Before the 2024 general election, Labour pledged in its manifesto to recruit 6,500 new teachers in response to England’s continuing teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Now, this recruitment target is central to the government’s plans to deliver its “national mission” to break down the barriers to opportunity facing children.
The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), a research charity, recently published a report on the ways that this recruitment target might be reached.
The report claims that the government could achieve this target by restoring the relative position of teacher pay to its 2010 level. This would mean pay rises of nearly 10% a year for three years.
While supported by the teaching unions, this was always unlikely: the NFER report states that this option would be the most costly to the government.
Indeed, the government has proposed a 2.8% rise to teacher pay in 2025-26. But this marginally above inflation pay rise will be unfunded, meaning that schools will not be getting additional money from the government to fund this rise and will have to find it from existing allocations.
The NFER report suggests that targeted measures such as bursaries and early career retention payments would be more cost-effective than large pay rises as they focus resources on subjects with the largest shortages.
It’s true that simply increasing teacher pay significantly would ignore the wider factors causing so many teachers to leave the profession. But pay still matters. It’s not just about recruiting teachers — it’s about recruiting the right teachers and ensuring they stay.
Imagine I’m hiring a research assistant. I post two identical job adverts, except one offers £12.60 per hour and the other £14.55. The higher-paying job would attract more applicants and, crucially, higher-quality candidates.
This principle holds true within professions: more and better candidates would apply to a business offering more money than one in the same field offering less. Crucially, though, it also works across professions, including teaching, affecting in which industries people choose to apply for jobs. This means that higher pay would attract more effective people into the teaching profession.
The qualities that make a good teacher, such as intelligence, adaptability, strong interpersonal skills and resilience, also make them highly desirable workers in other professions. This means that the most effective teachers are the ones with the best opportunities elsewhere. They are less likely to join teaching in the first place and more likely to leave for better-paying jobs than their colleagues.
Higher salaries increase the pool of applicants, giving schools a better chance of hiring effective teachers. And effective teachers make a difference. Their pupils have better academic performance and an increased ability to secure better jobs.
Research shows that the quality of a child’s teacher is a hugely important school-level factor in their education – more influential, for instance, than significantly smaller class sizes.
While it is possible that training might improve the effectiveness of current teachers, there is, in fact, not much evidence to suggest that this would actually work.
Although there are some exceptions, research generally finds that training programmes for qualified professional teachers have no effect on pupil outcomes.
The only factor that can reliably improve teacher effectiveness is experience. This is why retention is key. And significantly better pay is also an incentive for experienced teachers to stay in the profession.
If the government wants to recruit more teachers and keep existing ones in the profession, it needs to make teaching a financially attractive option for talented professionals. Not just by offering competitive starting salaries and bursaries, but ensuring that salaries remain competititive throughout their professional lives.
By doing so, they can create a system in which not only are schools are adequately staffed, but students are taught by the best and the brightest educators.
The government’s broader commitment to improving schools is promising. If it values education — and the role it plays in shaping the future of our society — it needs to start valuing teachers. That means paying them fairly, reducing their workloads, and ensuring that they are appropriately resourced and supported to do their jobs well. These aren’t radical ideas – they’re the bare minimum.
Joshua Fullard is affiliated with the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change, University of Essex. He has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
