Public sector pay 2010: schoolteachers and support staff

Author: Rachel Sharp

Schoolteachers in England and Wales had the final year of a three-year pay deal honoured by the new Government from September 2010. But the work of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body has been suspended, and support staff are facing a pay freeze in 2010.

Key points

The change in Government following the general election in May 2010 will have a significant impact on schools, particularly in England. The coalition's programme for Government stated: "The Government believes that we need to reform our school system to tackle educational inequality ... and to give greater powers to parents and pupils to choose a good school." The document went on to give details of its plans, including:

• giving schools greater freedom over the curriculum;
• enabling teachers, parents, charities and local communities to set up new schools; and
• reforming the "existing rigid national pay and conditions rules to give schools greater freedoms to pay good teachers more and deal with poor performance".

The new secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, was quick to change his department's name from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to the Department for Education, and the Government was equally quick to announce legislation to bring about its planned reforms. In a separate article we look at the Government's expansion of the academies programme and examine how pay is managed in existing academies in a series of case studies.

Pay award for schoolteachers in England and Wales

The change in Government also cast doubt on multi-year pay deals that had been agreed under the previous administration. The School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) had recommended a three-year pay deal running from September 2008 to August 2011 for teachers in England and Wales.

The review body was given a remit to review the appropriateness of the "indicative increases" of 2.3% for the 2009 and 2010 stages of the award, and it confirmed its recommendations in July 2009. Ed Balls, the then Labour secretary of state, said he intended to implement the increases recommended by the review body (on the Parliament website).

The emergency Budget on 22 June 2010 spelt out the Government's plans for a two-year pay freeze in the public sector from 2011/12. On the same day, Gove confirmed that the Government remained committed to honouring the deal for teachers in full. This means that teachers received an increase of 2.3% from 1 September 2010 as the final stage of their long-term award, with teachers in inner London receiving higher increases as proposed by the review body. The salaries with effect from 1 September are shown in table 1.

Review body recommendations rejected

Although the review body was not asked to look at the pay award in its 2010 report, in October 2009 it had been given a remit to look at other matters. These included:

• criteria for allowances paid to teachers of pupils with special educational needs (SEN); and
• criteria for leadership roles and progression that could be used to provide a national framework for establishing deputy headteacher and assistant headteacher posts.

In March 2010, the review body's 19th report covering these issues was published. It set out revised criteria for payment for teachers of pupils with SEN and recommended these be introduced from September 2010. From the same date, it also recommended revisions to the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) to include criteria for appointing to a deputy or assistant headteacher post and the levels of responsibility that these roles should carry. The STPCD sets out the statutory requirements for teachers' pay and conditions for maintained schools in England and Wales, and also includes statutory guidance for schools and local authorities.

Ed Balls said he intended to implement most of these recommendations following consultations. The consultation period was to run until 29 April 2010.

In July, Gove wrote to the chair of the review body, Dr Anne Wright, with the outcome of the consultation. He said that the recommendations on SEN allowances would be reflected in the new STPCD, continuing: "However, you will note that I have decided not to implement criteria for appointment to the leadership group. The Government is committed to giving schools greater freedom and flexibility over the pay and conditions of teachers. I believe therefore that it should be for headteachers to determine the most appropriate staffing structure for their schools, including the roles and responsibilities that they would want their deputy and assistant headteachers to undertake in delivering the school's priorities."

Leadership pay limit proposed

He then went on to express his view that there should be an upper limit on leadership group pay so that it could not exceed the salary of the Prime Minister, which stands at £142,500 a year, and that this should take effect for appointments on or after 1 September 2010. Under the terms of the Education Act 2002, provisions on pay and conditions of teachers must be referred to the review body, but the secretary of state can consult the chair of the review body about disapplying this requirement. This is what Gove sought to do.

Wright responded (on the OME website), giving her views on the proposal to implement a cap on the pay of headteachers and raising several issues about its implementation and possible impact. Clear guidance would, she said, be needed if the new limit was to be applied, "not least to avoid the unintended consequence of upward pay drift".

She also said that while she understood the Government's desire to introduce an upper limit as soon as possible, she was concerned about implementing the cap without full consultation. She explained: "I would be concerned about any risk of undermining the integrity of an independent process that has worked well in recent years."

Instead, Wright suggested that the cap could be implemented from September 2010 as an interim measure pending the outcome of a full review body report on this and the wider issue of senior management reward, which could be done in time for changes in 2011.

Seven teaching unions also sent a joint response to Gove's letter, supporting the review body chair's view that the proposed cap on leadership pay should be subject to full consultation and consideration by the STRB. They also expressed concern about Gove's rejection of the leadership group criteria without further consultation.

Gove then informed the review body that the plan to introduce a cap had been put on hold. He said: "... on balance I have concluded that there is a need to look further at the implementation of a limit as part of a wider review of leadership pay, in the context of the Government's policy on senior salaries in the public sector."

Ongoing role for the review body

Gove also confirmed that the review body would be asked to look at a limit on the pay of headteachers as part of a future remit. At the time of writing the remit had not been issued, so the scope of the work the STRB will be asked to carry out is uncertain.

The STRB is expected to continue to play a role in teachers' pay awards during the pay freeze, as the review body remit group includes unqualified teachers who earn below the Government threshold of £21,000 a year, so they will be excluded from the two-year pay freeze. Andrew Morris, head of pay and pensions at the NUT, said: "We expect the review body to look at the pay for this group, and that offers it the opportunity to comment on the appropriateness of a pay freeze for the rest of the teachers in its remit group."

Given the commitment in the Government's coalition document to reform the national pay and conditions of teachers, Morris says: "We anticipate that the review body may receive a future remit to review the existing pay structure."

Pay for schoolteachers in Scotland

Schoolteachers in Scotland were covered by a separate three-year deal, which increased pay scales by 2.4% in the final stage, effective from 1 April 2010. This is agreed by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, which includes members from teaching unions, local authorities and the Scottish Government. The recent Independent Budget Review by the Scottish Government calculated that this group accounts for 16% of the Scottish public sector paybill.

Uncertainty over negotiating body for support staff

The School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) (on the OME website) gained statutory power on 12 January 2010. It was asked to reach agreement on:

• producing a core contract of employment to cover pay, duties and working time;
• designing job profiles for support staff roles;
• developing a method of converting the job profiles into a salary structure; and
• a strategy to implement the national pay and conditions framework for school support staff in maintained schools in England. It would not apply to staff employed in academies.

The original timescale envisaged a deadline for this work of May 2010, but this was subsequently extended Ed Balls to April 2011.

Following the general election, the Department for Education put the work of the SSSNB on hold while it carried out a review of support staff pay and conditions and the SSSNB, and at the time of writing no decision had been made.

Bruni de la Motte, Unison national officer for education and children's services, sits on the SSSNB. She told XpertHR: "The suspension of the work of the SSSNB is very frustrating. We were about to start testing in schools the 100 or so job profiles that had been developed. The funding for the consultancy support that this required had been approved by the previous Government but this has now been stopped. This means the timetable will be delayed further. We are seeking clarity on whether other work can continue." She added: "Early noises are not encouraging - the Government's desire to reform the pay of teachers does not bode well for a new national system for support staff."

Most of the support staff in England that would be covered by the SSSNB are currently under the remit of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services (NJC). The employers' side of the NJC informed the staff side in January 2010 that it would be unable to offer any pay increase from the April 2010 review date, and at the time of writing had stated that this position would not change in spite of the trade unions registering a formal dispute.

Pensions review

Both the Teachers' Pension Scheme, and the Local Government Pension Scheme that covers support staff, are included in the "fundamental structural review of public service pension provision" currently being carried out by the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission chaired by John Hutton (on HM Treasury website). The commission is due to produce an interim report ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October this year, looking at short-term savings. The final report is due in time for the Budget in 2011.

In the emergency Budget, Chancellor George Osborne described the "spiralling costs of public sector pensions", which he said was "one of the greatest long-term pressures facing our nation's finances". Pre-empting the findings of the review, the Budget also announced a change in the way in which public service pensions are uprated. From April 2011, indexing will be based on consumer prices index inflation rather than the retail prices index measure.

The unions are concerned that the commission's review will result in pension scheme members having to pay higher pension contributions while having their pay frozen.

Morris argues that the Teachers' Pension Scheme has already seen sufficient reform following a review in 2007. The normal retirement age for new entrants to the scheme was increased from 60 to 65, and the members' contribution rate was also raised. These changes, he says, have addressed the issues of affordability and sustainability.

The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), unlike the majority of public sector pension schemes, is a funded scheme. The LGPS in England and Wales was reformed in 2008, with changes to benefits and contributions affecting new and existing members.

Table 1: Pay scales for qualified teachers¹: England and Wales, 1 September 2010

Pay scale point	Pay band D: England and Wales2, £pa	Pay band C: fringe, £pa	Pay band B: outer London, £pa	Pay band A: inner London, £pa
UPPER PAY SCALE
U3	36,756	37,795	40,433	45,000
U2	35,447	36,483	38,991	43,536
U1	34,181	35,218	37,599	41,497
MAIN PAY SCALE
M6	31,552	32,588	35,116	36,387
M5	29,240	30,278	32,630	33,865
M4	27,104	28,146	30,080	31,446
M3	25,168	26,203	28,325	29,889
M2	23,295	24,331	26,674	28,408
M1	21,588	22,626	25,117	27,000
1. Other than leadership group, advanced skills teachers, "excellent teachers" and "unqualified" teachers. 2. Excluding London and the fringe. Source: School Teachers' Review Body Eighteenth Report part 2 - 2009 (on the Office of Manpower Economics website).