The Department for Education wants to find out how teachers and headteachers think the pay system is affecting recruitment and retention.
The move comes amid continuing concerns about teacher shortages and a big fall in the number of people applying for teacher training courses this year.
The department is advertising for a £55,000 contract to research the impact of the pay framework, following the introduction of performance-related pay for teachers from 2014.
Last July, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), which makes recommendations to ministers about teacher pay, called on the government to “review the national pay and allowance framework for classroom teachers” as part of its commitment to strengthen teaching as a graduate profession.
Now, the DfE is seeking someone “to undertake a research project to understand the perceptions, opinions and experiences of teachers/leaders and governors to teacher pay frameworks and their place in recruitment, retention and career progression”.
The contract document says the aims include giving the STRB robust evidence about the perceptions of teachers and leaders on the current pay framework and how it is “supporting teachers’ career pathways”.
The impact of teacher pay reforms
The project also aims to understand what teachers and leaders think about teacher pay scales, including the use of teaching and learning responsibility allowances, the main pay range and the upper pay range.
The research is set to cover primary and secondary schools, academies and non-academies, as well as teachers on the cusp of the main to upper pay range.
The document adds that the study is expected to include interviews with teachers who are near to the start of their careers “to understand their perceptions of the likely career progression and pay ranges and allowances available to them”.
Last October, the DfE published research that included the results of interviews with headteachers in 2016 who “felt it was too soon to tell whether the pay reforms would impact on teacher recruitment and retention”.
The closing date for expressions of interest is 14 March, with the contract due to run between May and the end of August.
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