Pay for FE teaching staff has remained static over the last five years, with the median pay packet actually shrinking slightly.

The latest further education workforce data for England, compiled by the Education and Training Foundation, highlighted that over the past five years, the median pay packet for teaching staff had fallen by 2.2 per cent to £31,800.

The report also shows there has been a marked increase in the number of zero-hours contracts across the FE workforce. In the past year, there has been a 2 per cent increase, meaning that staff on zero-hours contracts now make up one in 20 members of the FE workforce.

The report - published today and revealed exclusively by Tes - is based on Staff Individualised Record (SIR) data from 111 colleges, almost half of the total in England, and a number of other providers.

It showed pay had remained stubbornly static for almost a decade, with colleges insisting their tight budgets simply do not allow for a significant increase.

With the cost of living rising faster than wages, this masked an even steeper decline. According to the University and College Union, staff are now 24.7 per cent worse off today compared with 2009 prices - even in colleges that have agreed to recommended pay increases since 2009.

This week, UCU members at a number of colleges walked out in a dispute over pay and working conditions. This follows strike action at 14 colleges last month.

The union’s general secretary Sally Hunt says that the systematic holding down of pay is the root cause of the two sets of strikes in the space of a month.

“While there is finally a consensus that pay is a real problem, staff continue to see their living standards decline year on year,” she adds.

Cuts have ‘disproportionately hit colleges’

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, says that a major part of the case for better funding for colleges is to allow the reward packages to be more competitive.

“Every college wants to attract and retain the best people,” he says, “but it is clear that cuts to FE funding over the last decade have disproportionately hit colleges - impacting directly on their ability to reward staff.

“We will work closely with organisations to campaign for fair funding for colleges and address the under investment which the sector has faced for too long.”

Norman Crowther, the national official for post-16 education at the NEU teaching union, says that the rise in zero-hours contracts is a disappointment.

Next month, at the annual conference of the ATL section of the NEU, the FE lead member group will call for a national contract, a “robust and credible pay mechanism” and a professionalised workforce.

A Department for Education spokesperson says that teacher pay is a matter for individual colleges to decide upon.

“The department has committed £19 million to support teaching in further education, including over £4 million in bursaries that are worth up to £25,000 per person.”

This is an edited version of an article in the 30 March edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. Tes magazine is available at all good newsagents

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