Government’s 6,500 teacher recruitment plan would require 10 per cent pay increase for two years, new research reveals

Government plans to recruit 6,500 new teachers would require a teacher pay increase of nearly 10 per cent a year for two consecutive years, if using pay as a sole incentive, according to new research.

The NFER analysis suggests that this would cost an additional £2.1 billion next year (2025/2026), rising to £4.9 billion from 2026/2027 onwards.

It highlights the potential for alternative lower cost options which either rely on cost-effective spending on targeted measures aimed at shortage subjects, particularly bursaries and early career retention payments (ECRPs), or on non-financial measures such as reducing workload or improving Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

The 2024 Labour party manifesto pledged to ‘recruit 6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects’, but without setting out a detailed definition of how this supply target would be measured or delivered. The education secretary has since committed to deliver the recruitment target over the course of the five-year parliament.

‘How to recruit 6,500 teachers? Modelling the potential routes to deliver Labour’s teacher supply pledge’ provides detailed analysis of some of the potential policy choices available to the government, with estimated costs.

NFER’s analysis, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, explores the role of financial policy levers, such as pay, bursaries and ECRPs, and non-financial measures – such as workload reduction – in meeting the teacher supply target.

According to the research, targeted measures aimed at shortage subjects, such as physics, could include an expanded set of retention payments that are available to a wider set of teachers. For example, these payments could be made available to teachers of shortage subjects in all secondary schools and/or those with more than five years’ experience.

Achieving the supply target through pay increases alone would require a pay increase of 9.55 per cent per year in both 2025/26 and 2026/27. This would restore the relative position of teachers’ pay within the country’s earnings distribution that it had in 2010.

However, the analysis estimates the pay increase would cost the government £7.7 billion pounds per year from 2027/28 and beyond to finance. NFER’s research suggests the current tight financial environment makes it unlikely these measures will form a significant part of an overall strategy.