The Cabinet Secretary for Education issued the
7th remit letter to the IWPRB on 22 September. On 2 October, the IWPRB commissioned written evidence submissions from statutory consultees. For the September 2026 pay award, the IWPRB will submit a report to the Cabinet Secretary by 30 April 2026.
We are pleased to see an earlier start to the process than in recent years, but this still needs to be improved for future years, to ensure that school leaders are able to plan their budgets with accurate information on pay awards well before the end of the summer term.
The matter for recommendation for this remit is:
"
What adjustments should be made to the salary and allowance ranges for classroom teachers, unqualified teachers and school leaders, to ensure the teaching profession in Wales is promoted and rewarded to encourage recruitment and retention of high-quality practitioners."
We submitted our written evidence to the IWPRB ahead of the deadline of Friday 5 December.
How did we respond?
We call for a
fully funded, above-inflation pay award from September 2026, which addresses the following elements:
- Restoration of pay erosion.
- Annual uplifts linked to RPI.
- Compensation for limited flexible working opportunities.
Recruitment and retention are at
crisis point, with missed training targets, high vacancy rates, and declining applications for leadership roles.
School business leaders should be included in the STPC(W)D to ensure fair pay and recognition.
Workload and wellbeing must be addressed urgently to prevent further attrition.
Why have we taken this view?
In our submission to the IWPRB, we make a series of recommendations on pay, recruitment and retention. These include that a fully funded pay increase that at least keeps pace with inflation (RPI) is awarded across all pay ranges for September 2026. We also include significant evidence around the erosion of pay as a result of real-terms pay cuts since 2010.
Our evidence submission also includes robust information which clearly demonstrates the need for a significant above inflation increase for all teachers and school leaders, along with a longer-term strategic plan to restore the real-terms value of teacher and school leader pay. We also have provided evidence with regards to the alarming shortfall in teacher recruitment at both ITE and for more experienced teachers. Excessive workload and poor working conditions are also seeing high rates of teacher attrition and a weak leadership pipeline.
Teaching needs to be a financially rewarding career, with whole career salaries which are competitive and comparable with other graduate professions, in order to be attractive. Furthermore, there are significant recruitment and retention challenges across the profession that need to be addressed at a national level.
Business leaders must also be recognised and remunerated for the vital roles they carry out and the level of responsibility and accountability that those roles hold. Our recent pay survey shows that this is clearly not the case, with 74% of respondents citing that they are paid below their SLT colleagues. We believe that this should be addressed by them being brought into the scope of the STPC(W)D alongside their leadership colleagues.
Moreover, workload and wellbeing are significant issues for all teachers and school, trust and college leaders and the Welsh Government must take action to address this. We remain concerned about the delay and lack of action on the previous remit item around leaders’ conditions of service, as we know that school leaders in Wales have excessive working hours and do not have protected holidays and weekends. This is affecting both recruitment and retention figures.
Read ASCL Cymru evidence to the IWPRB 7th remit
Annex One calculations for the IWPRB 7th remit