The statement made by Catherine McKinnell, the Minister for School Standards, in the House of Commons on 22 May 2025.
May I start by thanking our teachers, school leaders and school staff for all they are doing right now to ensure a successful exam season for students, and indeed for all their hard work throughout the year?
Rather than scaremongering with fantasy statistics, the Government are getting on and delivering. We are already seeing positive signs that our plan for change is working. Teacher recruitment is up, with 2,000 more people in training than last year. Teacher retention is up, with thousands more teachers forecast to stay in the profession over the next three years. This Labour Government are getting on and delivering. Unlike the Opposition, who last year sat on the STRB report, hid from their responsibility and left it to Labour to sort out, this afternoon we will announce the teachers’ pay award, which will be the earliest announcement for a decade.
We understand the importance of giving schools certainty, giving them time to plan their budgets, and ensuring that they can recruit and retain the expert teachers our children need. The Secretary of State’s written ministerial statement will be coming out this afternoon—[Interruption.] It will show once again that this Labour Government—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have granted the urgent question, so please will Members on the Opposition Front Bench wait for the Minister to finish her answer. I do not want you, Ms Trott and Mr O’Brien, to be a bad example of this school class.
Catherine McKinnell
The written ministerial statement is laid before the House and will be coming out this afternoon, showing once again that this Labour Government are getting on and delivering on our plan for change.
Mr Speaker
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Laura Trott
Mr Speaker, this is absolutely outrageous. It is astonishing that we have had to summon the Government to the House today, but the Minister cannot even tell us what pay rise teachers will get and whether it is going to be funded. That does not allow us to scrutinise the matter in this House.
The Government said that they would tax private schools to fund 6,500 more teachers, but the reality is that state schools have not got any of that money. Instead, we have had broken promises on compensating schools for the jobs tax, confirmation from the Department for Education itself that there will be a shortfall in teacher pay funding, which we are not allowed to discuss here today in this urgent question, and uncertainty as to what the actual pay rise for teachers will be. That is a disgrace, and it is the opposite of what people who voted for Labour expected.
All that is in the final two weeks when headteachers up and down the country have to decide whether to make teachers redundant in time for September—in fact, sadly, many schools will already have made the difficult decision to let good teachers go. These are job losses on the Minister’s watch, due to her inability to provide schools with the clarity that they need. Do not just take my word for it. Dan Moynihan, from the Harris Federation, says that it proposes to make 40 to 45 teachers redundant. Jon Coles, the chief executive of United Learning, which runs 90 state sector academies, said that the trust has been left with £10.5 million a year of unfunded costs. He said:
“It’s no good Treasury waving their hands and saying ‘efficiency’—that would be 400 job losses. Sector wide, that would extrapolate to ruinous harm in the one well-functioning public service: tens of thousands of redundancies.”
Simon Pink, the finance director at the Elliot Foundation, which has 36 primaries, said:
“This is the toughest budget…in a generation.”
One secondary school headteacher has already had to cut two teaching assistant posts and a teacher role due to rising national insurance and anticipated wage rises.
What is the pay rise that the Government recommend for teachers? The Prime Minister’s spokesman said on 28 April:
“There’ll be no additional funding for pay.”
Yesterday, the Government started to U-turn on the winter fuel allowance. Will the Minister now fully U-turn and fund the national insurance rise and agree to fully fund the pay increases, whatever they are?
Catherine McKinnell
Neither I nor any Minister in this Government will take lessons from Conservative Members, who, after 14 long years in power, had still not restored real-terms spending in our schools to the level that they inherited. The brass neck of the Opposition is quite extraordinary. Conservative Members would also do well to remember the difficult decisions that this Government have had to take because of the utter mess that they left behind. The right hon. Lady was in the Treasury, creating the mess—she knows very well what happened.
Recruiting, retaining and supporting expert teachers is central to our vision for delivering high and rising standards in our schools. Despite the challenging financial context and years of missed recruitment targets under the previous Government, this Administration are prioritising education and ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality teacher. We are working at pace to ensure excellence for every child. That is why we remain committed to our manifesto pledge for 6,500 teachers and to ensuring that it responds to the demand in secondary schools, special schools and further education.
We know that high-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, breaking down barriers to opportunity for every child, so recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers is clearly absolutely central to our vision for delivering high and rising standards. That is why, despite the challenging financial context and years of missed recruitment targets, we are getting on and delivering on our plan for change. The right hon. Lady will have to wait, like everybody else, for the statement that she knows is coming this afternoon.