Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of the public sector pay freeze on levels of recruitment and retention in the teaching profession.

The public sector pay cap is no longer in place and the Department has adopted a more flexible approach to public sector pay. The Remit letter from my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) said that the STRB should utilise this flexibility to target the next pay award to promote recruitment and retention.

Research suggests that pay is not the main driver of teachers leaving, and teachers do not tend to leave for better paid jobs.

The fundamental changes to teachers’ pay that have been introduced over the last four years following the STRB’s recommendations have given greater autonomy to schools to decide how to reward their staff. This increased flexibility helps schools to attract and retain the best teachers and to target any school-level recruitment and retention problems they may have, including addressing teacher shortages in specific subjects.