.