Government will amend schools bill over academy teacher pay

The government will amend its own schools bill to make clear that academies only have to adhere to a teacher pay ‘floor’, the schools minister has said.

Academies will only have to show “due regard” to other pay and condition rules, government said today.

This means academies will maintain their flexibility to provide better salaries and conditions, the schools minister Catherine McKinnell said in parliament today.

The government has come under fire for proposals to make academies follow national pay and conditions – which leaders said could lead to pay cuts for staff and less flexibility conditions.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the bill would create a pay “floor, but no ceiling” for schools, but the bill as written does not reflect that.

McKinnell said today that government will table an amendment to change that.

She said it would make clear academies only have to follow a teacher pay floor. Academies would only have to show “due regard” to other national pay and conditions details, she added.

‘We want to enable healthy competition’

“We want to create a floor with no ceiling – enabling healthy competition and innovation beyond that core framework to improve all schools and that’s what we intend to deliver,” McKinnell told MPs.

She said government had “heard the feedback from the sector” that “our ambition for teacher pay and conditions should be clearer”.

She said the amendment will “set a floor on pay that requires all state schools to follow minimum pay bands”.

But it will also set out academies only need to “have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the schools teacher pay and conditions document”.

“In doing so, we make clear we will deliver on our commitment to create a floor with no ceiling so that good practice and innovation can continue to spread and be used by all state schools to recruit and retain the very best teachers we need for our children.”

Local authority maintained schools would still have to follow the entire pay and conditions document, government confirmed this evening.

But a press notice added they will “see the benefit of further flexibilities, supporting innovation, that we will remit the STRB [teacher pay review body] to consider following the passage of the bill”.