Teacher pay to rise 3.5% in 2026, but it’s not fully-funded

Teacher pay will rise by 3.5 per cent from September 2026, but schools will be on the hook for almost a third of the cost.

The government has published its long-awaited response to the school teachers’ review body (STRB) report for 2026.

It confirms a rise of 3.5 per cent from September for all school teachers. Some of those on the unqualified pay scale will see larger rises, as the government plans to lift the bottom of the scale by 5 per cent.

Teachers will then receive a further 3 per cent pay rise from September 2027.

But despite unions threatening to strike unless the rise is fully funded, government has confirmed schools will be expected to fund around a third of teacher and support staff pay awards from existing budgets.

Support staff were recently offered a rise of 3.3 per cent, back-dated to April.

This will mean schools will have to find around £460 million from their budgets, teachers’ union the NEU estimates.

Schools must ‘play their part’

“Schools, like the rest of the public sector, will need to continue to play their part and will be expected to find the first 1 per cent of each pay award through continued efforts to maximise value from their budgets,” said the Department for Education.

To fund the remaining 2.5 per cent of the 2026 teacher and support staff pay awards, schools will receive additional funding of £700 million to cover the period from September to March next year, rising to £1.1 billion for the full 2027-28 financial year.

This additional funding will come from existing DfE budgets, said education secretary Bridget Phillipson.

Funding for the 2027 pay rise has not been confirmed.

The STRB considered a review mechanism for 2027, which they said “could mitigate economic shocks, but may create uncertainty for financial and workforce planning”.

They did not recommend one. Instead, if economic or labour market conditions diverge significantly from forecasts, this should be reflected in the 2028 remit, STRB stated.

It proposed an indicative rise of 3 per cent in 2028-29, but this will be decided on in the future. This means a total increase of 9.8 per cent over three years.

In its evidence to the STRB, the DfE called for a 6.5 per cent pay rise, spread over three years. They said schools would be expected to “realise and sustain better value from existing spend” to help deliver this.

But modelling by the department later showed schools would be able to afford a rise of just 2.7 per cent over the next two years.

Phillipson said the multi-year deal for teachers, “backed by significant additional investment, shows the immense value we place in our teachers, while giving schools and colleges certainty over pay and their budgets”.

Strike threat

Whether today’s announcement will be enough to hold off strike action remains to be seen.

The NEU previously said it will formally ballot for strike action in October, if the government does not provide a “fully funded pay offer…that exceeds inflation”, along with “sufficient funding for schools to prevent redundancies and rises in workload”.

In a comment to Schools Week this afternoon, an NEU spokesperson said the union is “considering all options”.

As of May, UK inflation sat at 2.8 per cent, but latest Bank of England modelling shows it could rise as high as 3.7 per cent by the end of 2026 as conflict in the Middle East has knock-on effects for the global economy.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “Let us be clear: a partially funded settlement still means cuts to education, and the NEU will never accept that.

“With inflation set to rise, members know this offer is not the decisive shift needed to reverse real-terms pay cuts since 2010 or restore the competitiveness of teacher pay.”

Matt Wrack, NASUWT general secretary, said the union would be “carefully considering our next steps in light of today’s announcement and all options, including possible industrial action, remain on the table”.

Criticism over lateness

The STRB typically makes pay recommendations on an annual basis, but this year ministers asked it to make a multi-year recommendation, to help schools with longer-term budget planning.

Last year, the government accepted the STRB’s recommendation of a 4 per cent pay rise for September 2025. It provided additional funding of £615m to help cover this, but ordered schools to meet around one-quarter of that rise from their own budgets.

ASCL general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio welcomed the pay awards, and the “greater certainty” brought about by a two-year announcement.

But he said this “has been undermined…by how late in the summer term” it has come.

Under the previous government, pay announcements were consistently made in July, but the Labour government vowed to bring these forward.

“We really need to return to a timetable that is completed much earlier in the academic year,” said Di’Iasio.

He added the union will be speaking to leaders about the precise impact, as finding cash to help fund pay rises “will be very challenging for many schools”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of leaders’ union NAHT, said while “there remains some way to go to achieve our aim of restoring the value of pay to 2010 levels”, the uplift “represents another step in the right direction so long as we don’t see a big spike in inflation”.

New controls on CEO pay

As revealed by Schools Week yesterday, the government has also announced plans to control academy trust executive pay.

From September, trusts will need to seek government approval before advertising roles over £174,000, or awarding performance-related bonuses over £25,000.

The DfE says this will “bring…the sector in line with other public sector workforces including the NHS and colleges”.

But the £174,000 rule will only apply to new appointments, advertised from 1 September. CEOs already on large salaries won’t see them cut.

Annual pay increases for executives “will also be brought in line with the wider school workforce, meaning executives will not be able to receive pay rises higher than those set for classroom teachers”.

Phillipson said it was “also right that classroom teachers are not seeing executive pay rise faster than their own – or set at excessive levels in the first place – so tighter controls will mean unjustifiable exec salaries become a thing of the past, helping level the playing field for school staff and drive every pound towards classrooms”.

Kebede described the cap as “a start, but…not enough”, highlighting that it will not apply to those already on salaries above £174,000.

Stacey Booth, national officer for union GMB, said limiting trust CEO pay “is common sense and common decency”.

But she added that “the proof will be in the pudding”, and how many applications for high pay are approved remains to be seen.

However Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, criticised the changes, which she said the government “appears to have rushed into…without consulting with school trusts to understand their impact.”

She said while trusts “must of course be careful with the money they receive from government”, the cap “risks adding slow, bureaucratic process to recruitment, harming the ability of trusts to recruit and retain strong leaders.”

Incoming INSET day flexibility

Phillipson asked STRB to look at the current working hours arrangements for teachers and leaders.

Directed time is a rule in teachers’ pay and conditions that stipulates they cannot be “directed” to work more than 1,265 hours across the school year. In reality, teachers’ average working hours are much greater.

In their report STRB proposed a “twin track” approach. The first is “immediate clarity and governance measures” within the current framework.

Two of these ideas will be implemented. These include INSET day flexibility, by codifying accepted local practices, such as twilight sessions and split-day training, within the 1,265 model.

The second is on leader working time protections. STRB said government should reinforce the existing work-life balance clause, including the right to uninterrupted breaks and clarifying that requirements for weekend work should be exceptional and limited to emergencies.

DfE officials will consider the full scope of the wider views and suggestions in future policy development, Phillipson said.

Some of the remaining ideas include stronger part-time protections and guidance on reasonable additional hours.

STRB also suggested a future remit providing for a “longer term, structured exploration of alternative models, assessing a spectrum of options”.

Salary safeguarding unchanged

After “careful consideration”, DfE has retained the current salary safeguarding provision for teachers and leaders.

This is where teachers whose pay is due to decrease due to a change in circumstances, school restructure or move to a different school under the same employer have their pay topped up to its old level for three years.

STRB had recommended the period should be reduced to at least one academic year.

They added: “If a change which gives rise to salary safeguarding is implemented after the commencement of an academic year, salary safeguarding should apply for the remainder of the academic year in which the change is implemented, plus the following full academic year.”

But Phillipson did accept a recommendation to allow maintained schools to optionally offer “modest recognition schemes”.

Academies already had greater flexibilities, such as offering recruitment or performance bonuses.