What does the Government evidence to the STRB tell us about teacher pay and retention in London?

The Government provided evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body in January 2019 that needs to inform the NEU’s campaign for improved pay and conditions for London’s teachers:

1) A campaign over London teachers’ pay also needs to be a campaign for improved funding

It is no accident that the Government’s submission (or, in reality, instruction) to the STRB starts by emphasising the economic outlook and the need for “fiscal discipline”. In the Government’s view, “public sector pay remains competitive” and any awards need to be based on “affordability”.

The evidence also stresses the particular need for affordability in schools. As usual, the Government stresses that schools should use performance pay and pay scale autonomy to limit costs but “while recognising the importance of schools’ flexibility to set their pay policies in light of local circumstances, we continue to consider it very important that the STRB pay due attention to the likely impact of its recommendations on schools’ budgets, in the light of this affordability evidence” (para. 45). It also warns that “although the government provided funding, through a teachers’ pay grant, to support the implementation of the 2018 award, it should not be assumed this will be the case again for the 2019 award” (para. 34).

In summary (para.4), it states that “the evidence sets out the importance of ensuring that the pay award does not place undue pressure on school budgets, with a 2% increase in per teacher pay being affordable nationally” and that any awards “also need to be considered in relation to other areas where schools may wish to invest (such as school improvement, teacher continuing professional development, pastoral support and teaching resources)”.

It is therefore clear that any campaign for increased salaries for London teachers also needs to be linked to a campaign for improved funding for London schools.

2) A London pay campaign needs to relate to a national campaign over declining teacher salaries

In its initial submission to the STRB this January, the NEU took up the issue of “affordability” pointing out that “last year, the STRB sought to address the deterioration in the value of teacher pay and the “further deterioration” in teacher supply. Although insufficient in our view, the STRB’s recommendation for a pay increase of 3.5 per cent across the board showed that it understood the need for a whole-market signal on pay to address teacher supply problems. The Government’s unprecedented decision to refuse to implement this recommendation was not based on any refutation of the STRB’s case, but on funding grounds. The Government’s damaging policy on education funding was therefore used to justify further damage to teacher pay and teacher supply”.

The submission goes on to argue “that the STRB should not feel constrained by questions of affordability in its recommendations but should focus on the actions it believes are needed to restore the appropriate value of teacher pay and address the recruitment and retention crisis. It is then the Government’s responsibility to address the resource implications”.

As it goes on to explain, “Government found additional money for teachers’ pay last year after stating that no additional resources would be available. The Government can choose to find additional resources again – this is a political choice which rests with the Government”.

The submission points out that, nationally, “teacher starting pay, when expressed as an hourly rate based on the average 54.4 hours worked by teachers according to the latest DfE Workload Survey, is just 13 per cent above the National Minimum Wage (NMW). This gap has narrowed significantly”.
Interestingly, a similar analysis carried out by the NFER (Worth, J., Lynch, S., Hillary, J., Rennie, C. and Andrade, J. (2018). Teacher Workforce Dynamics in England. Slough: NFER) is referred to in the Government’s own STRB submission. Although this uses median earnings, so arrives at higher hourly rates, in analysing a not unreasonable scenario that assumes that teachers also work three weeks in their holidays, it concludes that this “would mean teachers work the most hours per year of the three professions [comparing to police officers and nurses] and have the lowest real average hourly pay”. Their analysis also concludes that “teachers’ average gross annualised pay per hour has fallen over time, due to falling real-terms pay and longer weekly working hours”.

In conclusion, the NEU submission calls on the STRB to recommend:
• an immediate fully-funded pay increase for all teacher pay points and allowances of 5 per cent in September 2019;
• further pay increases for teachers as soon as possible, to restore the cut in teacher pay against inflation since 2010; and
• a further urgent review of teacher pay levels, to establish appropriate pay levels for the long term that will support recruitment and retention by ensuring that teacher pay levels are competitive with those of other graduate professions.

The NEU submission at this stage has not provided a specific demand for an increase in pay for teachers on the London scales. It warns that “real-terms pay cuts and restrictions on pay progression affect teachers across England. Just as teacher supply problems are systemic and require a holistic response, regional pay would provide no solutions and would create new problems” but makes clear that “we do, however, have concerns about the current operation of the long-established London pay area arrangements. The STRB noted concerns on this area in its 28th Report (STRB, paragraph 5.9); and we will discuss these issues in more detail in the context of the forthcoming remit on the pay framework”.

3) The Government’s own evidence points to the need for improved pay for teachers in London

To what degree a campaign on London teachers’ salaries should relate to a national pay and funding campaign is a strategic question. However, what is clear from the evidence already provided by the Government is that there is a clear case for increased salaries for teachers covered by London pay arrangements.

a) The STRB’s 28th Report (as eventually released in July 2018)

In its 28th Report referred to above, the STRB stated in paragraph 5.9 cited above that “Some consultees raised concerns about the impact that the current geographical bandings have on teacher recruitment and retention for some schools, particularly those near the borders of the Inner London, Outer London and Fringe areas. There are also some distinctive features of the teacher labour market in London that may mean that the differentials between these bandings need to be reviewed”.

The Report showed evidence that the relative position of classroom teachers’ median earnings in all regions has continued to deteriorate but that the comparison is worse in the South-East and London, but with Outer London teachers suffering a significant relative decline over the last five years:
b) Government Evidence to the STRB (January 2019)

In its latest evidence to the STRB, Government evidence illustrates specific concerns about London teacher pay, recruitment and retention. It points out, based on NFER analysis (see below) “that system-level retention is more challenging in certain subjects, particularly science and modern foreign languages, and in certain areas, particularly London. This analysis, in common with the department’s, found that retention is most challenging in the first five years of a teacher’s career. The STRB will want to consider these retention trends in deciding how to best target its recommendations to tackle retention challenges”.

Its own School Workforce census figures, released as the “Teacher Analysis Compendium 4” in September 2018, it had already confirmed the worse rate of retention in the London Region: 


 
In this latest evidence it provides further relevant regional data.

This table confirms the higher ‘wastage rates’ of teachers leaving the profession in London:

This graph indicates that, while median salaries in general may be higher in Inner London, this is not the case for academies. This must presumably be due to either to having a younger workforce – suggesting higher turnover -and/or greater use of performance pay measures to prevent pay progression.


c) NFER Paper - Teacher Workforce Dynamics in England (October 2018)

Further, in the NFER paper Teacher Workforce Dynamics in England referred to in its evidence, the NFER researchers sought to develop the clear evidence from the Department for Education’s own 2016 local analysis of the teacher workforce where, as they state “London stands out from the analysis as being different to the other regions, having higher than average rates of teachers leaving the profession, proportions of unqualified teachers and proportion of schools with vacancies or temporary staff”.

To make sure that this wasn’t just a general urban effect, the NFER researchers analysed the data in comparison to other large cities and concluded that “there is something unique about London that makes the teacher supply challenge particularly acute”. It went on to produce data showing that:

• “London has a higher rate of teachers leaving the profession than other areas ... Overall, London loses 0.5 per cent of its workforce each year from teachers moving to other schools, after accounting for teachers moving to a school in London from a school outside London. Again, this is not the case in other large cities”. 
• “Teachers aged in their 30s and 40s tend to move out of London” putting particular pressures on recruitment into middle and senior leadership. “While these opportunities for quick progression can initially attract teachers to London, it may leave teachers feeling underqualified and therefore overwhelmed by their extra responsibilities”.
•  “London has seen the fastest growth in pupil numbers ... The high rates of London teachers leaving the profession and moving to schools in other areas are despite London having seen the largest increase in teacher demand in recent years”. 
  
  The Report concludes that “Our analysis suggests there is something unique about London that makes the teacher supply challenge particularly acute. London has considerably more teachers leaving the profession compared to other areas, including other large cities. It also suffers from greater churn of teachers moving to schools outside of London, particularly experienced teachers aged in their 30s and 40s. Small and medium-sized areas, rather than other cities, are the biggest destinations for teachers who move out of London. The high cost of living is the main barrier to longer-term retention of teachers in London”.
  
  d) Teacher Supply, Retention and Mobility in London (Worth et al, 2018) 
  
  The NFER paper also refers to further evidence produced by Worth et al in another NFER report produced with the GLA on behalf of Teach London in May 2018. This similarly concludes that “the findings demonstrate that London’s teacher labour market faces a particularly acute challenge over the coming decade and that this challenge is specific to London rather than a general pattern across other large English cities”.

The report concludes that “the most important factor driving low teacher retention in London is higher housing costs” and produces an analysis comparing rents with leaving rates for younger staff:

It also gives data to show that:

• London has a higher rate of teachers leaving the profession [i.e. the state sector]. “Between 2010 and 2015 an average of 10.5% of non-retiring teachers left teaching each year in London (around 4,000 teachers per year). This compares to the national average of 7.5%”. 
• More London schools have vacancies and temporarily-filled posts than in other areas.  
• London’s primary and secondary middle leaders are leaving the profession at a higher rate than in other areas (Figure 13 shows an average for the period from 2010-2015).
  

 





The Report concludes by proposing two possible solutions.
(1) “housing policy interventions ... to retain more teachers in London”
(2) “to increase the pay of teachers in London”

4) What is the effective ‘London Allowance” after the September 2018 Pay Award?

Following the Government’s failure to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 3.5% rise across the board in September 2018, the lower 2% increase on the UPS now means that a M6 teacher in Inner London is paid more than a UPS1 teacher in a school covered by the Outer London pay area.

The table below shows the effective ‘London Allowances’ on different scale points based on a comparison with the England and Wales scale: 




These figures need to be compared with recent research from Donald Hirsch at Loughborough estimating the additional costs of living and working in Inner London as being around £8,000 a year more than national costs, in Outer London around £6,500 a year.

Teachers speak out on the poverty blighting Britain this Christmas

As schools reach the end of term, and schools and families alike prepare for Christmas, the National Education Union has released the results of a distressing survey into child poverty.

Over half of teachers answering the survey believed there are young people in their school who will go hungry over Christmas. Nearly two-thirds said that more families are unable to afford adequate shoes or clothing this winter compared to three years ago.

In terms of the impact of poverty on the education of children, teachers identified:
· 85% behavioural issues
· 83% absences from school
· 81% lack of concentration
· 79% lateness to school
· 59% impacts on children’s health
· only 3% have observed none of these consequences

However, it's the quotes that speak more than figures ever can:

“I see children with dirty clothes. Wearing canvas shoes in wet and cold weather, not having a decent winter coat, wearing clothes that clearly aren't theirs and being bought shoes that are too big for them so they will last longer.

“Good shoes are too expensive so students are coming to school in cheap shoes that lasts a few weeks at most. I often have students asking me if I can glue their shoes back together because the sole has fallen off. Some students smell as they are in the same shirt/ uniform all week.

“Mute students going cold, making excuses, feeling ashamed.

“Period poverty causing absence. We now have a box from Red Box project and the impact was almost instant for a small number of girls.

“Our school experienced whole school attendance of 86% after heavy rain because students' shoes are damaged.

“Summer dresses, ankle socks, poor quality shoes, we have a ‘help yourself to clothes’ rail and the stuff flies off every week.

“Some students whose families have been placed in temporary accommodation are having to travel huge distances across London. 

"The increase in mental health issues in families directly related to poverty is another one of the pastoral issues which are taking up vast amounts of time and resources at the same time that budget pressures are forcing both in-house and external support to be cut to the bone.

“Breakfast club snacks in my drawer, bus fares for pupils whose parents are hit by universal credit, tights for pupil in temporary accommodation.

A Government that presides over such a disgraceful situation is a failing government. Instead of a Government that blames schools and families, we need one that will take the urgent steps needed to end poverty and inequality, including funding schools so that they have the resources and staffing to meet every child's needs.

If you know your history ... building a National Education Service

Anger is growing at the failure of the May Government to fund schools adequately, at the unhappiness of both staff and children in our ‘exam factory’ schools, at the increasingly obvious failings of thirty years of market-driven education policy. Parents and school staff alike will be hoping for news from this week’s Labour Party Conference in Liverpool that the promised ‘National Education Service’ will offer the radical change of direction that is so desperately needed.

As Kevin Courtney has written in an article for the Conference bulletin of the Socialist Educational Association, ‘For Socialism and Education’, “These are not accidental failures. They are the products of austerity, and of an educational programme based on the core principles of neoliberalism – a marketised system, policed by a strong state”.

Kevin continues, “We need a change on the scale of the 1944 Education Act to put right the failures of the 1988 [Education Reform] Act. They cannot be ended without investment, and without a bold redesign. Here the Party proposals have some way to go. The NES will need to be based on concrete proposals, as well as good intentions”.

He goes on to list a number of proposals, including to “Restore the cuts made by Coalition and Conservative governments”, “Commit to ending the current system of testing in primary schools in its entirety … introduce the better systems of assessment for learning that we see in other countries” and “Take bold first steps to re-integrating all schools into a unified, democratically accountable system … including by allowing LAs to open new community schools”.

These proposals (listed in full in the SEA article) – and others - are part of a growing debate within the Labour Party, and beyond, about a new direction for education. As I found when I spoke for the NEU at my local ward Labour Party, the debate will also open up discussion on long-standing contradictions within our school systems, including the place of faith, grammar and private schools.

Education and the Labour Movement

This is not a new debate but one that has been held throughout the history of our Labour Movement. Educational advances have been driven, in essence, by two sets of interests. On the one hand, employers and their political parties recognised that state expenditure on education would be necessary to produce a sufficiently educated and ordered workforce and electorate. On the other, the Labour Movement has sought to win educational change for workers' own advancement. At times those interests have coincided but tensions over the level of state funding available, and the breadth of the education to be provided, have never been reconciled. Those tensions are, of course, to the fore again today.

As the quote from Tom Mann, one of the socialist leaders of the victorious London Docks' strike of 1889 makes clear, trade unionists weren't just struggling to improve their children's life chances, they also wanted something more for their lives: "We claim now material necessities to lift us above worrying for food and shelter – but we claim more – we yearn for culture, we openly and fearlessly declare war against all that tends to keep us riveted to earth”

Caught between these two pressures, middle-class efforts were often directed into maintaining their own educational privileges, particularly through the development of selective grammar schools and fee-paying public schools. Unfortunately, some Labour politicians, like Fabian Sidney Webb, set their sights on simply trying to help a minority of working-class children up into those middle-class ranks, rather than seeking genuine equality for all young people.

It would take the 1944 Act and the later development of comprehensive education to extend the rights of all children to a genuine secondary education. However, as the post-war boom turned to downturn and neo-liberalism, those efforts were strangled by cuts and the ongoing marketisation of education introduced through the 1988 Education Reform Act.

As Kevin Courtney argues above, a radical change is needed to repair the damage inflicted since 1988. In looking forward, then it's worth looking at the past. It's certainly worth reading through the history of the NUT "The Struggle for Education 1870-1970, given to delegates at the final NUT Conference held earlier this year, to learn lessons from our history. Below, are just three points which are relevant today:

Underpaid and Underappreciated - twas ever thus

It was the 1870 Education Act that first started to properly legislate for elementary schooling, although only through a compromise allowing for both voluntary Church schools and fully maintained schools that continues to this day. Then, as now, there was a sad lack of recognition of a teacher's skills.

An 1847 inquiry into Welsh education complained that: "No person , really qualified for the office by moral character, mental energy, amiability of temper, and proficiency in all the elementary branches of education, together with aptitude in imparting knowledge, will doom himself to the worst paid labour and almost the least appreciated office to be met with in the country".  Sounds familiar?

'Payment by Results' damages education - then and now

Sadly, if Government has learnt nothing about teacher morale and retention in over a century, the same can certainly be said when it comes to the damaging effects of compulsory testing and performance pay.

The 1870 Act followed the introduction of the 'Revised Code', a device introduced to drive down costs by tying school funding - and hence teachers' pay - to the success rates in exams. Again, just as now, 'payments by results' led to  enormous pressure on students and teachers to get the results required - by any means necessary.
 
The newly-formed NUT summarised its objections as follows: "it had failed to provide the children with a good education; it had set up a false gauge of efficiency; it had necessitated a 'system of cram which encourages mechanical rather than intellectual methods of teaching', it had hurt both the bright and the slow; it had created suspicion between inspectors, managers and teachers; it condemned poor schools to continued inefficiency; and it had forced the same curriculum on all schools irrespectively".

"Under the management of the elected representatives of the people"

If those two examples only show how little has been learnt from the past, then the final one listed here could yet be a solution for the future - the elected School Boards introduced under the 1870 Act.

School marketisation, made worse by the expansion of unaccountable Academy Trusts, has created a broken system that urgently needs a radical overhaul. The model of elected School Boards, whose well-constructed school buildings still remain in many London boroughs, could be a way to repair the damage. Rather than just returning to Local Authority oversight, what about re-organising them under elected Boards that had direct responsibility for education? What about having a proportion of seats elected by different sections, representing, for example, unions, parents and the wider community?

All 15 votes could be 'plumped' on one favoured candidate

The School Boards set up after 1870 were no perfect solution. Depending on their make-up, they could run schools well or badly. However, particularly in the cities, they allowed pioneering candidates to be elected that introduced vital reforms, expanding education for working-class families, widening the curriculum and also introducing medical inspection and school meals.

Socialist pioneers like Annie Besant in London, Margaret McMillan in Bradford and Keir Hardie in Scotland were some of the first Labour candidates elected. Though always in a minority, their achievements were impressive. For example, alongside educational reforms, Annie Besant made sure the London School Board introduced a minimum wage in all their contracts. Campaigns were also waged for secular education and the abolition of school fees while Margaret McMillan became renowned for the introduction of school meals and child welfare services in Bradford. Those campaigns are going to have to be waged again in today's austerity Britain where cuts to social services leave too many schools picking up the pieces where nobody else is left to step in.

It was the very success of the School Boards that led to their abolition in the 1902 Education Act. The divergence between the differing interests of the employers and the Labour Movement came to the fore. The elected Boards were making reforms beyond the limits originally intended!

Although the struggle to remove the Boards was more complex than can be explained here*, county and borough councils were to be given the role of local education authorities and the elected School Boards were abolished. However, rather than leaving them in the history books, why not return to elected School Boards as part of a new radical step forward in advancing education in the twentieth-first century?

*For a more detailed analysis of the period, I recommend Brian Simon's "Education and the Labour Movement 1870-1920"