Despite the fiscal straitjacket imposed on all departments, the secretary of state for education, Bridget Phillipson, has found an additional £615 million to fund the 4 per cent teacher pay rise.

That is not insignificant. In fact, it is unprecedented in the current climate.

And while school leaders will rightly worry about how to make their budgets balance, it is worth taking a moment to consider where we have got to.

Teacher pay award ‘fight’

There are no easy wins in Whitehall. The reality is this: Bridget Phillipson will have had to fight tooth and nail - and then some - for every penny of that settlement.

She is caught between a rock and a hard place: balancing the expectations of a profession demoralised after years of erosion with the fiscal reality of a post-austerity, post-pandemic, inflation-shocked economy. 

Throw in the demographic challenge that is squeezing school places - and in some cases leading to closures - and you have what could be described as a perfect storm.

But this is a secretary of state who came into post pledging to rebuild trust. That’s not just a soundbite. That demands hard yards, and this pay award shows she means it.

‘Abdication of respect’

Just look at the data.

When the Conservatives took office in 2010, teacher pay began a slow-motion slide into stagnation. From 2011 to 2022, the average annual pay award under their stewardship was just 1.98 per cent, consistently trailing behind inflation and outpaced by the Consumer Price Index.

This wasn’t just poor policy; it was an abdication of respect. A profession charged with educating the next generation was effectively told that their contribution was worth less each year. 

Now compare that with the trajectory under Labour. The contrast is already clear.

The current Labour-led pay award is above inflation, and the trend line is heading in a different direction: toward recovery. The 4 per cent settlement is higher than any CPI forecast for 2025 and marks a decisive break from a lost decade of underinvestment in people.  

New models, tough decisions

Labour understands that building the future economy starts with paying our teachers a decent salary.

So, where does that leave us?

Of course, this decision brings pressure. Special schools, small primaries and those facing declining numbers are feeling this most acutely. And the pain is real.  

At E-ACT, with 38 academies across the country, this uplift will mean rethinking our financial modelling, navigating tough decisions on non-pay expenditure and continuing to advocate for longer-term funding reform.

Every 1 per cent of unfunded pay award is £1.1 million across our 38 schools. Broken down, that is less than £29,000 per school.

That starts to look a little more manageable - though not for everyone, particularly smaller standalone schools. 

For us, we will be able to save more than this per school on energy following our investment in solar - something that is available to all schools right now through the government’s GB Energy scheme.  

Leading through challenging moments

Let’s also not forget that there is circa £6 billion of reserves sitting across the system in local authority schools and academy trusts.

This is a significant amount of money that is very much front of mind for the civil servants in the Treasury when it comes to negotiating extra funding for schools. Our teachers and support staff are worth investing this in. 

We don’t want to see school leaders abdicating responsibility, waiting for government to fix all of the problems we face. I understand the impulse; years of underfunding, fluctuating guidance and endless change have taken their toll.

But we must resist the temptation to sit back and wait. Autonomy cannot be a one-way street. If we want freedom, we have to show agency. That means owning the responsibility to lead our schools through challenging moments, shoulder to shoulder with our staff. 

Rebuilding trust

I have been a vocal advocate for better teacher pay and campaigned for it - but now it’s my job to deliver it.

That is what this moment demands. It requires us to step up, not with platitudes, but with plans. To look our teachers in the eye and say: yes, this is hard, but you matter, and we’re going to make this work because we believe in what you do.

There’s a broader cultural shift we need to see, too. In the face of a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, it would be refreshing to see the major unions acknowledging this pay award as progress.  

The focus on whether it is fully funded or not is a different fight - that is simply not in the gift of our secretary of state and finds its feet in the legacy of poor financial performance from the last government.   

There’s a place for challenge - of course there is - but there’s also a duty to credit genuine steps in the right direction. Rebuilding trust is a two-way process.

‘Finally, teachers are being heard’

It’s also a long process. A 4 per cent uplift will not solve every problem in one fell swoop as it cannot reverse a decade of real-terms decline overnight. The hard truth is that we have a chronically underfunded system - we all know it, we all feel it every day. 

But this additional £615 million should be seen as a down payment on a new settlement between government and the profession. And it signals that, finally, teachers are being heard.

We’re all tired. Budgets are tight. But this pay award gives us a small but significant reason to hope. Not just for our own schools, but for the system we’re building: one that values its people, respects the profession and, in doing so, does right by the children we serve - even if that does place challenges on us as leaders.