7 March 2025
The Cabinet Secretary for Education issued the 6th remit letter to the IWPRB on
27 January. On 5 February, the IWPRB commissioned written evidence submissions from statutory consultees.
The timeframe for this year’s pay round has started much later than it should have, and even later than last year. As a result, the remit has a very narrow focus, with just two items included. The first is the September 2025 pay award which the IWPRB will submit a report on to the Cabinet Secretary by 21 May 2025. The second item is "
What adjustments should be made to Leaders’ Conditions of Service and in particular the consideration of whether guaranteed working hours (or limits on) as well as protected holiday entitlement and weekends for leaders be included in the STPC(W)D."
Members will be aware that this was also a remit item last year, but due to time constraints the IWPRB did not make any recommendations other than to push this item into the 6th remit.
We do have some concerns over this, as no timeframe has been issued as yet, we have simply been informed that the IWPRB will advise on the submission of evidence and consultation process for this matter at a later date.
We will continue to make representations to ensure that this item does not get pushed further back.
As a statutory consultee, ASCL has now submitted written evidence for the 6th remit, which you can read
here.
There will now be an opportunity for us to submit supplementary evidence based on the evidence from other consultees. The deadline for this is 21 March. We will then attend an oral evidence session with the IWPRB during the week beginning 7 April.
ASCL Cymru supplementary evidence to the IWPRB 6th remit
21 March 2025
Following consideration of the evidence of other statutory consultees, we have now submitted our supplementary evidence to the IWPRB. We are very concerned about the options on pay being presented by the Welsh Government and their sheer disregard of the recruitment and retention crisis besetting Welsh schools.
We focused our supplementary evidence on the
Welsh Government’s evidence (and accompanying
letter) which included modelling for pay awards of 1%, 2% and 3% for September 2025. Needless to say, we find it extremely disappointing that the recommendations for pay awards are based on these unsubstantial increases.
We are clear in our intent - A significant increase in pay is required as part of a longer-term strategy to repair the real-terms value of teacher and leader pay. Even an above inflation pay award increase between 2026/27 and 2028/29 would simply reduce the gap in earnings for teachers and other professions over the last 15 years.
The Welsh Government also submitted a very simplistic report on the issues facing Welsh Schools in terms of recruitment and retention. They even present data to show the alarming shortfall in terms of ITE and a record number of teachers and school leaders leaving the profession (3.8% in 2023) and yet claim that there is stability and a good leadership pipeline. There is only a glib acknowledgement of the difficulty of recruiting into secondary subjects and Welsh-medium schools when the majority of statutory consultees have pointed to strong evidence the state of crisis with recruiting, for example, maths or science teachers. Record unfilled positions at both teacher and school leader level are not mentioned.
You can read our full supplementary evidence below. We will be meeting with the IWPRB in early April to give further evidence.
ASCL Cymru supplementary evidence to IWPRB 6th remit