Changes in the pay and workload of school teachers

In February 2003, the School Teachers’ Review Body recommended an increase of 2.9% in the pay scales and allowances for teachers in England and Wales, and the introduction of a new inner London 'pay spine'. This followed a historic national agreement in January between government, employers and trade unions on measures to reduce the workload of teachers. This feature examines the links between changes in pay and workload in addressing teachers’ recruitment and retention problems.

On 7 February 2003, the latest report by the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) was published. It recommended an increase of 2.9% in the pay scales and allowances for teachers in England and Wales, and the introduction of a new inner London 'pay spine'. The government welcomed the pay recommendations, announcing that the 2.9% increase would be implemented in April 2003. It also agreed that the existing pay spine and the inner London allowance should be replaced by a new inner London pay spine for qualified teachers, and one for head teachers and deputies. The effect of these changes is that teachers in inner London will receive a minimum increase of 4%, and that experienced teachers will receive much higher increases when they move onto the upper pay scale, and when they progress to its second pay point. Head teachers and their deputies in inner London schools will receive pay increases of up to 10%.

Recommendations of the STRB report

Since 1991, the STRB has made annual recommendations to government on the pay and conditions of employment of teachers in England and Wales (UK0003163F). The review body is independent of government, but each year it receives a letter from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), identifying issues on which the government seeks recommendations. As the STRB’s report notes, the remit on this occasion was very wide-ranging in its scope; it covered 'almost every important aspect of teachers’ pay', and identified some 'pressing issues' and other longer-term ones. Apart from the basic pay increase, and the recruitment and retention problems faced by inner London schools, two contentious pressing issues were identified.

• First, would a long-term or multi-year pay settlement be preferable to one covering a single year? The STRB concluded that in the absence of agreement between the parties, and in the climate of rapid change in schools, it would be premature to recommend such a change in 2003, but suggested that it might do so in 2004 within its report on other longer-term issues.

• Second, should the decisions made in schools for progression on the upper pay spine be based on criteria that were 'progressively more challenging'? The STRB restated its previous views on the matter: that the key criterion for progression should remain 'continued substantial and sustained performance and contribution to the school as a teacher'; that the rate of progression should vary between teachers; and that the government should ensure that adequate funding for progression was sustained. Also, it recommended that the government should work with other organisations 'to strengthen the confidence and capability of heads and other managers' in developing performance management systems that were 'robust, simple and fit for purpose'.

The longer-term issues raised in government’s remit to the STRB indicated the radical agenda for pay reform being pursued by the government, including:

• the scope for local pay approaches to tackle recruitment and retention issues, shortage subjects and earnings levels;

• the potential benefits, risks and costs of placing greater responsibility on head teachers for determining part of the annual pay award for individual teachers;

• whether movement up the main scale for teachers should be performance-related;

• the effectiveness of allowances for management responsibilities within the pay system, in the context of the proposed school workforce reforms; and

• the scope for removing some of the detailed legal provisions of the school teachers’ pay and conditions document, in order to increase flexibility and responsiveness to local needs

The STRB reported that the parties had not anticipated many of these long-term issues and, thus, had no time to develop their views. It urged them to discuss the issues before submitting written evidence in July 2003, in the hope that some common ground may be reached. The review body also argued that there was insufficient information available on management allowances and performance-related progression, so it had commissioned some studies and will publish the results in May 2003. The STRB warmly welcomed the new national agreement to reform the school workforce and reduce the workload of teachers, reported below, and recognised its considerable implications for the pay and conditions of employment of teachers.

Workforce reform and teachers’ workload

On 15 January 2003, the education secretary signed a national agreement with five of the six trade unions representing teachers and head teachers (the exception being the National Union of Teachers, NUT), three unions representing non-teaching staff, and the national employers’ organisation for local government. Entitled Raising standards and tackling workload, the agreement was the culmination of long process involving strike threats by teachers’ unions (UK0105130N), the report of a management consultancy (UK0203102F), a special report by the STRB in May 2002, and an intense three-month period of consultation and negotiation at the end of 2002. The agreement to achieve a progressive reduction in teachers’ hours of work envisages:

• contractual changes to ensure that teachers undertake fewer administrative and clerical tasks, have guaranteed time for planning, preparation and assessment within the school day, have a reduced burden to cover for absent colleagues and have a fair allocation of time to support their management responsibilities;

• a concerted attack on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic processes to be pursued via the establishment of an Implementation Review Unit;

• the deployment of more and better trained support staff, including administrative assistants for teachers, additional technical support, new managers from outside education and high-level teaching assistants trained within a new professional standards framework; and

• additional resources to meet the government’s commitment to employ an extra 10,000 teachers, and 50,000 extra support staff between 2001 and 2005

The agreement marks only the first step in the process of reform, but its signatories are committed to work in partnership to implement agreed changes, and monitor progress in reaching specific objectives over the next few years.

Commentary

A link between the 'inflation-only' pay increase of 2.9% and the agreement on workforce reform was acknowledged by the education secretary. He argued that it was necessary for schools to have room in their budgets in 2003-4 to address workload issues, 'which teachers consistently rate higher than pay as a priority to be tackled' in dealing with recruitment and retention problems. Nonetheless, he suggested that the pay settlement was a good one, especially for teachers in London. A teacher in inner London who passed through the performance threshold to the upper pay scale at the first opportunity would have received a pay rise of GBP 9,000 over the last three years – a cash increase of more than 35%. Moreover, teachers progressing up the main pay scale will continue to receive annual increases of around 7% each September on top of the April pay award.

All of the leaders of the teachers’ trade unions criticised the 2.9% pay increase. They argued that it was below the 3.5% rise a year previously when the headline rate of inflation was much lower than in December 2002, and believed that it would have very little impact on recruitment and retention problems. The teachers’ unions expressed different views on new inner London pay spine. Eamonn O’Kane, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), accepted that the new pay scales 'may help the severe recruitment and retention problems ... but could create a dangerous precedent for the development of local pay determination'. Doug McAvoy, the general secretary of the NUT, denounced the 2.9% increase as a 'pay freeze', and argued that a better 'solution to the problems of London and the fringe areas would be to award teachers in inner London an allowance of not less than GBP 6,000 with matching increases elsewhere', reasserting the claim on which the NUT mobilised strike action in London in 2002. The NUT was the only teachers’ union that did not sign the agreement on workforce reform, arguing that it could not accept that 'unqualified persons will teach whole classes', and that 'teachers’ salaries will be held down in order to pay for the government’s remodelling agenda'.

The 'headline' 2.9% pay increase recommended by the STRB was replicated in pay review body reports covering senior civil servants, members of parliament and senior civil servants. Although the armed services’ review body recommended increases of between 3.2% and 3.7%, the government has indicated clearly that pay increases for other groups of public service employees should be lower than in the last two years, except where they are associated with major reforms in pay systems and working practices. As the public sector borrowing requirement is expected to rise sharply over the next few years, the government seems determined to ensure that pay increases do not absorb too high a share of planned public expenditure increases. (David Winchester, IRRU)