Pay award 2025/26 - England

The Secretary of State has accepted the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendation of a 4% pay award to uplift the pay and allowances for teachers in England from 1 September 2025.

A process of statutory consultation has commenced with the following key dates:

  • statutory stakeholder consultation ends on 9 July;

  • current estimates from the Department for Education (DfE) are that the final School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions of Service Document (STPCD) 2025/26 and the Statutory Instrument (SI) will be published around 18 July; and

  • the formal 21-day discussion period would then run until approximately 7 August.

Schools and employers will be able to consult on updating pay policies from 1 September for the first time in many years and teachers should receive the 4% uplift in their pay in September.

It is important to note that on 13 December 2024, both the DfE and HM Treasury included in their written evidence to the STRB that a pay award of 2.8% was sufficient and that it was to be funded only from existing school budgets and that no further funding would be made available by the Government if the STRB recommended more than 2.8%.

NASUWT declared a dispute on 10 January 2025 with the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, on this issue. You can read the letter on the right/below.

There can be no doubt that we have shifted the government’s position on the matter of funding since December 2024.

In her Written Ministerial Statement to Parliament, the Secretary of State also accepted the STRB’s recommendation on Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payments for school teachers.

This means that from 1 September 2026 at the latest, TLR payments will be paid to teachers based on the proportion of responsibility they carry out, rather than their contracted hours. For example, if a teacher undertakes the full role, they will receive full remuneration for this, but if they undertake only a portion of the role, they will receive remuneration in that proportion.

NASUWT’s evidence to the STRB and the STRB’s 35th Report can be found on the right/below.

Other public sector pay award for 2025/26

  • school support staff and all other local government workers - 3.2%;

  • civil servants - 3.25%;

  • nurses, midwives, porters - 3.6%;

  • consultants, speciality doctors, specialists, GPs - 4%;

  • resident doctors (formerly known as junior doctors) - average 5.4% pay rise (includes a consolidated payment of £750);

  • fire service - 3.2%;

  • armed forces - 4.5% pay rise for most personnel;

  • senior officers - 3.75%.

Funding the school staff pay award

There are three elements to how the government has identified funding for the school staff pay awards.

  1. Additional funding of 1.7% for teachers’ pay awards and 0.9% for support staff will be delivered via a £615 million Schools Budget Support Grant (SBSG) for the financial year 2025/26, before being rolled into the National Funding Formula (NFF) for future years.

SBSG for the financial year 2025 to 2026

The £615 million funding provided by the SBSG is broken down as follows:

  • £470 million for mainstream schools, in respect of their 5 to 16 provision;

  • £10 million for Centrally Employed Services (CES) (within LAs);

  • £80 million for special and alternative provision schools, through the existing Core Schools Budget Grant (CSBG);

  • £30 million for schools with 16 to 19 provision through 16 to 19 funding allocations;

  • £15 million in respect of early years provision in schools.

How much of the £615 million SBSG will my school get?

The SBSG calculator will show the indicative allocations per school when the unique reference number (URN) is entered. School URNs can be found by entering the school name on the Government’s Get Information about Schools service.

  1. The Schools’ Costs Technical Note (SCTN) (pdf), produced annually by the DfE, was published on 31 March 2025. The SCTN aims to provide an understanding of the drivers of cost increases in mainstream schools in England at the national level based on the funding allocated. The analysis is split into two parts: the current financial year 2024/25 and a look ahead to 2025/26. The SCTN focuses on funding and costs of 5 to 16-year-old education, therefore excluding early years and post-16 provision from the analysis.

The SCTN has estimated that the average headroom, or unallocated funding from 2024/25, means that the average school is therefore deemed to have funding of 1.3% already provided to support pay rises in 2025/26.

Funding is allocated to schools via the NFF. This is a per-pupil amount. Therefore, schools which are not operating at or close to their published admission number (PAN) will be facing additional budgetary pressures.

  1. Productivity gains and smarter spending (1% of the funding for the pay award).

To support schools, the government is providing a range of initiatives to help them cut the cost of things like energy and recruitment, as well as providing better banking solutions.

There are already examples of schools making savings and bringing costs down: the 400 schools that have participated in the Department’s new energy for schools offer will save 36% on average when compared to their previous contracts.

We have also produced the 2025 report Where Has All the Money Gone? This report details the systematic misuse and abuse of public money and calls on the government to do more to curb such excesses and ensure that every pound of public money is spent efficiently on pupils.

Teacher pay awards for the past five years

  • 2024/25 - 5.5%;

  • 2023/24 - 6.5% (7.1% for M1);

  • 2022/23 - 5.0%;

  • 2021/22 - 0.0%;

  • 2020/21 - 2.75% (5.5% for M1).

Press releases/news in England

 


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