We’re thrilled to see the government have accepted pay rises of 6.5%, but is it enough?
This is the largest pay award for teachers in 30 years, boosting the minimum starting salaries to £30,000 in England and Wales and a maximum of £36,745 in Inner London.
The payrises come after a long battle, with multiple strike days throughout the academic year, which have cost teachers money from their current salary.
Most importantly, the government has pledged an extra £525m to schools in the 2023/2024 financial year, and a further £900m in the 2024/2025 financial year.
From a recruitment standpoint, we have seen a staggeringly high amount of teachers leaving the profession, with 72% citing workload as one of the key driving factors for their decision. We believe paying teachers a tad more after tax each month will not solve the key issue: that teachers feel overworked and undervalued.
In the 2022 data released by the DfE, we were informed that:
- More than 100,000 teachers under the age of 40 have quit teaching in the last 5 years
- A third of teachers are quitting in their first 5 years since qualifying
- The number of teaching vacancies has more than doubled in the past 2 years
What are your thoughts? Will the pay rises and increase to school budgets help lower those figures and boost retention rates and attract more aspiring teachers to the profession?
