This week I report on the DfE’s offer of a 6.5% pay increase for teachers and confirmation that primary school pupil progress data won’t be published in 2024 or 2025.

The DfE offers a 6.5% pay increase for teachers for 2023/24
The government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation for a 6.5% pay increase across all pay scales for next academic year, as outlined in its 33rd report. However it will only provide extra funding for 3% of this rise and the remaining 3.5% will need to be funded from schools’ own budgets. The DfE has indicated that the pay award will be reflected in salaries from September 2023 and will be backdated; however the department has not yet clarified when the pay award will be backdated to.

In a joint statement, the general secretaries of the ASCL, the NAHT, the NEU and NASUWT confirmed that they will now put the pay deal to their members, recommending they accept the 6.5% pay increase in order to prevent any further industrial action.

DfE won’t publish primary progress data in 2024 or 2025
Yesterday the DfE published guidance confirming it won’t publish data on primary school pupil progress next year or in 2025 because there are no Key Stage 1 SATs results to provide a baseline. Progress is normally based on a comparison between Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 SATs results, but Key Stage 1 SATs were cancelled along with all other school tests in 2020 and 2021. However, the DfE has said it intends to return to producing progress measures using Key Stage 1 assessments in 2025/26 and 2026/27, ahead of the introduction of Reception baseline assessment-Key Stage 2 progress measures from 2027/28.

The guidance also confirms that the DfE will resume publishing primary test data at school level on the performance measures website for this academic year. Because of the pandemic, no school-level data has been published since 2019.