Teachers in Northern Ireland have accepted a 5.5 per cent pay rise, which will push the starting salary for graduate teachers up to £31,650, while also securing an independent review of workloads.
The Northern Ireland Teachers’ Council (NITC), which is comprised of five unions, agreed to the revised pay offer from the management side of the Teachers’ Negotiating Committee on 18 March, having rejected two previous offers.
The pay increase is expected to come into effect for most teachers in May, with full-time teachers on the starting salary receiving a £1,237.50 back payment (excluding statutory deductions) for the period covering 1 September 2024 to 31 May 2025.
NI teacher pay deal
Teachers higher up the pay scale will receive larger increases of around £1,900 to £2,500 a year. For example, a full-time teacher on upper pay scale point 3 will be handed £1,913.25 in back pay (before statutory deductions) for the same period.
The deal concludes a period of industrial action short of strikes and averts the potential for disruptive mass strikes. It will cost taxpayers £48.5 million for the 2024-25 financial year with subsequent full-year costs of £83 million.
The agreement follows intensive meetings between Northern Ireland’s education minister, Paul Givan, and the NITC.
The NITC said “an intervention” by Mr Givan on teachers’ workloads had been instrumental to securing the deal, with the minister proposing a commission to conduct an independent review into “all aspects of workload”.
The commission will be led by a three-member panel comprised of an independent chair appointed by Mr Givan, a member nominated by the unions and a member nominated by management. It is scheduled to report its findings by the end of November 2025.
Mr Givan welcomed the decision by the NITC: “The end of industrial action will increase stability in our schools and provide the basis for continued improvement throughout the education sector.”
He added that he had listened to the unions’ workload concerns and wanted to “make meaningful progress on the issues to ensure that teachers have the time and space to focus on what matters most - teaching, learning and supporting pupils in the classroom”.
‘Unsustainable’ workload pressures
The national secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union in Northern Ireland, Graham Gault, said: “We are grateful for [Mr Givan’s] recognition of the unsustainable workload pressures affecting both teachers and school leaders.”
In April 2024, the teachers’ pay settlement saw the starting salary for teachers raised by almost 25 per cent while other teachers were given a pay rise of 12.5 per cent on average, at a cost of £170 million a year.
New teachers in Northern Ireland are now paid £7,513 more than they were before the devolved government at Stormont returned in February 2024 after a 24-month absence.
In addition to the teachers’ pay award and workload review, the deal will see a 5.5 per cent increase to the teaching and special needs allowances, backdated to 1 September 2024.
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