A partially funded pay rise for teachers in England could result in “further cuts” to education provision for pupils, unions have warned.
The Government has accepted the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) to increase the salaries of school teachers and school leaders in England by 4% from September.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said schools will receive an additional £615 million of funding this financial year to help cover most of the costs of increased pay awards for staff.
But she said schools will have to find around 1% of the pay awards themselves “through improved productivity and smarter spending”.
Ms Phillipson added: “I believe schools have a responsibility, like the rest of the public sector, to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible.”
The National Education Union (NEU), the largest education union in the country, has threatened to “register a dispute” with the Government unless it fully funds the pay rise for teachers.
On the partially funded pay offer for teachers, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “In many schools this will mean cuts in service provision to children and young people, job losses, and additional workloads for an already overstretched profession.”
He said: “Unless the Government commit to fully funding the pay rise then it is likely that the NEU will register a dispute with the Government on the issue of funding, and campaign to ensure every parent understands the impact of a cut in the money available to schools, and that every politician understands this too.”
Last month, both teaching unions – the NEU and the NASUWT – threatened to take strike action if schools did not get extra funding to pay for salary increases for teachers.
It came after the Department for Education (DfE) previously suggested in its written evidence to the STRB in December that a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate”.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the funding allocated to partially cover the cost of the teacher pay award “represents a further cut to school budgets”.
He said: “If the Government really thinks it will be possible to bridge this funding gap through ‘improved productivity and smarter spending’, then it is mistaken.
“Schools have already spent many years cutting costs to the bone and beyond.
“The most likely outcome is that there will be further cuts to educational provision.”
In April, the NEU said it would launch a formal ballot on strike action if the Government’s pay award for teachers was “unacceptable”.
It came after a majority of NEU teacher members in England who took part in a preliminary ballot said they would be willing to take strike action to secure a fully funded, significantly higher pay award.
Last month, the NASUWT teaching union also said it would ballot its members for industrial action if the Government offered a pay award that was “not fully funded”.
Matt Wrack, acting general secretary of the NASUWT, said the union will be “carefully considering” the implications of the Government’s announcement on teachers’ pay.
He said: “We need to see long-term investment in education and there is a substantial risk that many schools will be placed in severe financial difficulty this year and next if any financial shortfall they experience is not addressed with extra funding.”
In a written statement, Ms Phillipson said the 4% pay rise means school teachers “will see an increase in their pay of almost 10% since this government took power and over 22% over the last four years.”
On Thursday, the Education Secretary also announced that the Government will invest an additional £160m this financial year to support colleges.
In July last year, the Labour Government offered teachers and school leaders in England a fully funded 5.5% pay award for 2024/25.
NEU members staged eight days of strike action in schools in England in 2023 in a pay dispute.
In July 2023, the Government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5% increase for teachers in England, and coordinated strike action by four unions was called off.
