Teachers are having to use food banks and charitable assistance as the cost of living crisis hits, sector leaders have warned.
Speaking at an event on teacher retention run by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) today, Jane Peckham, deputy general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, and Sufian Sadiq, director of teaching school at Chiltern Learning Trust, both told of teachers having to use food banks.
Mr Sadiq said that he was a trustee at a food bank that had seen teachers turning up “because of the energy hikes” and other cost-of-living issues.
Ms Peckham revealed that she too had heard of teachers using food banks, and that many were also taking on second jobs due to the current cost-of-living crisis.
The revelations come after headteachers and education leaders said they were “disappointed” by the chancellor’s decision not to increase education funding in his Spring Statement today.
Speaking at NFER’s ”Teacher supply after the pandemic” webinar today, Mr Sadiq said people often “misunderstood how difficult life is at the moment”, and added that when teachers were being paid at current levels and the cost of living was going up, it was a “really tough start to a teacher’s career”.
He also said the cost-of-living crisis was having an impact on recruitment, adding: “We have to accept the fact that when there’s a cost-of-living crisis, you’ve got to be fairly brave, with savings, to say, ‘right, I want to follow my passion to teach, and therefore give up [my job for] a year of training’.”
Ms Peckham talked about many of the sacrifices that teachers were having to make at the moment due to the cost-of-living crisis.
She said 54 per cent of NASUWT members had reported having to cut back their expenditure on food during 2021 in a recent survey, and that 12 per cent had taken a second job.
She added: “Most worryingly, teachers have reported to us that they are having to use food banks and to seek other charitable assistance.”
The lack of extra funding in chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Spring Statement issued today was heavily criticised by heads and teacher leaders this afternoon.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said if the government was serious about protecting living standards, it should reverse the “real-terms cuts” to teacher pay.
Reacting to the chancellor’s statement to MPs, she said: “Instead, with RPI inflation reaching 8.2 per cent and in the midst of the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, the government plans yet more real-terms pay cuts for teachers,” she said.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he was “disappointed” that financial pressures facing schools had not been addressed amid rising inflation rates.
“We are disappointed that the chancellor failed to address the financial pressures facing the education system amidst soaring inflation, and the fact that many experienced teachers and leaders will see the real value of their pay fall under the government’s current pay proposals,” he said.
The Department for Education (DfE) said in its submission to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) earlier this month that it wants statutory starting pay to increase by 8.9 per cent this year and 7.1 per cent next year.
But the proposed increases for more experienced teachers are lower at 3 per cent in 2022 and 2 per cent in 2023, equating to an average rise of just under 4 per cent across all teachers, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculated earlier in March.
The IFS said that given rising levels of inflation, the proposals for teacher pay would see a real-terms cut of 5 per cent for more experienced staff between 2021 and 2023.