Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the oral contribution by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury of 13 July 2023, Official Report, column 526, which budget lines within the Department for Education's existing budget are being reprioritised to deliver the additional funding to increase teachers' pay by 6.5%.

The Government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations for 2023/24 teacher pay awards in full. This means that teachers and head teachers in maintained schools will receive an increase of at least 6.5%, the highest STRB award in three decades. The Department will be providing an additional £525 million of funding in the 2023/24 financial year, and £900 million in 2024/25, and as the unions have agreed, this means that the award is properly funded.

Although the Department will have to make difficult decisions, the Secretary of State has been clear all frontline services will be protected. Funding for early years, SEND, school conditions and core school and college budgets are fully protected. To help fund the pay award, the Secretary of State has also secured exceptional permission from the Treasury to keep money where there have been or will be underspends, which in normal years would have to be returned to Treasury.

The additional funding announced alongside the teachers’ pay award fully covers the cost of the pay award above 3.5%, nationally. The Department’s affordability calculation says that a 4% pay award should be affordable for the average school, and the Department is more than covering that calculation.