The majority of schools have drawn up salaries policies, but most are out of date and many are useless, according to a survey by the teachers’ pay review body. Some are even at odds with the national pay structure.
Schools are not required to have a pay policy but the Department for Education and Employment recommends them. Headteacher associations want to make it a legal requirement that all governing bodies should draw up a salaries policy and review it every time there are changes in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document which follows the annual recommendations of the pay review body.
In its latest report, the review body calls for more up-to-date policies which reflect the circumstances of particular schools. But it says: “We are not persuaded that having a policy needs to be a formal statutory requirement. ”
* The practice of issuing additional contracts to teachers who undertake additional teaching work outside their 1,265 hours is illegal, according to the School Teachers’ Review Body.
“The legal position under Section 2(7) of the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act 1991 is that ‘so far as it concerns his statutory conditions of employment, the contract of employment of a schoolteacher should contain no terms other than those which have effect by virtue of a pay and conditions order’, that is, as set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document.
“We understand that this means that where a full-time teacher carries out extra work for his employer which is within the definition of teaching, that work should not be rewarded by means of a separate contract because it would in effect circumvent the document,” says the review body.
Part-time teachers could be offered a separate contract or alternatively they could have extensions made to their existing contract of employment.
