While pay is not always a motivating factor for people who choose public service, denuding people’s pay over many years certainly does nothing to keep them in post and delivering their best.

The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) is the mechanism we have to set the pay for teachers and leaders in education. The annual STRB cycle is a frustrating process for education unions. We make reasoned and evidenced-based cases for pay increases to live up to the graduate rates needed for recruitment and retention, only to be rebuffed by specious claims from the government that public sector wages outperform those in the private sector. 

It is also an annual missed opportunity for the government to provide the financial muscle needed to make good on its oft-repeated manifesto pledge that children should “have access to the best teaching all around the country” and that teaching is a “high-value and prestigious profession”.

Since 2010, the STRB has been hemmed in by repeated public-sector pay freezes, pay caps and other interference in its role.

Teacher pay: Morale-sapping decisions

In 2018, the secretary of state simply ignored the STRB’s findings, choosing instead to press ahead with a pay award of 3.5 per cent for teachers on the main pay range, but just 2 per cent for teachers on the upper pay range and 1.5 per cent for those on the leadership pay scale.  

No evidence or rationale was ever provided to underpin this morale-sapping decision, which did further damage to the prospects of long-serving staff.

In 2020, the STRB recommendations acknowledged that the damage of another differentiated pay rise in favour of early-career teachers would have the effect of baking in a decade of real-terms losses. This would, once again, leave the most experienced teachers and leaders relatively worse off.

The review body also noted the “growing challenge in retaining experienced classroom teachers and those in leadership roles”, and that the pay system must fairly “reward teachers taking on additional management or leadership responsibilities”.

So we are genuinely shocked by the paltry and insufficient remit that the secretary of state has set for the review body’s consideration in its pay round this year.

At this extraordinary time, the government has decided to impose yet another pay freeze on all teaching professionals, with the exception of unqualified teachers earning less than £24,000 a year. Alongside this, it has abandoned its manifesto commitment to raise starting salaries in teaching to £30,000 by 2022-23.

Delivering yet another real-term pay cut to a profession where recruitment and retention is through the floor is inexplicable. Doing so when that profession is reeling from the huge personal costs to individual professionals of supporting young people, families and communities through a pandemic is simply incomprehensible.  

Teacher retention: The risk of an exodus

A slap in the face doesn’t even begin to describe the way many experienced teachers and school leaders feel.

On top of this, the government has further undermined its relationship with the teaching profession through its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Its actions have driven unnecessary new workload, harmed teachers’ and leaders’ wellbeing and done enormous damage to morale. 

The implications for retention are serious. Even before the pandemic, wastage rates were extraordinarily high. 

In 2018, 14.6 per cent of teachers left the profession within one year. More than a quarter (26.8 per cent) of teachers who qualified in 2016 left within their first three years, rising to a third (32.6 per cent) within the first five years. 

It is possible that there may now be an exodus from the profession, particularly of late-career teachers and leaders, exhausted by a year of constant crisis management, and the inadequacy and incompetence of the government’s chaotic approach to the school sector.

Many of our members tell us that they have felt a responsibility to guide their schools through this extraordinary period but intend to leave the profession at its conclusion.

While we support the manifesto commitment that the government made to increase starting salaries for qualified teachers by 2022-23, we were clear that a step-change on pay was needed to retain serving teachers and leaders.

Coronavirus: Teachers and school leaders have gone above and beyond

Teaching professionals and school leaders have played an extraordinary part in the response to the pandemic, reaching out beyond their schools and roles as educators to support whole communities. This includes school business leaders, which is why NAHT continues to call for their pay to be included as part of the STPCD (School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document). 

There is no justification for another pay freeze. The government prefers an independent pay review body to give the cloak of impartiality and fairness to its deliberations. It’s time to set the STRB free to do its work and follow its recommendations.

The government has relied heavily on the most experienced members of the school workforce to carry schools and young people through the pandemic. And they have stepped up.

The top three words our members used to describe their experience of the past year are “challenging”, “exhausting” and “stressful”. Of all the members we surveyed at the end of last year, only one had a single positive word to say about the experience.

Of course, it has been a very hard year for many. But the fact is that government has asked an awful lot of teachers and school leaders, with no support given at all, and precious little thanks.

Still, teachers and school leaders have stepped up and done everything they have been asked and more, going above and beyond to help their children and their communities. From their roles in track and trace, to delivering free school meals, to looking after key workers’ children, they have worked all hours and with no breaks, in order to do what needed to be done. And they have been crucial to the country’s pandemic response.

The government should honour that hard work and achievement with a proper pay settlement for these dedicated professionals.

Paul Whiteman is general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT. He tweets as @PaulWhiteman6