ATL

Wales

Teachers' pay in Wales is a key issue in the general election, says ATL Cymru director Dr Philip Dixon

Elsewhere in this issue you can read about the three main English political parties' policies on education ahead of the forthcoming Westminster election. Given that much of education is a devolved matter it would be easy for members in Wales to be a little blasé about the outcome.

It would be folly to do so. Although the agenda for education in Wales is diverging from that of England in a way that ATL would generally welcome, there is one area where we don't want any divergence or devolution at all: teachers' pay. Members have made it abundantly plain that they fear any devolution of pay would mean less — rather than more — for teachers in Wales.

So it is going to be interesting to see if any incoming government in Westminster, no doubt under the weasel words of 'efficiency', 'reward' or 'localism', will try to break up the current agreement covering Wales and England. If they do then we will want to oppose them all the way, and if they succeed then we will need to consider that new situation very carefully. Regionalisation of pay — or worse, school-by-school bargaining — is not acceptable in Wales. We do not want to see school competing against school, nor local authority against local authority, in a race for the 'best'. We've seen that seductive market model before and we know that all it does is produce a race for the bottom.

Much of the debate about education in this upcoming Westminster election does not affect us, but for the reasons outlined above members cannot be complacent in their choice at the ballot box.