Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what will be the total additional cost of the 6.5 per cent pay rise agreed for teachers.

The government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) recommendations for the 2023/24 teacher pay award in full. This means that teachers and head teachers in maintained schools in England will receive an award of 6.5%, the highest STRB award in three decades. The 2023/24 pay award completes the delivery of our manifesto commitment to raise starting salaries to £30,000. This will raise the status of the teaching profession and provide a pay offer that helps attract and retain the best teachers in the profession.

Back in March, the department set out its calculation that schools, on average, could afford a pay award of 4% from within existing funding. The department decided to fund the 2023 pay award from a lower affordability figure than that calculation: funding the costs of the pay award above 3.5%, on average, rather than above our 4% national affordability calculation. That matches the earlier figure in our written evidence to the STRB, which many schools used in their budget assumptions. Unions have confirmed that this ensures the pay award is properly funded.

The department is therefore providing additional funding equivalent to 3% of the pay award, or £525 million in the 2023/24 financial year and £900 million in the 2024/25 financial year. The estimated full cost of the 6.5% award, for all state-funded schools in England, would be £1.14 billion in the 2023/24 and £1.95 billion in 2024/25 financial years respectively.