Alan Milburn: give the best teachers a 25 per cent pay rise

26th March 2015, 1:00pm

Teachers should be offered a 25 per cent pay rise if they teach in a challenging school, the Labour MP and government adviser Alan Milburn will say.

Mr Milburn, who chairs the government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, is to call for a “teachers’ pay premium” under which 2,000 of the best teachers would be given the 25 per cent increase in salary for teaching in “challenging” schools.

Speaking at an event organised by the Policy Exchange thinktank later today, Mr Milburn will say that teachers must be given “financial incentives” to work in disadvantaged areas.

He will also call for the creation of a teaching “fast stream”, which would allow good teachers to be promoted rapidly but only if they spent time teaching in disadvantaged schools.

Mr Milburn will urge the government to commission the School Teachers’ Review Body to create new pay grades that would encourage good teachers to work at challenging schools in areas with the greatest recruitment problems.

He will also say that regional schools commissioners should make sure academies focus on improving teacher quality.

“National pay bargaining has not helped to narrow the attainment gap,” he is due to claim. “The old orthodoxy is not working…A laissez-faire approach of giving schools more freedom and then sitting back to see what happens is not working either”.

Mr Milburn will also warn that 36 per cent of secondary school pupils in deprived areas are taught in schools that require improvement or are inadequate.

Teachers should be paid more, says Pope - 17 March 2015

Top teachers set for 2% pay rise - 12 March 2015