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. For the September 2025 pay award, the IWPRB will submit a report on to the Cabinet Secretary by 21 May 2025
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:
- What adjustments should be made to the salary and allowance ranges for classroom teachers, unqualified teachers and school leaders, to ensure the teaching profession in Wales is promoted and rewarded to encourage recruitment and retention of high-quality practitioners.
- 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.’
How did we respond?
Remit Item 1 (Salary and allowances): ASCL Cymru have submitted its response to the Welsh Government on Friday 5th March, outlining continuing concerns about the long-term erosion of pay for teachers and school leaders. You can read our submission below.
Remit Item 2 (Leaders’ Conditions of Service): May. We will submit our evidence to this in due course.
Why have we taken this view?
In our submission to the IWPRB, we make a series of recommendations on pay, recruitment and retention. These include that a fully funded pay increase that at least keeps pace with inflation (RPI) is awarded across all pay ranges for September 2025. We also include significant evidence around the erosion of pay as a result of real terms pay cuts since 2010.
Our evidence submission also includes robust information which clearly demonstrates the need for a significant above inflation increase for all teachers and school leaders, along with a longer-term strategic plan to restore the real-terms value of teacher and school leader pay. We also have provided evidence with regards to the alarming shortfall in teacher recruitment at both ITE and for more experienced teachers. Excessive workload and poor working conditions are also seeing high rates of teacher attrition and a weak leadership pipeline.
Teaching needs to be a financially rewarding career, with whole career salaries which are competitive and comparable with other graduate professions, in order to be attractive. Furthermore, there are significant recruitment and retention challenges across the profession that need to be addressed at a national level.
Business leaders must also be recognised and remunerated for the vital roles they carry out and the level of responsibility and accountability that those roles hold. We believe that this should be done by them being brought into the scope of the STPC(W)D alongside their leadership colleagues. Our recent pay survey shows that this is clearly not the case and also shows that 50% of respondents intend to leave the profession within the next three years. Moreover, workload and wellbeing are significant issues for all teachers and school and college leaders and the Welsh Government must take action to address this.
With the second remit item, ASCL Cymru is very concerned about this, as we know that school leaders in Wales have excessive working hours and do not have protected holidays and weekends, and this is affecting both recruitment and retention figures. 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.
ASCL Cymru evidence to IWPRB 6th remit
ASCL Cymru Annex One - calculations for 6th remit
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