More than 100,000 teachers across Wales and England walked out in strike action on Wednesday calling for better pay and working conditions. In what was dubbed "the biggest day of industrial action in more than a decade" teachers and school staff joined civil servants, the DVLA, bus drivers, train drivers, and university staff in a mass walkout.
Many schools in Wales have been forced to close with parents having to take the day off work to care for their children or find alternative childcare arrangements after last-minute talks with the Welsh Government and a one-off payment offer to teachers last week failed to stop the walkout. Unions have branded a recent 5% pay offer to teachers as "an insult" and say years of underfunding have prompted a recruitment and retainment crisis that is damaging children's education.
While striking staff have seen support from pupils, parents, and members of the public in towns and cities across Wales others have criticised the walkout saying teachers are paid well and shouldn't feel the need to strike. According to The Telegraph teachers in England are among the best paid for the fewest contracted hours in Europe.
Read more: School strike in Wales: Live updates as teachers walk out with nearly all schools affected
We looked at the data to see what the picture is like in Wales. According to data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the average salary for a teacher in England with 15 years' experience was £44,557 for both primary school teachers and secondary school teachers in 2020. This almost (we found a £7 difference) equates to the salary for a teacher on level three of the lead practitioner pay scale for England, according to the NASUWT teaching union. A teacher at the same level on the pay scale for Wales would also have earned £44,550 in 2020. So how does this compare to salaries in other countries in Europe?
The pay comparison
If you compare the 2020 salaries (the most recent full data set available) of teachers in England and Wales with 15 years experience and teachers in various countries abroad with 15 years experience the numbers appear to show teachers in England and Wales were earning significantly more. Salaries in the data sets were adjusted by the OECD to "account for purchasing power" but they still give an interesting insight into the difference between teacher salaries in England and Wales compared to various other countries.
According to the OECD teachers in Italy with 15 years of experience typically earned £32,116 in 2020 while teachers in France with 15 years' experience typically earned £32,506 and teachers in Finland with 15 years' experience typically earned £37,156. The 2020 salaries for teachers in England and Wales with 15 years experience were also higher than teachers in the same experience bracket in New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Colombia, Lithuania, Turkey, Israel, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, the OECD said.
The working hours comparison
The maximum number of hours teachers work in England and Wales are set by the UK and Welsh Governments. In Wales all schools operate according to the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (Wales) Document which states that a classroom teacher can only be directed by the head teacher to work for up to a maximum of 1,265 hours over 195 days of the year. According to data from the OECD this is far fewer hours than the hours worked by teachers in many other countries where the rules are different. It is also important to remember that many teachers in England and Wales work many hours outside of their normal contracted hours doing things like marking and grading homework and assessments and preparing classwork.
David Evans, Wales secretary for the National Education Union, criticised the figures and said it represented "a highly selective interpretation of OECD data". He added: "No teacher will recognise the 1,265 hours of directed time as their experience of the job. The last Education Workforce Council (EWC) education survey showed us teachers were working 56 hours a week. This is over 2,000 hours in term-time alone plus all the extra work they do outside school terms. The figure of 1,265 hours does not reflect current reality for teachers. The insult of real-terms pay cuts combined with unpaid working hours is driving teachers out of the profession and making it unattractive to graduates. "Welsh Government's own figures show they haven't hit their secondary training targets for teachers for the past seven years with primary meeting the targets just once in the last six.
"Comparing pay between countries is in any case notoriously difficult – prices have risen faster in this country than in many others. Besides we are not competing for teachers against other countries but against other graduate professions here in the UK. The IFS, NFER, and Public First all agree the declining teacher pay relativity in the UK is a cause of recruitment and retention problems."
Joint general-secretary of the National Education Union Kevin Courtney said: "By any measure, teachers have had double-digit, deep and sustained real-terms pay cuts since 2010. If this were not the case then the government would not be failing to hit recruitment targets for training and we would not be seeing a third of teachers leaving within the first five years of qualifying. The OECD data appears to ignore the high levels of unpaid working hours which teachers work and which devalues their pay. Working weeks of 55-60 hours are typical for teachers in the UK."
Total annual working hours (in order of most to least by country) according to the OECD:
Switzerland: 1,866
Germany: 1,795
Sweden: 1,767
Japan: 1,728
Colombia: 1,720
Norway: 1,688
Czech Republic: 1,688
Netherlands: 1,659
Hungary: 1,656
Denmark: 1,628
France: 1,607
Turkey: 1,576
Slovakia: 1,560
Estonia: 1,540
South Korea: 1,520
Lithuania: 1,512
Poland: 1,432
Spain: 1,425
Portugal: 1,368
Scotland: 1,365
Latvia: 1,320
Israel: 1,268
England: 1,265
Wales: 1,265
Luxembourg: 1,229
Salaries across England and Wales differ slightly in 2023
Salaries this academic year do slightly differ between England and Wales. Pay scale levels are the same in both countries – for example M1, M2, and M3 – but the salaries for each pay scale level appear to differ. Typically teachers of different levels of experience, qualifications, and responsibilities sit in different places on the scale and as a teacher progresses in their career, for example by taking on extra responsibility or becoming more experienced, they progress to a higher level on the scale.
According to the NASUWT teaching union's pay scale for teachers in England the starting salary for a classroom teacher in England is £28,000 (academic year 2022-23), increasing to £29,800 when a teacher progresses from level M1 to M2. Classroom teachers in Wales start at M2 band. According to the NASUWT teaching union's pay scale for teachers in Wales the starting salary for a classroom teacher in Wales is £28,866.
At M3 level, however, the pay ranges of salaries in England begin at a slightly higher level. A classroom teacher at M3 level in England earns at least £31,750, according to NASUWT figures, while a classroom teacher at M3 level in Wales earns a minimum of £31,184. In the "upper pay range" of the pay scale the minimum salary for a teacher at the U1 level is £40,625 in England and £41,337 in Wales, the union says.
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