Commenting on the announcement of Government for an expansion of the Levelling Up payment scheme to teachers in schools and further education in key stem and technical subjects as well as early years education, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“The Government continues with sticking plaster responses to a systemic teacher recruitment and retention crisis in schools and colleges. There are teacher shortages across the curriculum.
‘Not only are teacher recruitment targets being missed by huge amounts, but an unprecedented number of teachers are quitting the profession prior to retirement. This scheme does nothing to retain existing teachers.
‘The Government’s underfunding of schools and colleges, cuts to the value of teacher pay and sky-high workload have severely damaged the ability of the profession to compete for new recruits and retain existing staff.
‘Government attacks on teacher pay have resulted in huge real terms pay cuts for those working in schools and colleges. This has significantly damaged the ability of our education service to compete with other graduate professions. It is clear that the solution needed is the significant and fully funded correction in pay for which the NEU is campaigning.
‘Instead, the Government has chosen to offer prescriptive ideology, divisive pay incentives and half-baked recruitment schemes. Teachers and leaders in schools and colleges, students and parents deserve better”.