All posts tagged: pay

NEU to hold indicative strike vote over ‘insulting’ pay rise

NEU to hold indicative strike vote over ‘insulting’ pay rise

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Union demands ‘fully funded’ pay increase amid concerns schools will have to lay off staff Union demands ‘fully funded’ pay increase amid concerns schools will have to lay off staff The National Education Union (NEU) will hold an indicative strike ballot over pay, after branding the government’s planned rise an “insult” to the profession. Members will be balloted on their “willingness to take industrial action” if ministers do not “commit to a significant and fully funded” increase beyond what has already been proposed. This comes after the Department for Education told the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) a 2.8 per cent pay award “would be appropriate” for 2025-26 last month, but that most schools would have to find efficiencies to fund it. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “The current proposal of 2.8 per cent is not sufficient to even start to address the crisis in recruitment and retention.   “The suggestion that an unfunded pay award can be paid for by making ‘efficiencies’ is an insult to a profession who have already endured 14 years …

Schools bill ‘won’t cut pay’, says Phillipson

Schools bill ‘won’t cut pay’, says Phillipson

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Sweeping schools reforms “will not cut teachers’ pay” and will restore academies “to their core, intended purpose” of raising standards, Bridget Phillipson has insisted as she batted back criticism of her schools bill today. The education secretary spoke in Parliament this afternoon during the second reading of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. The bill passed after a Conservative attempt to bring it down failed. Here’s what we’ve learned so far. 1. Reforms ‘won’t cut teachers’ pay’ Labour’s proposal that academies be forced to follow national pay scales for teachers has prompted warnings from the Tories that “thousands” will face a pay cut. Some trusts pay teachers above national rates. The country’s largest has flagged concern about the consequences of Labour’s plans. Phillipson was pressed today to confirm “there is nothing at all in this bill that would result in a teacher in any school getting a pay cut”. The education secretary said: “I will reiterate today that the measures in this bill and the changes that we will bring forward to the school teachers …

Labour’s ‘act of vandalism’ bill ‘risks teacher pay cuts’

Labour’s ‘act of vandalism’ bill ‘risks teacher pay cuts’

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More from this theme Recent articles Labour’s plan to water down academy freedoms is an “act of vandalism” that could cut 20,000 teachers’ pay, Conservatives have warned amid growing criticism of the schools bill to be debated by MPs today. Sir Nick Gibb, the former schools minister, this week urged Labour to abandon plans “driven by ideological hostility to academies” While the Tory veteran’s criticism is not unexpected, he is just the latest to publicly raise concerns over proposals set out in the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. The bill will make all academies follow the national curriculum, allow councils to open schools again and end the automatic academisation of failing schools. Trust bosses have already voiced their misgivings, with national newspapers also starting to criticise the government’s academy plans. For instance, the Economist ran a piece headlined: ‘Labour lacks good ideas for improving Britain’s schools’. The criticism comes as the bill is due to be debated in parliament this afternoon. Reforms risk league table progress, says Gibb England’s pupils have risen up international league …

Schools face more cuts to afford 2025 pay rises

Schools face more cuts to afford 2025 pay rises

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More from this theme Recent articles Increases in school costs will outstrip the government’s recent funding boost, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, warning that leaders again face making more cuts to provision. The schools budget is due to rise by about £2.3 billion next year (2025-26), but about £1 billion of this is for high needs. That leaves a 2.8 per cent rise in per pupil funding for mainstream schools, IFS said, which is below the estimated 3.6 per cent rise in school costs. Most of the latter is driven by teacher pay rises, which were 5.5 per cent this year and 2.8 per cent for the next academic year. The report states that school budgets will feel “very tight” next year, adding some may “struggle to cover their costs without making savings”. Schools can only afford a 2 per cent pay rise next year, IFS said. Julie McCulloch, policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools face “another round of cutbacks”. “It will inevitably mean further reductions to …

Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets

Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets

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Digital license plates, already legal to buy in a growing number of states and to drive with nationwide, offer a few perks over their sheet metal predecessors. You can change their display on the fly to frame your plate number with novelty messages, for instance, or to flag that your car has been stolen. Now one security researcher has shown how they can also be hacked to enable a less benign feature: changing a car’s license plate number at will to avoid traffic tickets and tolls—or even pin them on someone else. Josep Rodriguez, a researcher at security firm IOActive, has revealed a technique to “jailbreak” digital license plates sold by Reviver, the leading vendor of those plates in the US. By removing a sticker on the back of the plate and attaching a cable to its internal connectors, he’s able to rewrite a Reviver plate’s firmware in a matter of minutes. Then, with that custom firmware installed, the jailbroken license plate can receive commands via Bluetooth from a smartphone app to instantly change its …

England’s planned pay increase for teachers isn’t enough to recruit the 6,500 more the government wants

England’s planned pay increase for teachers isn’t enough to recruit the 6,500 more the government wants

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Before the 2024 general election, Labour pledged in its manifesto to recruit 6,500 new teachers in response to England’s continuing teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Now, this recruitment target is central to the government’s plans to deliver its “national mission” to break down the barriers to opportunity facing children. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), a research charity, recently published a report on the ways that this recruitment target might be reached. The report claims that the government could achieve this target by restoring the relative position of teacher pay to its 2010 level. This would mean pay rises of nearly 10% a year for three years. While supported by the teaching unions, this was always unlikely: the NFER report states that this option would be the most costly to the government. Indeed, the government has proposed a 2.8% rise to teacher pay in 2025-26. But this marginally above inflation pay rise will be unfunded, meaning that schools will not be getting additional money from the government to fund this rise and will have …

This pay offer insults a profession that voted for change

This pay offer insults a profession that voted for change

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More from this theme Recent articles Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister have repeatedly said that austerity is over, but austerity is ended in deeds – not words. The proposed unfunded 2.8 per cent pay increase for September 2025 for teachers in England, as set out in the government’s evidence to the school teachers’ review body (STRB), falls well short of the urgent action needed. This government committed to breaking with the past. It promised to do so at the last general election. Yet Sir Keir Starmer is setting himself up to be the first Labour prime minister since James Callaghan to tell schools to make cuts. That won’t do. Fourteen years of funding cuts have left education on the brink, with a deep and severe recruitment and retention crisis that is causing wholescale damage to education provision. We have the highest primary class sizes in Europe. We have the highest secondary class sizes on record. There are, scandalously, a million pupils taught in classes of 31 or more. Seventy per cent of schools in …

Woman defended after refusing to pay for mother-in-law’s phone after toddler broke it

Woman defended after refusing to pay for mother-in-law’s phone after toddler broke it

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Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more A mother has asked for opinions on whether or not she should have to pay for her mother-in-law’s phone after it was broken by her child. In a recent Reddit post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” subreddit, the mother explains that her mother-in-law was babysitting her toddler when she decided to give the child her phone to watch YouTube videos. “Our LO decided she was done and threw the phone from her high chair, cracking the screen badly. Now, we absolutely do not do this. Our LO gets maybe two hours of screen time a week, and it’s always on the TV, never a phone,” the Reddit post read. The mother then clarified that her mother-in-law has more money than she …

Teachers want to quit over pupil behaviour

Teachers want to quit over pupil behaviour

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More from this theme Recent articles Job and pay satisfaction among teachers and leaders has increased, but poor behaviour is making them want to quit the classroom. A major government survey shows average working hours have dropped slightly after a rise last year, but leaders are still working 11 hour weeks and teachers are more stressed. The latest wave of the national working lives of teachers and leaders survey shows an improving picture in some aspects of the job, but a worsening situation in others. The survey of more than 10,000 teachers and leaders working in English state schools was conducted between January and March of this year Here are six key findings… 1. More staff happy with pay, but most still aren’t The proportion of teachers and leaders reporting they were satisfied with their salary jumped by 10 percentage points, from 20 per cent in 2023 to 30 per cent this year. The figure was 26 per cent in 2022. However, 58 per cent remain dissatisfied with their salary. A quarter were satisfied with …

Apple Pay to Be Treated Like a Bank With Federal Scrutiny in the U.S.

Apple Pay to Be Treated Like a Bank With Federal Scrutiny in the U.S.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a new rule that will bring Apple Pay and other major digital wallet services under the same oversight as banks. The CFPB today announced that, effective 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, digital payment platforms processing over 50 million annual transactions in U.S. dollars will be subject to federal supervision. ‌Apple Pay‌ is one of the most widely used digital wallets in the United States and falls squarely within this threshold. The new rule will grant the CFPB powers to proactively examine ‌Apple Pay‌’s compliance with federal consumer financial laws, including privacy protection, fraud prevention, and account stability. The CFPB has highlighted privacy concerns, fraud risks, disruption caused by account closures, and consumer protection as key areas of focus in its supervision. While the CFPB already had some enforcement authority over ‌Apple Pay‌, it previously relied on responding to violations or direct consumer complaints. The new regulation enables direct and ongoing scrutiny of internal operations, just like the oversight banks and credit unions face. …