As a statutory consultee, ASCL Cymru has submitted a response to the consultation on the draft School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions (Wales) Document (STPC(W)D) 2024, the IWPRB’s 5th Report, and the Cabinet Secretary’s response to it.
In our response we welcomed the increase in the pay award from the 4.3% recommended by the IWPRB, to 5.5% to match the award made to teachers and leaders in England, thus ensuring that the ‘no detriment’ principle was adhered to. We also welcomed the additional funding provided to support the implementation of the pay award, but voiced our grave concerns about whether all of the funding provided by the Welsh Government would indeed arrive in school budgets and be enough to cover the actual costs of the pay award at school level.
We made clear that we must continue to see fully funded increases of this nature in forthcoming years until the real-terms value of teacher leader pay has been restored and salaries become competitive with comparable graduate professions.
We expressed our disappointment and frustration over the significant delays throughout the process for this pay round, which resulted in the report and response not being published until the second week in the new academic year – the latest we have seen since the devolution of pay and conditions in Wales.
Furthermore, it is unacceptable that school leaders were directly disadvantaged because of these delays (see recommendation 10 of the report). We must see immediate improvements to the timeliness of the process.
You can read our response
here.
Now that the consultation has closed, the Welsh Government will consider the responses, finalise the drafts and lay the Pay Order in the Senedd. This normally takes 21 days before it comes into effect. Please remember that the pay uplifts recommended by the Cabinet Secretary remain provisional until the pay award consultation and Pay Order are finalised. Therefore, employers should not finalise changes to their pay policy until after the Pay Order has been laid.