Teachers: Pay

(asked on 14th September 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the findings of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report Education at a Glance 2020, published on 8 September, which suggests that the teacher pay gap in England is twice that of the OECD average.


Answered by
Baroness Berridge Portrait
Baroness Berridge
This question was answered on 28th September 2020

The government appreciates the hard work and dedication of all teachers, and recognises the need to recruit and retain good teachers and leaders.

For the 2020 teachers’ pay award, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) has recommended a 5.5% uplift to the minimum of the main pay range and 2.75% uplift to the maximum of the main pay range and the minima and maxima of all the other pay ranges and allowances. The STRB has also recommended advisory pay points on the main pay range and upper pay range. The department is accepting these recommendations in full.

This teachers’ pay award is the largest since 2005 and provides for a substantial above-inflation increase to the pay ranges for all teachers and leaders and thanks to the flexible performance based pay system we have, schools can choose to give teachers and leaders a higher pay rise where this is appropriate to their local context and budget.

The government made a commitment to increase starting salaries to £30,000 by 2022/23 in order to place teaching where it belongs at the top of the graduate labour market. This pay award takes the first step to delivering this target with a 5.5% increase to starting salaries worth between £1,341 and £1,677 depending on location.

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