Education secretary Gillian Keegan insists teacher pay rise offer won't cut into school budgets

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has insisted the pay rises offered to teachers won't be funded by cutting into school budgets.

Speaking on Peston, which aired on ITV1 and ITVX on Wednesday night, Ms Keegan replied "no" when she was asked whether the raise offered to teachers would be funded by cutting into school services.

The National Education Union earlier this week said it will recommend members reject what it branded an “insulting” pay offer from the government.

The NEU said the offer amounts to a £1,000 one-off cash payment for the present school year and a 4.3% consolidated pay rise for most teachers for next year.

Peston challenged Keegan on her claim, saying: “I am a bit confused and I know the teachers are very confused, are you basically saying that all of the pay rise will come out of new money and that schools will not have their budgets cut?”

She replied: "So 3.5 to 4 per cent of it was already included in their budgets. So the extra half a percent and £1,000 is all being funded, yes."

Asked if she was being less generous with teachers than Health Secretary Steve Barclay had been with the government's pay rise offer to nurses, which prompted their strike to be suspended, Ms Keegan said teachers already started on a higher average starting salary than nurses.

The education secretary was also asked about recent criticism of Ofsted, following the death of head teacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life while awaiting a report set to downgrade her school's rating to 'inadequate'.

Asked if she believes that Ofsted needs to be changed in the light of controversy around its one-word grading system, Ms Keegan told Peston: "You take into account what is Ofsted there for, it's there for parents.

"So really the main purpose of Ofsted is to say we spend £58.8 billion of public taxpayers' money on schools and our education system and it's there to basically say to parents what the school is - good, outstanding, requires improvement, etcetera."A "very detailed report" with lots of detail about the school accompanied the Ofsted ratings, Ms Keegan added.

Pushed by Peston, she said the issue had been discussed with education unions, adding: "one of the things we were talking about was not to try and change the system to one word answers but to look at how we could make Ofsted work better for headteachers."

Asked again on whether she was likely to change the system, she said: "No, not at all."

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