Teachers' Salaries (Hansard, 11 October 1990)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Baroness Blatch)
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science announced on 23rd 408 July the Government's proposals for new negotiating machinery for teachers. The necessary legislation will be introduced at the earliest opportunity.
He announced also that the Interim Advisory Committee on School Teachers' Pay and Conditions was to sit for a further and final year to make recommendations on teachers' pay in 1991–92 and was given its remit on 14th September.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, will the Minister say when the Government intend to restore full and free negotiating rights to teachers? Secondly, do the Government not realise that their proposal to have nationally agreed scales and at the same time permit local negotiations to take place is absolutely ludicrous? Will the Government think again about that?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, it is not for me to pre-empt what may or may not be in the gracious Speech in a very short time; therefore, I cannot be specific about timescale. However, the Government's proposals as they are set out at present include a return to free negotiations. Therefore, the time to discuss alternatives to that or alternative ways of meeting the machinery of providing teachers' pay will be when that Bill comes before this House.

§ Lord Tordoff
My Lords, could the Minister explain why she is prevented from anticipating the gracious Speech when every other Minister from another place is anticipating it daily at Bournemouth?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, I can anticipate that there has been a promise that measures will be brought before this House shortly. That is all I am prepared to say and all I shall say.

§ Viscount Caldecote
My Lords, will my noble friend on the Front Bench confirm that it is Government policy to pay teachers of mathematics and science more highly than other teachers because of the great demand for their services in industry and elsewhere?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, there is the principle of differential pay to meet a host of issues. One is teacher shortages; one is particular subject areas where it is difficult to recruit teachers, and the other facet is to pay for performance. The idea of variable pay is very much a principle upon which this Government are proceeding.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, does the Minister agree with her colleague, Mr. Walden—recently a Minister of the DES—who said in the Daily Telegraph on Monday that unless we take radical action to deal with the problem of teacher quality we shall not improve our national education performance, and that there must be a substantial increase in teachers' salaries?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, it is not for me to come to the Dispatch Box to answer for anybody outside this Chamber. My duty is to reply on behalf of the Government.

§ Lord Ritchie of Dundee
My Lords, when the Education (School Teachers' Pay and Conditions) Order was debated on 15th June of this year, the noble Baroness said: 409 At the end of the day the policy must be that teachers need to be paid sufficient to make recruitment and retention buoyant and to motivate teachers".—[Official Report, 15/6/90; col. 589.] Does the Minister consider that that position has now been achieved or that we are approaching that aim? I recently read of three well qualified teachers who need to moonlight in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living. One is an A level biology teacher who makes kitchen equipment in his spare time; another is a music teacher who plays in a pub in the evenings, and the third is a CDT teacher who does landscape gardening. What are the Minister's comments on the necessity for that?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, I stand by the statement I made at that debate. This Government's record of responding to the business of teachers' pay is a fine one. The remit given to the interim advisory committee for the coming year includes a general increase for teachers; modifications for selective pay, which includes the number and value of incentive allowances that are to be increased with respect to teacher shortages, and to take into account rewarding good classroom teachers. Therefore I believe we are addressing all the problems of teachers, including the levels of teachers' pay.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, perhaps I could come back and ask the Minister, as Government spokesman, whether or not she agrees that we need to take radical action to deal with the problem of teacher quality, and that we shall achieve nothing in regard to teacher quality unless there is a substantial increase in teachers' pay?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, again I believe this Government's record on teachers' pay is a good one. The Government have set up some effective interim machinery for it. They have proposals which will develop those ideas even further. I agree that paying teachers for the job they do, which is a very important one and most teachers do that job extremely well, is an important part of those proposals. The proposals the Government have put on the statute book, in the form of the Education Reform Act, and the proposals to take forward machinery for teachers' pay, are radical and will work.

§ Baroness Phillips
My Lords, may I ask the Minister, who is a very understanding person, whether there is some way in which we could halt the constant reiteration of the statement that the poor state of our education is due to the teachers? It is not due to the teachers. It is due to governments interfering with the education system. I appeal to the Government spokesman to make the point that that reiteration must be stopped.

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, that is an important point. Again, this Government have done more to take government off the back of education than any other government. The grant-maintained part of our Education Reform Act does just that: it takes government out of the classroom and puts the teachers 410 in the absolutely central position of being the most important people when it comes to educating the children.

§ Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran
My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister, as a supplementary to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Ritchie, whether she agrees that moonlighting is necessary for teachers to exist these days?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, I do not believe it is necessary. We live in a free world, and if teachers wish to do something alongside their teaching career that must be a matter for them as individuals.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, in answering my supplementary question the Minister used the words "free negotiation" in relation to teachers' salaries. For clarification—this is an important point—will the Minister say whether that means full, free, unfettered negotiation? As the noble Baroness is aware, there has been trailed the question of a time limit and the possible reference to a body which would presumably be the equivalent of the interim advisory committee. Will the Minister please clarify that point?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the proposals allow for freer negotiations than ever before. Lying behind the noble Lord's question is the question of whether we believe that there should be available a totally blank cheque for the new machinery to determine teachers' pay. As long as taxpayers' money pays the salaries at the end of the day there must be some finite statement regarding the level of resources.