New graduate recruits can now expect to earn £17,000 a year (up 6 per cent from last year) and starting salaries in inner London rise to £20,000 (up 9 per cent) for the first time.

The complete pay package reinforces three Rs – recruitment, retention and reward – to attract new teachers and keep good teachers teaching.

The 3.7 per cent rise, together with the performance threshold increase, means an extra £3,000 for good experienced teachers since April 2000 (from £24,000 to a minimum £26,900 pa - and £30,000 in inner London). 200,000 teachers applied for the threshold and over 150,000 are expected to meet the standards set.

Schools also get complete discretion for the first time to offer a range of extra recruitment and retention payments of up to £5,000 a year per teacher, helping tackle recruitment difficulties particularly in high cost areas such as the Home Counties and the South East. The red-tape cutting package means an end to restrictions on which schools can use allowances.

New retention bonus packages - or ‘golden handcuffs’ - worth up to £15,000 per teacher will help retain teachers in particularly challenging jobs by carrying forward recruitment and retention allowances for periods of up to three years and paying them as a bonus at the end of the period.

David Blunkett also announced that he was extending the successful London scheme to help people return to teaching with refresher courses - £5 million over two years will allow this support to be extended to returners in parts of the country facing particular shortages. This will also allow help to be offered for the first time to returners with childcare responsibilities.

 

 

Early indications from the Annual Schools Census give the first clear picture on vacant teaching posts this term. The overall number of vacancies is broadly the same across England as last year. There are fewer vacancies in primary schools in England than last year, falling from 0.8 per cent to 0.5 per cent. Primary vacancies in London have fallen and are broadly the same in other regions as last year.

The proportion of secondary vacancies has increased from 0.7 per cent to 0.8 per cent. The situation in London secondary schools appears slightly better than last year, however there has been an increase (probably due to rising house costs) in vacancies in secondary schools in the South East outside London.

There have also been increased vacancies in secondary schools in East and West Midlands, though the figures remain lower than the South East or London. Secondary vacancies remain at around the previous levels of 0.4 per cent or less in the North East, North West, Yorkshire and Humber and the South West.

Mr Blunkett said:

'This year’s pay settlement is designed to help us in three important objectives which are a vital part of our drive to raise standards: to recruit more new teachers, retain good teachers and reward teachers.

'This year’s pay increases means that new graduates can expect to earn £17,000 a year and starting salaries in inner London rise to over £20,000 for the first time. Experienced teachers who pass the performance threshold will see their pay rising from £24,000 to £26,900 (£26,000 to £30,000 in Inner London) with the chance of earning up to £4,000 more over time. These are significant and substantial increases which are not being staged.

'I welcome the pay review body’s proposals to make it easier for schools to target recruit and retention allowances where they want to do so. Schools have substantial extra resources this year and can choose to use direct grants to attract and retain good teachers. This will help schools and areas facing the greatest recruitment challenges to offer significantly better pay for specialist teachers, in particular.

'This government has taken unprecedented steps to recruit and retain teachers and the recruitment figures show our action is helping to make teaching a more attractive career. We have introduced £6,000 training salaries, £4,000 golden hellos and a 1,680-strong graduate teacher programme where trainee teachers can earn £13,000 in the classroom.

'Our decisive action means there are now 2,250 more people training to be teachers than this time last year. In response to heads and education authorities, we have also cut red tape to enable retired teachers to continue teaching, to support trained teachers from countries such as Australia and New Zealand and to help returners - with further moves to support them announced today. Teachers will also benefit from the DETR’s Starter Homes Initiative to help them buy their first home.

'The TTA advertising campaign has attracted over 114,000 inquiries to date, over 50,000 of whom have gone on to register - more than double the number during the same period the year before. Graduate applications have risen and we are expanding the graduate teacher programme further next year.

'Our Green Paper in 1998 heralding performance related pay is giving teachers new career options to earn much more in the classroom than ever before as well as in management. Good classroom teachers can earn up to £31,000 over time (£34,000 in inner London), those who take on management roles such as being Head of department can earn up to £36,800 (£39,800 in inner London) and the best can go on to become Advanced Skills Teachers and earn over £44,600 (£47,600 in inner London).

'Standards of teaching are improving as are results in schools. There is more support for teachers with far more money for school budgets than in 1997, including a substantial programme of school repairs, increased resources for professional development, more money for books and computers. Class sizes are being reduced and there are 24,000 more classroom assistants and new learning mentors to provide extra support with pupils.

'These are the very clear facts – and they stand in stark contrast to the way in which teachers posts were frozen and school budgets cut before 1997. Of course we need to recruit more teachers and of course we need to provide backing to those schools or education authorities where high house prices make recruitment more difficult. But this is a generous settlement and combined with the changes we have made last year, it starts to make teaching a genuinely attractive profession. I hope that this settlement will reinforce the wider improvements already being effected in working conditions and in standards for the coming year.

'I share the Review Body's concern about unnecessary burdens on teachers. I agree with their view that limits on hours or contact time would be difficult and cumbersome to administer. Instead, I believe that we must cut bureaucracy and we have already taken decisive action to reduce needless bureaucracy and cut duplication of data collection which we will build on over the coming year, working with heads and teachers.

'The figures I announced last December show that about 40 per cent fewer documents were sent to primary schools last term, and 66 per cent fewer to secondary schools. The largest item sent to primary schools was the new Grammar Guide designed to improve pupils’ writing skills which was widely welcomed.'

Subject to further consultations with key stakeholders, the pay increases will take effect from April 2001. There will be significant additional resources for performance pay from April 2002 and details will be announced shortly.

Notes To Editors

This press notice applies to England and Wales – the vacancy rate figures apply to England only.

1. This press release applies to England and Wales in relation to teachers’ pay and conditions and the STRB. References to other issues, including funding, apply in England only. Headline inflation rate stands at 2.9 %. The total cost is £564 million England and Wales, £529 m England only or a rise of 4.2%.
2. In total spending for schools in England will increase by £1.9billion in 2001-02:
   • Local Education Authorities are receiving over £1 billion extra in education Standard Spending Assessments - a 4.8 per cent increase on 2000-01.
   • The Standards Fund will increase by £600m from £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion.
   • All schools will also receive their share of the £250 million extra in this year's £540 million direct grant to schools. A typical secondary school will receive £60,000 and a typical primary school will receive £20,000. Direct grant to schools is guaranteed for the duration of the Spending Review and will be increased by 2.75% in both remaining years.
3. Key pay recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body are being accepted in full and without staging – subject to a consultation period which concludes March 2001.
4. The ‘good, experienced teachers’ referred to in these press notice are teachers that have been serving a minimum of seven years and have passed the ‘threshold’ performance assessment. Teachers in a management role are those holding the fifth management allowance, typically the head of a faculty or a large department in a secondary school.
5. Performance related pay is currently being assessed – 200,000 of the 250,000 eligible teachers have applied and most are expected to pass the threshold.
6. Figures in Table 1 are rounded to the nearest £100. The £3,000 rise - from £24,000 to £26,919 – is April 2000-April 2001.
7. The up to £15,000 retention bonuses will be payable to teachers remaining in post for three years in particularly challenging jobs.
8. The £5 million returners package: The TTA administers a returners programme for qualified teachers who have been out of the profession (for example, to raise children) and who need to refresh their skills before going back to the classroom. Returners' courses typically last 10 weeks full-time, but are also available part-time and by distance learning. On 29 August, David Blunkett announced, as part of the recruitment package for London EiC areas, new funding for returners consisting of the waiver of course fees; £150-a-week grants during their courses; and bonuses to course providers for every returner who finds a job in the area. Over 200 returners have already taken advantage of this initiative. Today's announcement will allow these incentives to be extended to other areas of England where they would be helpful to tackle teacher shortages. We also propose to introduce supplementary grants to help returners with children to pay for childcare during their courses.
9. Vacancy rate notes: A representative sample of 1453 schools was telephoned in advance of their submission of the school census in the first weeks of January. Nationally representative results, verified by DfEE statisticians, estimate the vacancy level in primary schools to be 0.5% (within a range 0.3% to 0.6%). For secondary schools the estimated rate was 0.8% (within the range 0.7% to 0.9%).
   
   Vacancies are defined as advertised full-time permanent appointments of at least one term's duration that exist on the survey day and are not covered by a teacher on a contract of one term or more.
10. There were 114,000 enquiries to TTA information line between 1 September and 28 January, compared to 43,000 in same period last year, +165%. Between 1 September and 28 January, there were 49,000 registrations with the information line, compared with 19,000 last year, +160%).
11. The settlement compared to recent Awards in Scotland:

    	Scotland (August 2001)	England and Wales	Inner London
    Starting pay August 2001	£16,000	£17,000	£20,000
    Pay for good, experienced teacher 2001	£25, 600	£26,900-31,000	£30-34,000

12. Cutting bureaucracy: During the Autumn term this school year, primary schools have been sent 30 fewer items than last year saving 1,170 pages. By this time last year they had received 56 items totalling 1660 pages in the same period. Of the 490 pages they have received this year, 216 pages were from the new Grammar Guide designed to improve pupils’ writing skills which was widely welcomed.
    The Government is on track to meet the target for this school year to cut by a third the number of documents and by a half the number of pages of information going to schools. Work in-hand to cut school bureaucracy includes:
    • radically simplifying the Standards Fund, with fewer separate, ring-fenced grants, an end to bidding and claiming, less form-filling and streamlined monitoring
    • launching EASEA, the electronic in-tray service for heads and teachers and other electronic services such as the popular electronic schemes of work to help draw up lesson plans;
    • extra help for teachers from more classroom assistants and learning mentors and an £80 million support fund specifically for small schools.