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 29 July 2024
Good afternoon,
I apologise for contacting you during your summer break and hope you are enjoying a well-deserved rest after all your hard work this year. However, I know decisions on pay and funding are vitally important, and I wanted to make sure they were communicated to you as soon as possible.
School teachers to receive a funded pay award of 5.5%
Today, the government has accepted the recommendation of the independent pay body for a school teacher pay award of 5.5% from September. This pay award applies equally to all pay points and allowances for teachers and leaders.
The financial context means that this has been a tough process, working across government, but this decision will help schools facing recruitment and retention challenges. We know this pay award is the right thing to do.
I know that many of you may have concerns about the affordability of this pay award, so I also want to assure you that it will be fully funded at a national level:
- We are providing schools with almost £1.2 billion in additional funding in financial year 2024-25 to support you with overall costs. This matches what we have calculated is needed to fully fund, at a national level, the teacher pay award and the support staff pay offer in financial year 2024-25, over and above the available headroom in existing school budgets overall.
- We will deliver almost £1.1 billion of this additional funding for schools through the new Core Schools Budget Grant (CSBG), providing £945 million for mainstream schools, £140 million for high needs, and £11 million for centrally employed teachers.
- The CSBG is for 2024-25 and so covers the financial year 2024-25 portion of the award (i.e. September 2024 to March 2025), rather than the full academic year’s costs, which are felt across financial years 2024-25 and 2025-26. Budgets for 2025-26 are still to be agreed right across government. When considering 2025-26 budgets for schools, we will be taking into account the impact of the full year's costs of the teacher pay award.
- We are also providing £97 million for schools delivering post-16 education (£63 million) and early years (£34 million) provision. This forms part of the total £1.2 billion above.
To translate these national figures into what you might be able to expect in your school or setting, we have published mainstream and high needs rates alongside a calculator tool so that those of you in mainstream schools can estimate your grant funding.
I know that it has been frustrating to wait for the pay award. Though I hope this outcome has been worth the delay this year, I know that the timing of the pay process, even in a normal year, often does not fit well with schools’ planning and I am keen to improve this in future.
Thank you all for your unwavering commitment
You all work incredibly hard and are not often enough recognised in the way that you should be. Since taking office, I’ve spoken about the need to reset the relationship we have with each other and rebuild trust and respect. I hope that securing this pay award for schools, alongside the additional funding needed to implement it, shows how serious I am about building that positive and productive partnership.
You and your work are at the heart of the change this government wants to achieve. I am determined to work with you all so that we drive forward this transformation together. You know the scale of the challenges facing us: the financial context is extremely tight and I want to be honest with you about this. But you have my word that I want what’s best for you, and what’s best for children and young people – and that is what I will always fight for.
Thank you for everything that you do.
Bridget Phillipson
Secretary of State for Education
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