As a new school year begins, the struggle to recruit and retain teachers continues. Yet many teachers in England and Wales are facing the possibility of a pay cut. What price Teaching and Learning Responsibility Payments?

Time for teachers to take responsibility for their pay

WORKERS, SEPT 2005 ISSUE

In April 2005 school teachers received a 2.5% pay increase on their basic pay — less than inflation. At the start of September the basic pay increased again by 0.7%. These small increases are part of a long-term pay agreement supported by some, but not all, teacher unions. Where does the suggestion of pay cuts come from?

Around 200,000 — more than half of all classroom teachers — currently receive management allowances (MAs). As the name suggests, these allowances are in addition to teachers' basic salary so that they can carry out management and other duties as well as their teaching responsibilities. These payments have been frozen since March 2003 — and now for many teachers could reduce further or disappear altogether. Why is this happening?

Remodelling agenda
As part of the government's workforce remodelling agenda, all schools in England are required to review their staffing structure by December 31st this year and remove all management allowances. (Schools in Wales have been given an extension until March 2006 by the Welsh National Assembly.) A new system of Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payments is to be introduced instead.

On the face of it, that doesn't sound too bad. But the government estimates that the new payment system will lead to £49 million "savings" on teacher salaries, and that no additional money is to be provided to schools in order to finance the new payments. The government expects to see fewer teachers receiving additional pay allowances and argues that this will provide funding for increased number of support staff posts in schools.

Unlike the current Management Allowance system there will be no nationally prescribed levels or values for individual TLR payments, but the payments must fall within two nationally prescribed bands: £2,500 to £5,500 and £6,500 to £11,000. Different payments must also have a minimum differential of £1,500. Apart from these two restrictions, schools are free to decide for themselves the number of TLR payments they wish to make and their individual value.

The minimum payment possible (£2,500), combined with the government's insistence that no additional funding will be provided, leads to the possibility of teachers facing pay cuts. Currently teachers on the lowest management allowance payment receive £1,638. So a school that does not wish to inflict pay cuts will have to increase its salary bill — and at the moment the government is refusing to fund such increases.

The response
So what are teachers doing about this? The short answer is that teachers are divided. But that's not an adequate description.

At a national level teacher unions are divided on this issue. The NUT opposes the introduction of TLRs and is seeking to protect members against pay cuts. The NASUWT and ATL (the other two main classroom teacher unions) support the new system and have worked with the government in drawing up guidelines to schools for their introduction. These two unions (at a national level) have accepted that some teachers will lose pay.

As previously reported in Workers, the largest classroom teacher union — the NUT — did not agree to the Workforce Reform Agreement, because the union believes that the government has used the crisis in the recruitment and retention of teachers as a reason for providing a cheap and low-quality education service employing even fewer qualified teachers. The union is not opposed to workforce reform or to increased numbers of support staff being employed by schools. However the NUT does oppose support staff being required to be in charge of whole classes — as it believes that this undermines the skill and professionalism of teachers and the quality of the education service for pupils.

The Head and Deputy Teacher unions were all original partners to the agreement, but the largest of these (the NAHT) has since withdrawn its support because of the lack of government funding for the changes to schools.

The other teacher unions saw the agreement as a means of reducing teacher workload and considered this of such importance that they were prepared to accept unqualified staff teaching whole classes. They are also prepared to accept a reduction in teachers' pay as a means of paying for increased numbers of support staff. This is the crux of the division that exists between the teacher unions. It is now down to teachers at school level to decide how they are going to respond.

Consultations on the TLR payments will take place school by school. The guidance to schools from the government and the trade unions that have accepted the new payment system strongly urges schools to reduce their overall teacher salary bill. Teachers will have to be vocal and determined if they wish to counteract this "guidance".

Many teachers who are members of the NASUWT and ALT are bewildered to discover that their unions have agreed pay cuts on their behalf. Alarmingly, the NASUWT has advised its school representatives not to take part in any joint meetings with the NUT on the issue. Encouragingly, anecdotal evidence suggests that where schools have a tradition of holding joint union meetings, this advice is being ignored. The unions may be divided nationally but where teachers are prepared to get organised they can have an impact in protecting their pay. Many school governors have been shocked to discover that they are expected to preside over pay cuts for teachers and will be sympathetic to the argument that enforcing pay cuts will lead to demoralisation, exacerbating the present difficulties in retaining staff.

The NUT has invested a lot of effort in providing its school representatives and local lay officers with guidance and training. The task of school by school negotiations is massive, especially when it is shoehorned into such a tight timescale, but it does provide a stimulus for teachers to improve their level of union organisation in schools. Union membership amongst teachers is high, but not every school has a school representative for each of the unions — not surprising when there are so many! Some schools have no lay union representative at all.

Subsidies
Some governing bodies will be in the fortunate position of being able to subsidise any new staffing structure by using budget reserves and so avoid pay cuts. Others may be persuaded to approach LEAs with a request to borrow against future years' budgets. Such responses will depend on the determination of the teachers of each school to defend their pay and to make sure their governing body is aware of their strength of feeling. That said, they are purely defensive and do not tackle the root of the problem — the government's refusal to fund the pay of all the workers and their complementary skills that are required to run our schools and provide our children with a quality education service.

Consider the situation in just one school. This is a large school with 1500 pupils and over 100 teaching and support staff. Union membership among teachers is high and amongst support staff it is reasonable. The NUT and NASUWT are the only unions with representatives/stewards employed at the school. Over the past two years new staff have been recruited to have responsibility for: running exams; invigilating exams; organising cover for absent teachers; monitoring attendance of pupils and ensuring parents are contacted; acting as learning mentors for pupils identified as either underachieving or having special needs; pastoral support for pupils; work experience for pupils.

These were all tasks previously undertaken by teachers. The individual teachers concerned have had their responsibilities renegotiated and suffered no loss in pay. All teachers at the school who receive management allowances do so for responsibilities that are directly related to teaching and learning and can only be carried out by qualified teachers. In addition, the number of classroom assistants employed at the school has increased and there are four new posts of learning supervisors. These four members of staff supervise classes of absent teachers with the agreement of NUT members at the school.

In short, the school has embraced workforce reform to the benefit of all staff and pupils involved. As a result, however, the school is carrying over a deficit in its budget of £14,000. The school governors do not wish to impose pay cuts but do not have scope within the school finances to avoid this. This is a real, not a hypothetical, school. The staff and governors at this school will have to unite with others to challenge the government's underfunding of school staff pay.

Elsewhere in Britain workers have taken on the government where it tries to fund the pay of some workers by reducing that of others. In the NHS, trade unions and their members made sure that the government's "Agenda for Change" was supported with significant increase in government funding. As reported in July's Workers, support staff in schools in Northern Ireland took disciplined and united action and forced the Education Minister to come up with an additional £10 million for special education and the school meals service in NI and to release more money for pay upgrades.

Teachers in England and Wales need to take up the battle on their own behalf.

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