New Teachers’ Pay Grant to fund teachers’ pay inflation increases in 2018/19 and 2019/20

Recently the DfE has published guidance for schools and local authorities on the new Teachers’ Pay Grant for the financial years 2018/19 and 2019/20.

The grant will be paid based on the number of pupils aged 2 to 19 in all nursery, primary, secondary maintained schools and academies.  Funding will also be allocated to pupil referral units, special schools or hospital schools.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will pay the funding to local authorities who then will distribute the funding for maintained schools at the published rate. Academies will receive this funding directly.

The government is only due to fund increases above 1%, claiming schools will have already budgeted for the increase of this amount. This grant is intended to cover the difference between 1% and September 2018 uplift which depending on the pay scales ranges between 1.5-3.5%.

The DfE has not yet explained which census the number of pupils will be taken from for the calculation of this funding.  However, rates per pupil are shown below:

Rates per pupil for primary schools

Rates for secondary schools (with the same rate for all 11 to 19-year-olds)

Rates for special and alternative provision schools

There is no information whether the Teacher Pay Grant will continue to be paid to schools in future years.