Should teachers be paid the same as doctors and lawyers?

Teachers joining the most disadvantaged secondary schools are to receive “golden handcuff” payments of £10,000 in an attempt to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor pupils.

The money is the equivalent of nearly half the starting salary of £20,627 of a newly qualified teacher outside London, and almost a third of the average teaching salary of about £35,000.

The £10,000 package will be available to more than 500 schools and will cover up to 6,000 new appointments a year.

The measure, to be announced today in the Government’s New Opportunities White Paper, will apply to schools in England where at least 30 per cent of pupils receive free school meals, or where fewer than 30 per cent achieve five good GCSE grades, including English and maths. Teachers receiving the money will have to agree to stay for at least three years.

Half the cost of the scheme will be met by the Government, and half by the school. The plan is one of several proposals to boost employment during the downturn, including government-backed “golden hellos” of £2,500 for employers who recruit and train the long-term unemployed. There will aso be an expansion of apprenticeships and internships.

Research from the Conservatives suggests that poorer teenagers appear to be falling farther behind their middle-class contemporaries as better-off families colonise the best state secondary schools.

The proportion of pupils achieving five good GCSE grades, including English and maths, in schools where more than half were eligible for free school meals fell from 14 to 13 per cent last year. At schools where fewer than a tenth of pupils were eligible, the proportion rose from 57 to 58 per cent.

Research by the Sutton Trust charity suggests that children from poorer homes have less well developed cognitive skills than middle-class children – even before they start school.

In a test measuring the cognitive skills of three to five-year-olds to determine their readiness for school, more than 60 per cent from the wealthiest fifth of homes passed, compared with only 32 per cent from the poorest fifth.

Jane Waldfogel, Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and the lead author of the research, said that the solution was greater investment in early years childcare.

Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said: “We will now do more to break the link between disadvantage and achievement. Great teachers are key to this, so I want to go further now to help heads recruit and retain the very best teachers in the most challenging schools. As well as the £10,000 payment for three years’ service, head teachers will be able to attract new teachers with access to extra professional development, a support network and access to the new masters [degree] in teaching and learning.”

Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, said that his party had proposed an explicit pupil premium to increase per capita funding for pupils from deprived backgrounds. “Our plans would ensure that those schools which attracted a larger number of poorer children would have the additional resources to pioneer new ways of operating and the money to pay more for higher quality teaching,” he said.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the money would be welcomed by schools in deprived areas, which often struggled to attract teachers, even though they had extra funding. “They do have quite a bit of funding to spend on staff, but the problem is that they can’t attract people to go there. We need to put in place incentives like this,” he said.

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