The Secretary of State issued the remit for the STRB’s 34th report on 20 December 2023. The remit covers the following matters for recommendation:

A.    "The adjustments that should be made to the salary and allowance ranges for classroom teachers, unqualified teachers, and school leaders in 2024/25."

B.    "The potential benefits and challenges, in principle, of targeting remuneration by subject in the future in order to address subject specific teacher shortages."

On item B, the STRB also said: "We anticipate that our work in this area will result in a number of observations relevant to addressing the challenges of teacher shortages in certain subjects. However, given the complexity of this topic, we will not be making formal recommendations for immediate implementation on this topic in the 34th STRB report."

How did we respond?
Our evidence submission (links below) 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.

In our submission, we make a series of recommendations on pay, recruitment and retention. These include:

• A fully funded, above inflation pay increase across all pay ranges for September 2024. This must be accompanied by a longer-term commitment and funded strategic plan to fully restore the erosion of pay which has taken place since 2010, together with the re-establishment of previous differentials between pay ranges, particularly as classroom teachers move into leadership.
• Once the real-terms value of pay has been restored, that annual uplifts must continue to be fully funded and must at least keep pace with RPI each year.
• Sufficient funding to be provided to ensure that schools can afford to implement these commitments. 
• The scope of the STRB and the STPCD to be broadened to include those working in business leadership roles to ensure that they receive the recognition and remuneration for the crucial roles they hold and which support other school leaders to deliver their core functions.

Why have we taken this view?
Our evidence highlights the severe issues relating to recruitment and retention of teachers and school leaders including the disastrous recruitment to ITT targets. We also include significant evidence around the erosion of pay as a result of real terms pay cuts since 2010.

Teaching needs to be financially rewarding in order to be attractive and there are significant recruitment challenges across the profession that need to be addressed at a national level.

Business leaders must be recognised and remunerated for the vital roles they carry out and the level of responsibility and accountability that those roles hold. 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.

Furthermore, workload and wellbeing are significant issues for all teachers and school leaders and the Department must take action to address this.

ASCL evidence to STRB 34th remit

Annex One - calculations for 34th remit

Annex Two - ASCL Business leaders pay survey results

Annex Three - School affordability testing models