Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Education, Skills and the Welsh Language, Suzy Davies MS, is calling for clarity over teachers’ pay after it was announced that teachers in England would be receiving a 3.1% pay rise this year.
In 2018 teachers’ pay was devolved to the Welsh Government with recommendations from the Independent Wales Pay Review Body over what increases should be introduced.
However, there is growing concern in the teaching sector that the report for this year’s pay scales has not been released and schools have now gone into the summer holidays.
Commenting, Suzy Davies MS, said:
“It’s catch-up Cymru yet again. Teachers and school leaders in Wales have given their all in response to the demands of Covid lockdown as well as in the face of confusion of Welsh Government’s own making.
“Teachers over the border already know what their pay rises will be. School leaders in England know they can expect a £4.8 billion boost for this financial year.
“Yet here, Welsh teachers are in limbo over pay, as they’re still waiting for the recommendations from the independent review body to be published. And governors, headteachers and many others will be worrying about whether Welsh Government will plump for powers allowing local authorities to deny funding clarity to schools for their budgets for next year and what they need to do to balance the books.
“I’ll be disappointed if the review body doesn’t recommend at least a 3.1% pay rise for teachers. They deserve recognition for the extraordinary lengths they have gone to during the pandemic, enabling key workers to stay on the front lines to save lives and everything they will need to do to support our young people when they come back to school in September.
“However, the Welsh Government has to get to grips with school funding. After years of poor per-pupil funding, the Education and Local Government Ministers need to get money to schools. Despite getting an extra 20% of what the UK Government spends on pupils in England, in Wales the Welsh Government spends £200 a year less per pupil. With the more than £4bn in extra funding that the Welsh Labour-led Government has for this year, they need to end the deficit in pupil funding.
“Welsh Conservatives have had enough of this sluggish response to a much-criticised way of funding schools and will be offering an entirely new model of financing schools in our Senedd manifesto next May.”
ENDS