Salaries for new teachers in England will shoot up to £26,000 this autumn.
This forms part of government’s plans to stop them from leaving the profession.
The Department for Education (DfE) has sugested the rise in pay this September as part of its pledge last year to raise starting salaries to £30,000 by 2022-23.
But unions say the increases to salaries for new teachers should be replicated across the workforce, adding that the changes will do little to address a decrease in real-terms pay over the last decade.
The proposals come after the government failed to hit its targets for recruiting secondary teachers for the seventh year running – and maths and science were among the subjects worst affected.
Wages for new teachers in England working outside London will rise by 6.7 per cent this autumn to £26,000 from the current minimum of £24,373 under the government’s plans.
Salaries for those in outer London would rise to £30,000, and £32,000 for those in inner London.
And experienced teachers and school leaders would get a pay rise of 2.5 per cent this year – which would be funded out of extra money due to be pumped into the school system, the DfE has said.
Ministers have announced a three-year plan to increase school spending by £7.1bn by 2022-23.
The DfE has submitted its pay proposals to the School Teachers Review Body (STRB) – which reviews teachers’ pay and makes recommendations on pay increases.
They say the changes could see more than 1,000 extra teachers retained per year by 2022-23.
But Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he was “dismayed” by the plans to only increase the pay of experienced teachers and school leaders by 2.5 per cent.
He said: “This is nowhere near enough to make up for years of real-terms cuts to their salaries, and will do nothing to improve dire retention rates. We have to do more to keep experienced staff in the profession, and this proposal is extremely disappointing.”
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