Pay rise for all teachers ruled out

Teachers should not get an above-inflation, across-the-board pay increase next year, the Government says.

Every 1% on the school pay bill is worth £150 million which could be spent on thousands of classroom assistants or nearly 150,000 laptop computers for teachers, the Department for Education and Skills says.

It also proposes giving individual schools more power to set pay rates for their staff.

The DfES confirmed it wants movement up the teachers' pay scale linked much more closely to performance in future as part of the Government's drive to "modernise" public services.

All the teacher unions in England have called for "substantial" increases for all teachers, no matter what point on the scale they are on - the National Union of Teachers said 10% or £2,000, whichever was greater.

But the DfES said: "The Government is strongly of the view that the priority for this year is not a general increase in pay above the rate of inflation but instead action to promote workforce reform and tackle workload issues."

The warning came in the DfES's annual submission of evidence to the School Teachers Review Body, which advises ministers on the profession's pay and conditions.

Education Secretary Estelle Morris believed schools were "increasingly well placed to make judgments about how pay can address their particular recruitment and retention challenges", it said.

The evidence also confirmed the Government's support for three-year pay deals, as long as they were "affordable, gave absolute priority to the increasing costs of workforce reform and workload reduction and took full account of the progress already made in raising teachers' pay since 1997 and wider reforms".

NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy said: "The Government shows no understanding of the causes of the shortfall in the numbers of young people entering and staying in the teaching profession."