§ Mr. EvennettTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford of 8 May,Official Report, columns 298–99, if information from the 1988 secondary staffing survey can be used to test the accuracy of his Department's expectations in relation to the automatic award of incentive allowances in October 1987 for that sector, without reference to the DTR data mentioned in his reply; if he will publish a table showing comparative figures for entitlement to such allowances (a) derived from the results of the 1988 secondary staffing survey and (b) his Department's plans; if he will, by other means, estimate the number of each rate of incentive allowance awarded automatically in secondary schools; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mrs. RumboldData from the 1988 secondary school staffing survey can in due course be compared with the assumptions in circular 8/87 about the number of teachers in secondary schools who would receive an incentive allowance automatically in October 1987. Such data are not yet available and, for a number of reasons, will not provide a precise measure of the accuracy of the assumptions in the circular. Information from the 1987 database of teacher records will enable more reliable comparisons to be made, and will shortly become
Estimated cost1 of incentive allowances in ordinary schools 1987–882 1988–89 1989–90 Total cost (£ million) 113 319 366 Costs attributable to the automatic award of incentive allowances in October 1987 (£ million) 106 (94 per cent.) 3236 (74 per cent.) 3250 (68 per cent.) 1 Costs are cash values for financial years and include employers' on-costs. 2 1 October 1987 to 31 March 1988. 3 These figures assume that all the teachers who received an incentive allowance automatically in 1987 continued to teach in ordinary schools and to be paid the same allowance. They are therefore overstated because in practice a significant number would have been promoted or ceased to work in such schools