There is some hopeful speculation amongst pay-frozen teachers after the recent public sector deal for NHS workers. That modest settlement, however, is as nothing compared with the only genuine winners in the public sector in recent times - members of Parliament.
On April 1 the latest parliamentary pay deal will mean their salaries will have risen by 17.7 per cent since 2010 - almost exactly in line with the 18 per cent increase in the cost of living. Teachers’ pay, in comparison, has mainly been stored away in the deep freeze, except for the odd instance when the door has been briefly opened and 1 per cent thrown in, meaning a real-terms pay cut of about 15 per cent.
‘Teachers don’t have time to spend money’
On the surface, this looks shockingly unfair. However, I cannot speak for all teachers, nor for all the other disgruntled public and private sector groups out there, but I see no reason to whinge about this. There are 10 perfectly sensible reasons why MPs should get a better deal than teachers, particularly on April:
1. In life, there are always going to be winners and losers. (Source: D. Trump)
2. “M” for MP comes before “T” for teacher in the alphabet.
3. MPs often have to work quite late into the evening...
4. Up until 2009, many members used to earn a perfectly respectable extra few grand on the side, courtesy of some beautifully created expenses claims. But ever since the Great Parliamentary Expenses Scandal they have found this extra source of income much harder to tap into.
5. There is a little-known, freeze-free micro-climate in the Westminster area, caused by the warm air within and by its close proximity to the river. Salaries naturally grow better in those conditions.
6. When members received their richly deserved bumper 10 per cent increase in 2015 (taking them from £67,000 a year to over £73,000), they were merely “catching up”. While it may be a little unclear as to precisely what they were catching up with, it was plainly essential that the catching-up happened. (Nicky Morgan and 24 others refused to take the extra. What were they thinking?)
7. There are only 650 MPs, compared with over half a million teachers and teaching assistants. This means that it is much cheaper and easier to look after the financial interests of MPs. The morality of this argument is beyond question.
8. People need financial incentives to become MPs. This is clearly not the case with teachers, where there is obviously no shortage in number.
9. Since 2010, MPs have continued to face a vast and varied workload. Teaching, on the other hand, has become an increasingly easy life. In 2015 only about 100 MPs declared that they had a second job, whereas most of us in teaching earn a lucrative second income from directorships, dentistry, farming and the like.
10. Parliament has over 20 eating outlets and eight bars, whereas a typical school has just the one canteen and not a single pub. MPs are therefore going to make much better daily use of any pay increase, whereas many of us just take in some sandwiches and work all day. There is absolutely no point paying people more money when they don’t have the same time or opportunity to spend it.
So there we are. It’s all quite fair and I am not going to complain about it - not to my MP nor to anyone else. (There are many truly amazing, hard-working MPs by the way - not the point of this piece.)
As for those supposedly “inflated salaries” of various school academy trust leaders - another misunderstood minority - I am sure that there are a further 10 equally sound and sensible reasons why they, too, deserve every penny of that increase.
Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire
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