An unfunded teacher pay award will leave schools with nothing left to cut but staff, hitting the government’s drive to promote inclusion in mainstream settings, the incoming president of the NAHT school leaders’ union has warned.
Angi Gibson was speaking amid fears that schools will be left having to find £800 million in savings from their existing budgets to cover pay awards for 2025-26.
Speaking to Tes ahead of the NAHT’s annual conference in Harrogate, which starts today, Ms Gibson expressed concern that budget cuts could hit schools’ ability to support pupils’ needs.
She said headteachers supported the government’s focus on inclusion, but that it required resources.
“We’re all for inclusivity. We absolutely are. But inclusivity comes with many, many strands. Do we have the right building? Do we have the right location? Do we have the right staffing? Do we have the right specialists? Do we have the right resources?” she said.
School funding: fears over unfunded pay rises
Ms Gibson highlighted that one in seven maintained schools are already in deficit, and warned that an unfunded teacher pay rise “could tip a lot more over”.
For schools that are only breaking even, “staffing is the only commodity they can let go”, she said. “And what comes with that is a devastation - staff become overworked, pupils aren’t getting their needs seen to appropriately, it’s all just going to cave in,” she warned.
Mainstream school leaders have previously said they need more funding to properly meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
The government has committed to spending £740 million on providing more specialist places in mainstream schools, but MPs have been warned this is unlikely to address the main challenges.
Tes’ interview with Ms Gibson took place before it was reported that the School Teacher’s Review Body had recommended a pay rise of nearly 4 per cent.
Luke Sibieta, research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, explained that a 4 per cent rise for teachers alongside 3.2 per cent for support staff would mean around £300 million in extra costs for schools.
“If schools got no extra funding this year and the recommended pay awards were implemented, they’d need to find £800 million to 850 million in efficiency savings this year,” he said.
Ms Gibson, who has been headteacher at Hadrian Park Primary School in North Tyneside for the past decade and is currently the NAHT’s vice president, said school budgets cannot sustain an unfunded pay award, and heads will be forced to decide what they will have to cut to make ends meet.
“I think it’s an absolute disgrace for us to have to try and do that,” she said.
The NAHT will be continuing to demand fair pay for teachers and sustainable funding for schools. Teachers at both the NEU and NASUWT teaching unions’ conferences voted for the potential of strike action if the pay rise is the 2.8 per cent recommended by the government.
Delegates at the NASUWT conference passed a motion calling for the union to reject any pay award that is not fully funded.
And NEU delegates voted to launch a formal strike ballot if the pay offer remains “unacceptable” or if the government does not announce a real-terms funding increase at the June Spending Review.
Ms Gibson did not comment on the prospect of teacher strikes.
The Department for Education has yet to make a final teacher pay offer, but recommended 2.8 per cent in its submission to the pay review body.
It made no mention of additional funding in its submission. Instead it said schools could generate £550 million in “efficiencies” - despite unions having found that most school budgets will fall short in 2025-26.
‘Stop blaming teachers for everything’
The government has said it has already begun work on its promise to recruit 6,500 new teachers.
Ms Gibson has spent her teaching career in North East primaries, which, she said, tend to have more pupils coming from deprived backgrounds, and find the recruitment and retention of teachers more difficult.
“We have to remind civilisation about what the teaching profession are about, and we’re not here to be blamed for everything,” Ms Gibson said.
“We’re not here to solve everything. We’re not the fourth emergency service. We’re actually here to educate, and that’s what we should be allowed to do.
“But we need to campaign for leadership environments and school environments that nurture and not drain.
“We need to promote a trust and autonomy and a recognition of the profession. We need to rebuild. Although we’re the third most trusted profession with the public, we are bad-mouthed quite a bit by the government.”
“We’re not here to solve everything. We’re not the fourth emergency service”
Ms Gibson moved into teaching in 2002 from working in engineering, after her boss at the time pointed out that she was always hungry for more and advised her to take a sabbatical to try something else while her job stayed open.
“I left a very highly paid job in engineering to come into teaching,” she said.
“But why should I be sacrificing when actually, this job is so much more important? I’m shaping little minds yet it’s not seen or appreciated by the government, and that’s reflected in pay.”
Ms Gibson was acting headteacher at a school in Corbridge, Northumberland, for a stint before becoming headteacher of Hadrian Park in 2014.
Ofsted warned of ‘absolute uproar’
The NAHT has been urging Ofsted to rethink its proposed inspection reforms, which include the introduction of report cards. The watchdog’s consultation on its plans closed at the end of April.
If there is not substantial change to Ofsted’s proposals as a result of the consultation, Ms Gibson said many of the NAHT’s members will be “in absolute uproar”.
“We’ll have to take a lead from our membership” on what action to take in response, she added.
Curriculum review ‘wrong on Sats’
Ms Gibson also said she thinks the government’s ongoing review of curriculum and assessment has missed a trick with Sats and league tables.
The review’s interim report said national assessments are “broadly working well”, including the phonics screening check, multiplication tables check and national tests at the end of key stage 2.
The NAHT had called, in its submission to the review, for the phonics screening check, multiplication tables check and KS2 grammar, punctuation and spelling tests to be scrapped.
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