Experienced teachers are poorly paid compared to other graduate professions yet have skills which are highly valued by many industries. This is a recipe for disaster, says Dr Mary Bousted

A recent research paper from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, entitled The long, long squeeze on teacher pay, gives a compelling account of how teachers’ pay has declined in real terms over the past 15 years (Cribb & Sibieta, 2021).

It shows that between 2007 and 2014 there was an eight per cent real-terms (including inflation) fall in teacher pay levels – a fall which was 1.5 per cent more than the fall in general wages over this period.

The government has responded to increasingly vocal concerns about teacher supply by targeting raises in teacher pay at newly qualified and beginning teachers.

By September 2021, there will have been a five per cent real-terms rise in starting salaries – the bulk of this due to a large rise in 2020 as part of the move towards the government’s ambition of £30,000 starting salaries for teachers.

Teachers in the earlier stages of their career – on the main professional grade from M2 to M6 – have seen real-terms rises of three to four per cent.

However, more experienced teachers on the upper pay spine have seen their real-terms pay frozen between 2014 and 2021. This affects more than half of all teachers.

During the same period average earnings in the wider economy rose by 7.5 per cent. It is also worth remarking that salaries for teachers in Scotland and Wales are now “notably higher” than those in England – by seven and five per cent respectively (Cribb & Sibieta, 2021).

Experienced teachers know that they are paid poorly compared to other graduate professions. And they know that they have skills which are highly valued in other professions.

Poor pay leads to increasing numbers of teachers leaving just as they gain the experience and expertise to support younger colleagues, mentoring and helping them to get over the “shock” of the first two years of teaching.

Without this support and guidance too many early career teachers buckle under the pressure and stress of the job and leave earlier and earlier in their careers. Astonishingly, a fifth of teachers leave teaching within two years of qualification (DfE, 2021).

It is a vicious cycle and one that causes huge problems for school leaders and for the standards of education they provide in their schools. Experience is invaluable in all walks of life and especially so in the complexity of teaching when so much of the work is in the moment – in instant reactions to pupils’ responses to learning, their responses to the expectations that teachers have of their behaviour, teachers’ knowledge of them and their community.

There are few certainties in teaching but experienced colleagues can ease the way of their more inexperienced peers – console them when they are having difficulties with their classes and point them to what is important in their work.

When this experienced cadre of teachers is hollowed out, then the eager but inexperienced find that, too often, enthusiasm and commitment is not enough and they leave, burned out themselves.

This turnover, of course, costs. In the last report for which figures are available, the National Audit Office revealed that the DfE in 2013/14 spent £555m on training and supporting beginning teachers. That figure will be much bigger in 2021.

How much less money would be wasted in the endless quest to replace teachers leaving the profession if they were paid properly in the first place – not just at the start, but throughout their careers.

  • Dr Mary Bousted is the joint general secretary of the National Education Union. Read her previous articles for SecEd via http://bit.ly/seced-bousted

 

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