Teachers and doctors to get 4% pay rise as ministers reveal pay increases across public sector – UK politics live
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/may/22/tories-labour-crimes-sentencing-keir-starmer-kemi-badenoch-uk-politics-live-news?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Posted by topotaul
22 Comments
Great! Investing in public sector is win-win for all. Need services and schools back to a good level
People scoff at Labour but their generous payrises for teachers is exactly why I’m doing my PGCE this Autumn. Starting of a teacher is likely to be around 33k when I qualify in 2026 which is genuinely a competitive offer.
This is better than I was expecting but even then for many, with inflation being what it is, its another pay cut in real terms.
Oh and it seems like Schools will be expected to fund a large part of the pay deal themselves, so there is actually less money going into schools, unless I’m reading it wrong.
Edit:- And we are expecting tax rises soon, so even more of that pay rise may just….. disappear
Back-to-back above inflation pay rises are good to see.
3.6 percent increase for non doctors. Sigh. My bills have gone up way past 3.6 percent. Would be nice to be on a real wage.
3.6% for those in the NHS on Afc. So a whole .1% above inflation.
9.5% increase for teachers since Labour came to power, and they deserve every penny.
Those are great news. Salaries above inflation are beyond necessary for the public sector. This is not simply about increasing their salaries as much as it is an attempt of retrieving the standards we had back in 2005.
A starting teacher’s salary would be around £35,500 had it simply kept with inflation since 2005 to now. It is currently almost £33,000.
This trend goes through most of the public sector workers. Junior Doctors are still earning around 9% less than what they would have been earning back in 2005 – inflation adjusted.
4% is actually pretty good! Most people who don’t work in the public sector aren’t getting a pay raise this year, and if they do it’s going to be nowhere near the 3% of cost of living inflation.
Inevitably some won’t be happy at another public sector pay rise, but it is important to note:
* Many essential workers are still earning 25-30% less in real terms than they were in 2010 even as the required qualifications and skillsets have increased
* Whilst the headlines will focus on the higher paid earners like Doctors, under this pay rise a lot of NHS hospital staff and ambulance workers will still only be earning £25-27k to provide 24/7 life-saving care in highly stressful and sometimes dangerous environments. The same wage as a shelf stacker at Aldi.
Teacher here. 4% is fine with teachers is the mood, but the government is expecting a quarter of the pay rise to be funded from existing school budgets.
>In a written statement to Parliament, Phillipson said she is “asking schools and colleges to do their part in ensuring that we are driving productivity across all areas of the public sector”, she added.
>
>Schools “will be expected to find approximately the first 1 per cent of pay awards through improved productivity and smarter spending to make every pound count.
>
>“There will be those who say this cannot be done, but I believe schools have a responsibility, like the rest of the public sector, to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible.”
I don’t think it can be stressed enough that if schools were able to save money through “improved productivity” then we would’ve done it already after 15 years of austerity.
It’s too soon to tell what the mood of the unions is, but this is a sticking point: we don’t have ANY money left, literally. At my school funding a quarter of the pay rise would amount to finding about £35k a year from our budget. Where? The only place left to do that is staff themselves, everything else has been cut to the bone already.
Saying “find the pay rise from existing budgets” effectively just means “your budget for next year is reduced”. And there is no room for that, there just isn’t. So all these comments praising this as good news, keep that in mind if there’s further strike action over this.
Does anyone know if this includes teaching assistants as well? A family member who is a TA is criminally underpaid, often having a way harder job than the teacher as they have to deal with the most disruptive and violent kids whilst the teacher attempts to wrangle control of the class back.
I look foraars to getting 2% in policing because there’s no public support
I thought the teaching unions said they won’t accept anything that is not fully funded. Guess that red line was dropped rapidly.
Why are non doctors getting less? And what are they causing as senior managers? What band?
I got 2%, so I guess I have to pay more taxes so the public sector with their gold plated pensions can get double. Fucking great.
3.25% for us civil servants, officially below inflation. Damn it, here we go again.
Well I suppose it’s at least more than the 2.8% they were mooting originally…
As a teacher the real stickler for me is going to be if it’s fully funded.
While 4% isn’t amazing for an experienced teacher I would accept it. But if they are expecting schools to fund it with existing budgets then I would be on board for strike action. My school doesn’t have enough money to fund pay rises. They don’t have enough money to buy exercise books.
And now people will get angry at Labour for insisting teachers and nurses get paid almost as much as shelf packers at Tesco
Living in the shithole that is Northern Ireland and working as a doctor we won’t be getting this and I’ll be voting to strike asap.
4% is fucking meaningless when my pay has been cut by around 30% since I first started applying to be a doctor.
Meanwhile sat in the nonsense Private/Public netherzone, teachers in Higher Education are being offered 1.4% amid layoffs.
An economy with nobody buying is dead.
But in the UK we argue against people having money to spend then they complain the economy is dead.
Economics 101….let the people spend. Fuck the bank of England, fuck the businesses that claim wages going up is bad, how is it bad we can buy things?? Seriously think about it.