Written question WQ88075

As the academic year overlaps two financial years there are impacts from the 2022-23 academic year pay award in financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.

For schools, excluding sixth forms, the costs of the revised pay award are being financed through the unhypothecated local government settlements for those years and additional specific grant funding.

Teachers pay costs are part of local authorities’ overall costs, funded through their resources, including the core funding provided by the unhypothecated local government settlement. Local authorities set their budgets based on their local priorities and make prudent provision for annual pay awards for teaching and other staff.

On 14 November 2022, I accepted all the recommendations of the Independent Welsh Pay Review Body (IWPRB) including for the teachers’ pay award for academic year 2022/23. This included uplifting teacher’ pay scales and allowances by 5% from September 2022. As is usual, local authorities will have made provision for the impacts of the pay award when setting their budgets for 2022-23 and 2023-24. The local government settlement for 2022-23 increased by 9.4% and for 2023-24 by 7.9%.

Following negotiations with teacher unions and employers, I subsequently agreed an additional 3% pay increase for 2022-23, of which 1.5% is consolidated and 1.5% is a one-off non-consolidated payment.

It was agreed that this additional element of the 2022-23 pay award would be funded by the Welsh Government, and subsequent grant arrangements for funding the pay award have been agreed with local authorities.

This funding is being provided to local authorities through the local authority education grant. A total of £30m has already been paid to local authorities in respect of the additional 3% cost arising in the 2022-23 financial year and a further £21.3m will be provided for the 1.5% consolidated element of the pay deal affecting the 2023-24 financial year.

Funding by the same percentage uplift (1.5% non-consolidated/1.5% consolidated) has also been provided to local authorities for sixth form and adult community learning; and further education colleges.

As part of the recent negotiations, I also indicated that the IWPRB recommendation for a 3.5% uplift to all salary and allowance scale points for academic year 2023-24 will be increased to a 5% uplift and will also be fully funded to not impact on school budgets.