Teachers have been offered a pay rise of 4 per cent next year, the Department for Education has announced.
The DfE has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) recommendation. It also said there will be additional funding of £615 million towards the pay rise for schools and £160 million for colleges.
The award, for teachers in England, will be applied evenly across the pay scale.
Schools will be expected to find approximately the first 1 per cent from efficiencies.
The DfE also said earlier this year that schools have the headroom in their budgets to afford 1.3 per cent towards teacher and support staff pay awards from already announced funding.
It has not yet set out exactly what proportion of the teacher pay rise the extra money announced today will cover.
Pay award recognises teachers’ ‘crucial role’
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said today: “This pay award for schools backed by major investment alongside funding for further education is in recognition of the crucial role teachers play in breaking the link between background and success and will support schools and colleges to invest in the workforce they need, so every young person achieves and thrives.”
The average teacher salary will now be over £51,000, while starting salaries will be “competitive” at almost £33,000, Ms Phillipson said.
The decision comes after inflation climbed to 3.5 per cent, according to figures released this week.
Economists have previously said that teacher pay would need to rise by at least 3.7 per cent to be in line with average wage growth.
IFS: ‘Slight relief to schools’
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) research fellow Luke Sibieta said schools will need to find savings of around £400 million, or just less than 1 per cent, to afford the award.
“This is a bit less than was assumed a few months ago in the government’s proposals to the pay review body, which will probably come as a slight relief to schools,” he said.
Mr Sibieta added that salary levels for new teachers will now be about 1 per cent above their 2010 levels in real terms, though most teacher salaries will be about 8 per cent lower in real terms than in 2010.
School support staff have previously been offered a 3.2 per cent pay rise.
Where is funding coming from?
Schools and high-needs settings will get £567 million from a support grant, with an additional £15 million for schools with early years, and £32 million for post-16 provision in schools.
The funding has come from existing DfE budgets rather than being new Treasury money.
Ms Phillipson said the money has come from funds raised from VAT on private schools and by reviewing the department’s budget to “identify poor value for money spend”.
“We have driven efficiency through increasing digital capability both inside and outside of the DfE, reducing central headcount and removing duplication within programmes,” Ms Phillipson said.
What had been recommended?
Today’s decision comes after the DfE recommended in December that the teacher pay rise for 2025-26 should be 2.8 per cent.
Jack Worth, workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research, said that a pay rise of at least 3.7 per cent was needed to match predicted average earnings growth for 2025-26.
And today’s STRB report said a 2.8 per cent rise risked “undermining” the improved supply of teachers, and that a higher award was necessary.
The body added it was concerned that the government’s ambition of recruiting 6,500 additional teachers “does not appear to have, to date, a detailed and funded plan to ensure its execution. Nor is it clear that the additional teachers will be in the areas suffering the most from shortages”.
Flexible working
The STRB also made several recommendations beyond the main pay rise aimed at improving teacher recruitment and retention.
It said department intervention is needed to push flexible working practice forward, and suggested a mandatory duty for all schools to have a published flexible working policy.
The education secretary said this afternoon that a new reference to flexible working will be added to the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) to make it clear requests for this should be supported “where operationally feasible”.
And the department has announced that the Flexible Working Ambassadors Programme has been extended for a further year to support more schools across the country. The DfE said this would enable teachers to plan lessons from home, job-share or work flexible hours.
Writing for Tes, schools standards minister Catherine McKinnell said there is evidence that increasing flexible-working opportunities can support teachers’ wellbeing and job satisfaction and boost recruitment and retention.
TLR payments and performance pay
The government has also accepted the STRB’s recommendation that TLR payments should be paid to teachers based on the proportion of responsibility they carry out rather than contracted hours.
The STRB also said the current approach of uniform pay increases is “insufficiently effective”, and suggested the STRB or another body should be invited to undertake work on targeting remuneration to address teacher shortages, as well as work on modernising teacher employment and conditions and reviewing career pathways for teachers.
On performance-related pay, the STRB suggested the department should monitor the effectiveness of this to decide whether current arrangements should continue for 2026-27.
Concern over teacher pension ‘innovation’
The STRB said it would be “concerned about innovation” in teacher pensions being “used to reduce total remuneration”, and said the department should consider promoting flexible retirement.
‘Likely the NEU will register a dispute’
Teachers at both the NEU and NASUWT teaching unions’ conferences voted for the potential of strike action if the pay rise was the 2.8 per cent recommended by the government, with no additional funding.
Delegates at the NASUWT conference passed a motion calling for the union to reject any pay award that was not fully funded.
And NEU delegates voted to launch a formal strike ballot if the pay offer remains “unacceptable” or if the government does not announce a real-terms funding increase at the June Spending Review.
Responding to the announcement today, Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, said the NEU “will never accept cuts to education”.
“Unless the government commit to fully funding the pay rise then it is likely that the NEU will register a dispute with the government on the issue of funding, and campaign to ensure every parent understands the impact of a cut in the money available to schools, and that every politician understands this too,” he warned.
NASUWT acting general secretary Matt Wrack welcomed the higher award than originally recommended but said there is a risk many schools will be placed in “severe financial difficulty”.
He added that the union will be carefully considering the pay announcement.
Government ‘mistaken’ on smarter spending
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said school leaders remain concerned they will still need to find a proportion of the money towards the pay rise from their own budgets.
He added that, moving forward, the NAHT would be keen to discuss a multi-year approach to pay and funding that gives greater certainty to schools.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the award not being fully funded represents a “further cut” to school budgets.
“If the government really thinks it will be possible to bridge this funding gap through ‘improved productivity and smarter spending’ then it is mistaken.
“Schools have already spent many years cutting costs to the bone and beyond.”
Confederation of School Trusts chief executive Leora Cruddas said 4 per cent was a good step towards helping with recruitment and retention.
“School trusts will still need to work very hard to balance budgets though, and we need a long-term financial settlement that really enables schools, staff and children to flourish,” she added.
Redundancy warnings
Ahead of today’s pay decision, school and trust leaders had warned that, next year, schools are looking at one of the most challenging budget forecasts “in a generation”.
Harris Federation, which has 55 schools in London, has already announced proposals to make 40-45 staff redundant, as CEO Sir Dan Moynihan said not funding a rise made job losses “inevitable”.
Previous years’ pay rises
One of Labour’s first decisions after the election was to accept the STRB’s recommendation of a 5.5 per cent teacher pay award for this year, which was fully funded.
The previous year, teachers received a 6.5 per cent rise after the DfE had originally proposed a 3.5 per cent increase. Teachers in the NEU teaching union went on strike over pay in 2023.
