The government should make schools draw up policies to “fully embrace” flexible workings, review teacher pay grades and consider multi-year settlements, the School Teachers’ Review Body has said.
The body tasked with advising ministers on teacher pay has also said they “see benefits in maximising the value of remuneration to teachers by facilitating employee choice” over opting out of teacher pensions, but had “concerns” over “poorly-informed decisions”.
The body said “priority action” was required on three areas: improving the attractiveness of teaching by “fully embracing” flexible working, ensuring taxpayer value for money and “modernising” conditions and career pathways.
The STRB has published its 35th report, recommending a 4 per cent pay rise for the 2025-26 academic year. In it, it also made a range of suggestions for improvements to the current system of pay and conditions for teachers.
Here’s what you need to know…
1. Make all schools have a flexible working policy
The report said improving flexible working “would make a material positive impact”, but there was a “hesitancy in many cases to provide a substantive offer to staff”.
Suggested approaches include advertising all posts as “up to full-time”, allowing job-shares at all levels, four-day weeks or nine-day fortnights. Other interventions include compressed hours, time off in lieu, ad-hoc term-time leave and flexible retirement.
The report said a DfE intervention was “needed to move practice in schools forward” to flexible working is “fully embraced”.
But “rather than STRB prescribing a rigid approach, we suggest that it should be mandatory for all schools to develop, publish and implement their own flexible working policy”.
A senior staff member and governor “should be accountable to monitor and report back to the wider staff and responsible body each year on the implementation and impact of the policy”.
2. Target pay to address shortages
The STRB warned the current approach to teacher pay “mean that schools are not always able to make best use of the funding they receive to ensure adequate staffing, thereby preventing them from being as productive as they could be”.
The report called for “material change” to introduce “additional targeting of remuneration to remediate teacher shortages not currently being sufficiently addressed”.
At the moment teaching is “consistently failing to attract the full range of professionals needed”.
It suggested that the STRB or “another appropriate body” be “invited to undertake work on targeting remuneration to address teacher shortages”.
3. Time to review grading structures
The STRB warned the terms and conditions for teachers, including grading structures, “need significant review”.
Part of the problem is that the school teachers’ pay and conditions document (STPCD) has been “subject to continuing incremental change over many years”.
Given the “fundamental changes to the schools sector over recent years and more change ahead, we see limited value in continuing to make microlevel changes and believe that a significant modernisation is now required”, the body added.
With the children’s wellbeing and schools bill proposing extending pay and conditions requirements to academies, “we believe the timing is right for that work to start as a priority”.
4. ‘Consensus’ over multi-year pay settlements, but not a ‘priority’
Change is also needed to “provide schools with the ability to manage their budgets well with multi-year awards”, the report said.
Some consultees said they would support such awards, “citing the potential benefits for schools to plan financially and to provide greater certainty to staff.
These benefits “would particularly apply where multi-year pay awards coincided with the corresponding comprehensive spending review periods”.
However, there were “differing views on the precise approach to multi-year awards, including on the detailed mechanisms for reconsidering awards in reaction to economic volatility, and the need for suitable economic conditions”.
The STRB said the issue was one to “return to in the future”, but “we do not see this as a short-term priority”.
5. ‘Benefits’ of pension opt out, but ‘concern’ over ‘poor decisions’
The STRB said it had received “evidence of teachers opting out of the existing pension arrangements with consultees suggesting this was for cost-of-living reasons”.
There has been a renewed debate around the issue after Schools Week revealed how United Learning, the country’s biggest trust, plans to offer teachers a less generous pension in exchange for higher salaries. Government and unions oppose the plan.
The STRB said that, “all else equal, we see benefits in maximising the value of remuneration to teachers by facilitating employee choice”.
However, it said flexibility or innovation in pensions “should be focused on maximising the value of remuneration to teachers and not result in reduced total remuneration.
“It is also of fundamental importance that any flexibility is based on well-informed choice.”
Jon Coles, the chief executive of United Learning, said he was “very pleased to find this in the STRB report. The clearest possible advocacy of precisely the approach we are taking to pensions.”
Under United Learning’s plan, teachers will get independent advice and all money saved from lower employer pension contributions would go towards boosting pay.
However, the STRB said it recognised “consultees’ concerns about the risk of members taking poorly informed decisions that could have negative long-term consequences”.
There is a “widespread view that this part of teacher remuneration is not well understood”, they added.
They were “concerned that some teachers are insufficiently familiar with the options offered by the existing scheme, including in relation to flexible retirement”.
“Pensions flexibility can make a positive contribution to employment flexibility, but we would be concerned about innovation in this area being used to reduce total remuneration. The department should consider promoting flexible retirement.”
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