The Secretary of State issued the 36th remit to the STRB on 24 July. This remit covers the pay awards for 2026/27 and 2027/28 and also asks for indicative pay awards for 2028/29 to be confirmed or reconsidered in a subsequent remit. 

There are some other items for recommendation in this remit, including:

A.    Whether the current salary safeguarding period should be reduced to enable employers to deploy their workforce and resources most effectively, whilst maintaining core teacher protections.

B.    Whether to introduce the option for maintained schools to offer non-consolidated payments (including bonuses), for those who want to use them, separate to and above any pay progression arrangements and the annual STRB recommended pay uplift. 

A further item for broader consideration is for views of the benefits and drawbacks of the current working hours arrangement within the STPCD, considering both directed and non-directed time for teachers, and working hours for leaders.

As a statutory consultee, ASCL has submitted written evidence on these items.

How did we respond?

Our key recommendations:
Multi-Year Pay Awards: Support for multi-year awards with a robust review mechanism to respond to economic changes.

Pay Restoration: Above-inflation, fully funded pay increases to restore real-terms losses since 2010, benchmarked against RPI.

Leadership Pay: Significant uplift needed to restore competitiveness and address erosion in leadership pay.

Recruitment and Retention: 

• Competitive early career and whole-career salaries.
• Strategic alignment of bursaries and incentives with the pay framework.
• Urgent action to improve retention, especially among school leaders and women aged 30–39.

Flexible Working: Sector-wide support and funding for flexible working models, including ad-hoc arrangements and whole-school initiatives.

Workload and Wellbeing: Call for maximum working hours and protected leave for leaders; urgent action to address burnout and poor wellbeing.

Business Leaders: Inclusion of business leaders in the STPCD and STRB remit to ensure parity in pay and recognition.

Equalities: 

• Address gender pay gap and underrepresentation in leadership.
• Remove performance-related pay and improve data monitoring.
• School Funding: Schools face rising costs and funding pressures; urgent need for sustained investment and capital funding.
• Further Education (FE): Persistent pay disparities between FE and school teachers must be addressed with a funded roadmap for improvement.

Why have we taken this view?
Our evidence again highlights the severe issues relating to recruitment and retention of teachers and school leaders including the ongoing poor recruitment to ITT targets. We also include significant evidence around the erosion of pay as a result of real terms pay cuts since 2010.

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 be recognised and remunerated for the vital roles they carry out and the level of responsibility and accountability that those roles hold. 

Moreover, workload and wellbeing are significant issues for all teachers and school, trust and college leaders and the Department must take action to address this.

We urge the STRB to act on these recommendations, emphasising that education must be viewed as a vital investment in the nation’s future. Adequate funding is essential to implement reforms and support the workforce to thrive.

Download our evidence to the 36th remit

Download Annex One

Download Annex Two