Teacher Pay Award Update 2024

The dissolution of Parliament took place on Thursday 30th May 2024. The government have confirmed that they will not be publishing a response to recommendations on teacher pay before the election on 4th July 2024. The new government will need to carefully consider the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) recommendation and respond after the election.

The government has also recommended that teacher pay awards return to a more substantial level for 2024-25.? The Department for Education (DFE) has revealed it believes there is only headroom in next year’s financial budgets for schools to raise spending by 1.2 per cent, or ￡600 million.

However, the Department for Education has not spelt out an explicit pay rise percentage for 2024-25 in evidence submitted to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) unlike previous years.

Ministers had pledged to speed up the pay-setting process, with announcements having come right at the end of the summer term in recent years, throwing school budget-setting into turmoil. School leaders have warned that the government failing to decide on teacher pay before the general election leaves schools with no way of planning budgets for September.

But the timing of the vote in early July prompted fears that the decision could be left up to whoever, forms the next government, because the pre-election period, which began on Saturday, prevents most announcements from being made.

We received notification of a further update regarding the NJC April 2024 pay award, where unions requested a wage increase of ￡3,000 or 10%. Due to the response of the National Employers on the 16 May 2024, Unison, GMB and Unite have all voice their disapproval of the final offer and two of the three unions plan to ballot staff in the coming weeks. As of the 30 May 2024 Unison announced their ballot consideration will run from 5 to 28 June 2024, and GMB’s ballot consideration will run from 3 June until midday on 5 July. Unite are still to announce any ballot consideration timeframes.

This means that any decision will be made by the new government and once again be too late for academies to have confirmed salary assumptions in their budgets for the new academic year.

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Our team are more than aware of the difficulties our clients face with the uncertainty of school budgets and whether these will be funded by the government or if there will be the expectation for schools to “find” the money in their current budget. We can support with workforce planning, people strategies and restructures, please get in touch with our team to discuss your change management process and the support we can provide on 01924 827 869. Or look at how we can support via our website.