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Now Devolve Teachers' Pay to Wales, Urges Union

Posted on: Thursday, 27 October 2005, 18:01 CDT

By ALED BLAKE Western Mail

Teachers pay and conditions should be decided in Wales, a leading union said yesterday. Wages are one of the few remaining education policies not controlled by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Instead it is left to the Government in Westminster to decide how much teachers get paid around the country.

Now Gethin Lewis, secretary of the NUT Cymru, says the power to determine the teaching profession's pay settlement should be something decided in Wales.

He fears a change in pay structure may deter some teachers from moving to different schools, passing on valuable experience when they change jobs.

Mr Lewis fears the Westminster Government may go down the road of allowing one school to pay more than another, which would mean good teachers being attracted to one school but not others.

He said, 'Pay and conditions must be transferred to Wales in the future. You can't have one important area of education not being devolved.

'It needs to be devolved, with proper resources where teachers in Wales aren't seen as the lower paid professionals.'

Mr Lewis said the structure of pay in Wales means that good teachers are not deterred from teaching in certain schools because they will not get as good a wage.

He believes that is essential in keeping good teachers in Wales as well as ensuring certain schools do not have an unhealthy stranglehold on all the best teachers.

Mr Lewis, who is to retire in May, said, 'The education service needs to be seen as a family, working together.

'I don't believe teachers should spend all their career in one school. I have been lucky enough to have been able to teach in five schools, it was valuable for me to do that.

'I was bringing different skills and ideas to the schools and was also able to pick up new knowledge in the jobs I had.

'You need to have a new challenge and a new opportunity to see different groups of children otherwise you go stale.

'The last thing you want to see is a teacher telling a pupil, 'I taught your father and your grandfather and now I'm teaching you."

A Welsh Assembly Government spokesperson said it has had no formal approach from any unions seeking devolved pay for teachers, but at present there seem to be greater priorities for the education service in Wales. '

Source: Western Mail

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