Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 5 November 2018 (HL11052), what further discussions they have had with stakeholders regarding centrally employed teachers not covered by the Teachers' Pay Grant.

The teachers’ pay grant is to support schools with the cost of the award. Centrally employed teachers make up less than 1% of all classroom teachers, and we anticipate that local authorities will cover the additional increase from existing budgets. While we are distributing the grant on a per pupil formula, we do not have an equivalent basis on which to provide funding to local authorities, given the variability in approach to centrally employing teachers between different authorities. Many centrally employed teachers are employed by music education hubs. We recently announced a £1.33 million increase in funding for music education hubs for 2018/19 and 2019/20 to help with a range of pressures including pay.

Since November, we have discussed this further with a range of stakeholders, including the Local Government Association, other representatives from local authorities and representatives from teacher unions.