Leadership1 publisherNot yet confirmed elsewhere2 min readPublished
DfE counts on a support staff pension saving to fund teachers' 3.5% pay rise
Lucy Powell's department says a 4.9-point cut in employer pension contributions for support staff will let schools cover teachers' 3.5% pay rise. NASUWT says the saving was already built into school budgets, so heads will have to find the money for the award elsewhere.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- A Department for Education blog on 16 September set out the review body's recommendation of 3.5% from September 2026 and a further 3% from September 2027.
- Powell's letter to the National Education Union confirmed that the reduction in pension costs would not be clawed back.
- The blog has since been edited to remove its statement that the saving would not be clawed back, along with a table that set out how the rise would be funded.
- The NEU had planned an autumn strike ballot over pay and paused it on 24 September after Powell announced the funding.
- NASUWT wants urgent talks with the department so that the 2027/28 award can be renegotiated.
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Why it matters
- decision Heads setting this year's budgets have to choose whether the lower LGPS rate pays for the teacher award or is money already committed. If it is already committed, the cost of the award has to come out of other spending.
- contradiction The NEU paused its ballot after an announcement of additional funding. The department now describes a change in the affordability position, so the union and the department are giving different accounts of the same money.
- constraint The department makes its affordability claim for this year only. On the published record, nothing has yet been named to pay for the 3% award due in September 2027.
The department's confidence comes with a qualifier. Its blog said "we are confident that schools will be able to cover the costs of the teacher pay award, at a national level" [13]. The saving and the cost fall on different parts of a school's pay bill. Powell wrote to the NEU that the LGPS revaluation would "deliver significant savings on schools' pay bill for support staff" [12]. Teachers receive the award [3]. On those terms, whether the saving covers a given school's share of the rise depends partly on its mix of support staff and teachers. Matt Wrack, general secretary of NASUWT, claims the savings will not cover the extra money schools need and that the impact will not be uniform across schools [6].
Asked by the iPaper about Treasury funding, the department said the change was "a substantial improvement in schools' overall financial position" [15]. Wrack's point and the department's can both be true. A saving can improve the national total and still be money that schools had already built into their own budgets. NASUWT says that is what happened [4].
School-by-school figures would settle the dispute, and they have not been published. According to the iPaper, NASUWT has asked for the original funding table to be put back up, and for Powell to "explain to the profession which services she expects schools to cut" [9].
How heads book this year's award also affects the second one. The September 2027 rise would be paid on top of this year's higher base. Compounded, 3.5% followed by 3% raises teacher pay by about 6.6% over the two years: 1.035 x 1.03 = 1.066 [11]. Wrack has tied the pay dispute to the size of the schools budget as a whole. "Addressing pay and workload must be part of a wider commitment to a long-term substantial increase to education funding, in order to ensure every child can receive a world-class education," he said [8].
What to watch
- Whether the department republishes its funding table, and whether its figures show the saving covering the award school by school or only in total.
- Whether the NEU revisits its paused strike ballot now that the no-clawback line has been removed from the department's blog.
- The department's reply to NASUWT on the 2027/28 award, and whether the Treasury puts any new money behind it.