Teacher Workforce

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)]

I am today providing an update on the steps we are taking to drive high standards for every child and deliver our promise to recruit an additional 6,500 expert teachers across secondary and special schools, and our colleges, over the course of this Parliament.

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, breaking down barriers to opportunity for every child, so recruiting, retaining and supporting expert teachers is central to delivering high and rising standards.

That is why, despite the challenging financial context and recruitment and retention difficulties for schools, this Government are getting on and delivering our plan for change. Delivery of the pledge started on day one of this Government and we have taken key steps over the past year to encourage more talented people to train to teach in schools and colleges, including:

accepting the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation for a 5.5% school teacher pay award last year;

delivering a package of bursaries across schools and further education, and retention payments of up to £6,000 after-tax for teachers in shortage subjects;

enabling greater flexibility by allowing teachers to take planning, preparation and assessment time remotely;

supporting schools and colleges to utilise new technologies to help tackle workload and drive excellent outcomes for young people; and

streamlining the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship course to nine months so that it can be completed within one academic year, getting new teachers into classrooms quicker.

We are already seeing positive signs that our plan for change is delivering: this year 2,000 more secondary school teachers started training compared to last year, and additionally we are now forecasting 2,500 more primary and secondary teachers staying in the profession over the next three years. In FE we are also seeing positive signs with almost 6,000 approved claims for the targeted retention incentive payment, the majority in subjects critical to our plan for change, such as construction (1,700), maths (1,400) and engineering (1,200).

Today I am building on this by accepting in full the independent STRB recommendations for 2025-26, implementing a pay award for school teachers and leaders of 4% from September. This means school teachers will see an increase in their pay of almost 10% since this Government took power, and over 22% over the last four years. This will provide a competitive starting salary of almost £33,000, attracting talented graduates into the teaching profession, and we estimate the average teacher can now expect a salary of over £51,000 from September, helping retain talented existing teachers to deliver high standards for children.

I also recognise and value the vital role that school support staff play. The majority of these staff have already been offered a 3.2% pay increase through the National Joint Council for Local Government Services process from 1 April 2025, subject to agreement, and I thank them for their continued contribution to children and young people’s education.

I know it is important for schools to understand the implications of a pay award on their budgets as soon as possible. We have delivered on our commitment to confirm the teacher pay award substantially earlier than in recent years, and earlier than any year in the past decade.

Supporting schools and colleges

We recognise that this is beyond the costs for which many schools will have budgeted. Therefore, we are providing additional funding of £615 million this financial year to schools to support them with the costs of staff pay awards, on top of the funding already provided in their existing budgets. This funding has come from existing Department for Education budgets.

Alongside this announcement for schools, I am pleased to be able to announce that we will also invest an additional £160 million in financial year 2025 to 2026 to support colleges and other 16 to 19 providers. This will power our growth mission and enable these institutions to address the immediate challenges they face in recruiting and retaining the expert teachers so essential to delivering on our plan for change.

We have taken tough but fair decisions to ensure that every pound of taxpayers’ money is driving high and rising standards for our children. By ending tax breaks for private schools, and undertaking a robust line-by-line budget review to identify poor value for money spend, we are able to deliver this investment in recruiting and retaining more expert teachers in our classrooms. We have driven efficiency through increasing digital capability both inside and outside of the DfE, reducing central headcount and removing duplication within programmes.

As we have made clear throughout the pay process, we are also asking schools and colleges to do their part in ensuring that we are driving productivity across all areas of the public sector, ensuring that resources are deployed intelligently to maximise support for teaching and learning, freeing up educators to focus on what matters most: providing every child with the high-quality education they deserve.

Schools will be expected to find approximately the first 1% of pay awards through improved productivity and smarter spending to make every pound count. There will be those who say this cannot be done, but I believe schools have a responsibility, like the rest of the public sector, to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible.

Schools are already making savings and bringing core operating costs down: for example, the 400 schools who participated in the Department’s new energy for schools offer will save 36%, on average, compared with their previous contracts, which will free up vital funding to deliver for children and young people. We are also making plans to secure better banking solutions for schools, getting them better returns on their cash balances. Additionally, all schools will be able to access services, such as the “Get help buying for schools” service, to get best value when procuring goods and our teaching vacancies service to save recruitment costs. We will continue to provide them with additional tools, guidance and support.

We know that workforce deployment is the biggest component of school budgets. We will support schools to benefit fully from the tools we already offer to benchmark and integrate resourcing and curriculum planning, such as the financial benchmarking and insights tool. We will also introduce a new toolkit to support schools to adopt evidence-based deployment models. This will focus on data that helps schools identify areas for improvement and support to learn from best practice peers who are delivering strong outcomes for pupils with an efficient deployment model.

Beyond that first 1%, the cost of this pay award will be covered by the additional funding I am announcing today, on top of funding increases already in schools’ budgets for this year.

Building a modern profession

The teacher pay award is part of our comprehensive approach to reforming education while valuing those who deliver it. Teachers in our schools and colleges are shaping the lives of our children and young people every day. It is they who will deliver a broader, richer, cutting-edge curriculum that drives high and rising school standards and sets all young people up for life and work. It is they who are working hard in stuck schools where the reforms that we are introducing will deliver faster school improvement, alongside stronger accountability for all schools. It is they who manage the range of needs in inclusive classrooms. An excellent teacher in every classroom is essential for every child to achieve and thrive and to support pupils we are establishing 90 new RISE attendance and behaviour hubs.

We are further supporting talented experienced teachers to stay in the profession by taking action to promote flexible working in schools without impacting teaching time for pupils. By implementing flexible working, such as part-time working, personal or family days, or off-site PPA time, schools can support their staff’s working lives in modern, practical ways. This will support teachers to deliver the best possible education for children and young people. We will make it clear to schools that flexible working should be embraced by introducing a new reference to flexible working into the STPCD, making it clear that schools should aim to support flexible working requests where operationally feasible, while prioritising delivering the best possible education for children and young people.

I am also accepting the STRB’s recommendation on teaching and learning responsibility payments for school teachers. This will mean that from September 2026 at the latest, these additional payments will be paid to teachers based on the proportion of responsibility they carry out, rather than their contracted hours. For example, if a teacher undertakes the full role, they will receive full remuneration for this, but if they undertake only a portion of the role, they will receive remuneration in that proportion. I asked the STRB to look at this and I am pleased to be able to improve equality of opportunity for part-time workers, better enabling them to move into leadership roles.

We will continue to work closely with the sector to modernise and reform the profession. Later this year we intend to commission the STRB to look at specific reforms to teacher conditions, learning from innovative approaches that schools are taking to recruit and retain the teachers they need.

I would also like to thank the STRB for its detailed considerations this year on a range of other issues, which officials will take into account in future policy development.

Technical Annex: Further details on funding, the STRB process and recommendations

Funding details

We are providing schools with £615 million in additional funding in the 2025-26 financial year to support them with overall costs. Of this, we will provide over £470 million for mainstream schools, in respect of their five to 16 provision, through the new schools budget support grant; almost £85 million for special and AP schools; and almost £12 million for centrally employed staff. We will provide over £30 million for schools with 16 to 19 provision through 16 to 19 funding allocations. Over £15 million will be provided in respect of early years provision in schools. Mainstream and high needs rates and a calculator tool have been published to help schools understand how much funding they can expect to receive. Budgets for 2026-27 will be subject to the multi-year spending review.

Simultaneously, we are announcing £160 million to support colleges and other 16 to 19 providers with their strategic priorities, including recruitment and retention. Together, that means an additional sum of over £190 million will be distributed through 16 to 19 rates in the 2025-26 financial year. We expect to revise 16 to 19 allocations over the summer and to make updated payments from the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

STRB process, recommendations, and response

The 35th report of the School Teachers’ Review Body, responding to the remit issued in September 2024, is being published today. The report will be presented to Parliament and published on gov.uk. I will place a copy of this report in the Libraries of both Houses.

For 2025-26, the STRB recommended an increase of 4% to all teacher pay ranges and allowances. This pay award applies to all teachers in maintained schools. Alongside that, we are amending the provisions relating to TLRs so that, from September 2026, TLR payments must be based on the proportion of responsibility undertaken rather than pro-rated based on contracted hours. Schools will also have the option of implementing this change from September 2025. The Government are accepting these recommendations in full.

The STRB also gave its observations on broader structural issues relating to teachers’ pay and conditions. Following its report, from September 2025 the STPCD will be updated to reference that employers should aim to support flexible working requests where operationally feasible. Department for Education officials will consider the full scope of observations in future policy development.

The Department for Education will now consult all statutory consultees of the STRB on the Government’s response to these recommendations and on a revised school teachers’ pay and conditions document and pay order. The consultation will last for seven weeks, and the STPCD will be updated ahead of the new academic year, removing the need for schools to backdate the pay award.

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