Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her correspondence with teachers of 29 March 2023, if she will make an assessment of the affordability of the proposed pay award for teachers at schools that signed fixed-term energy contracts at peak prices that will expire after 31 March 2024.

The Government’s recent pay offer was fully funded, nationally, as set out in the Department’s recent Education Hub post, which can be found here: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/03/28/teacher-strikes-latest-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-teacher-pay-offer/.

Following the rejection of this offer, final decisions on teachers’ pay for 2023/24 will now be made following recommendations on pay rises by the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB).

The Autumn Statement announced additional funding of £2 billion in each of the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, over and above totals announced at the 2021 Spending Review. This means funding for both mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23.

Total funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. After accounting for the new pay offers in 2023, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimate that school funding is still growing faster than school costs.

The Government provides these annual increases to school revenue budgets so that schools can cover cost increases in the year ahead, including teacher pay increases. England’s funding system, using a national formula, is designed so that schools seeing the largest pressures typically attract the largest funding increases, but it does not match each individual school’s precise costs, as schools have autonomy over their own spending. The Government’s judgement of the affordability of teacher pay increases is based on national figures, which equate to the position for an average school.