Teachers' Pay (Hansard, 23 June 1992)

§ 6. Mr. Skinner
To ask the Secretary of State for Education whether he has any further plans to meet teachers' union representatives to discuss teachers' pay; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Patten
I expect to meet the teacher unions again early next year to discuss the second report of the school teachers review body.

§ Mr. Skinner
When the Secretary of State meets the teacher unions, will he tell them that he intends to restore teachers' negotiating status in matters affecting their pay and conditions? Does he recall that before the general election the review body offered the teachers 7.8 per cent? After the election another review body gives the judges, the generals and the top civil servants 30 per cent. Is not that an example of the double standards being operated by the Government? Are not teachers just as important to society as judges and generals? What has all this to do with the classless society? Give the teachers the same.

§ Mr. Patten
I congratulate the interim Leader of the Opposition on this excellent question. At least we are getting some opposition from below the Gangway. I would vote for the hon. Gentleman if I had the chance—I think. Before the general election the 7.8 per cent. pay award announced by the teachers review body was warmly welcomed by five out of the six teacher trade unions. Needless to say, the National Union of Teachers did not care for it much, and we have heard the NUT's song sung this afternoon by the interim Leader of the Opposition. The pay review arrangements are working well and I look forward, as I am bound statutorily to do, to meeting the trade unions in due course to hear what they have to say, but the decision is for the review body. Since 1979, teachers' pay has risen by 45 per cent. ahead of inflation. It fell between 1975 and 1979.

§ Mr. Haselhurst
Does my right hon. Friend regard the vacancy rate among teachers as a clue to the adequacy of teachers' remuneration and will he say what the signs are in that respect?

§ Mr. Patten
As I have just said, teachers' pay has risen by 45 per cent. ahead of inflation since 1979. That is ahead of the general average in adult earnings. The average salary for a schoolteacher—there are 400,000 of them in Britain at the moment, a considerable number—is some £20,000. The vacancy level is lower than it has been for more than a decade, which is good news.

§ Mr. Andrew Smith
As the Secretary of State is so enthusiastic about pay review bodies, why does he fail to apply to the higher education sector the logic that he adopts in respect of schoolteachers? Why does he not establish a pay review body for university teachers, as he has been urged to do by them and by many Conservative as well as Opposition Members?

§ Mr. Patten
As the hon. Gentleman represents the other half of the university city that embraces my constituency, he knows that pay negotiations are currently under way. There are many more universities and polytechnics than ever before, and they are developing very well. Record numbers are staying on in higher and further education. When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, the number was about 220,000. The figure today is about 800,000. Universities today derive a substantial proportion of their incomes from sources other than the Government, which gives them much more flexibility when dealing with pay.