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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE


Review body takes evidence

The Secretary of State has given the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) a remit to consider a pay uplift for the lowest paid teachers and to consider a cap on headteachers’ pay.

The Union has submitted written and oral evidence to the STRB, which makes recommendations to the Secretary of State for Education on teachers’ pay. The NASUWT has called for all teachers earning £21,000 or below, including teachers who work part time, to receive at least the minimum £250 pay uplift recommended by the Chancellor in the Emergency Budget in June 2010.

In the same submission, the Union has also opposed headteachers’ salaries being capped and their pay being benchmarked against that of the Prime Minister.

Pay uplift

The Union has told the STRB that:

• part-time teachers and those paid on the unqualified teachers’ scale should qualify for at least the minimum £250 payment as it is the lowest paid workers who will be hardest hit by the Coalition Government’s economic strategy;
• given that women and overseas trained teachers are concentrated disproportionately at the lowest pay grades, there is both a financial and a compelling equality argument for introducing the salary uplift.

Headteachers’ pay

The Union has argued that:

• the introduction of a cap on the salaries of school leaders to benchmark their pay against that of the Prime Minister is ‘flawed’ and ‘crude’ and amounts to little more than ‘headline grabbing popularism’;
• the salaries of school leaders should be determined through a fair and transparent national framework of pay and conditions that promotes equality and consistency;
• introducing an artificial ‘cap’ on headteacher pay could become an aspirational target that could cause salaries to spiral out of control;
• a cap would also fail to allow for any distinction between the type and size of individual schools or the nature and challenge of each headteacher’s job.

The written and oral evidence submitted by the NASUWT will now be considered by the STRB and it will issue its recommendations to the Secretary of State who will make the final decision in the coming months.

"Given that women and overseas trained teachers are concentrated disproportionately at the lowest pay grades, there is both a financial and a compelling equality argument for introducing the salary uplift."


Fair pay review ‘wasted opportunity’

The initial findings of a Government-commissioned report into fair pay in the public sector have been described by the NASUWT as a ‘wasted opportunity’.

While recommending that measures must be introduced to tackle the widening pay gap between the top earners and the lowest paid in society, the initial report by Will Hutton on public sector pay completely fails to address pay inequality within the private sector.

The NASUWT is concerned that the pay levels of public servants are being questioned by the Coalition Government while the private sector is escaping scrutiny.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said: “While hard-working public sector workers have to suffer a barrage of reports criticising their modest pay levels, private firms are subjected to far less scrutiny, regulation and transparency.

“This Report acknowledges that ‘further autonomy risks fuelling greater senior pay inflation’ but the destructive policies of the Coalition Government, designed to hand control of public services to private sector firms, will only fuel further pay inequality and devastate a public sector that delivers essential services to those most in need.”

"While ha rd-working public sector workers have to suffer a barrage of reports criticising their modest pay levels, private firms ar e subjected to far less scrutiny, regulation and transparency"

Go online: www.nasuwt.org.uk/FairPay