The £300-a-day team ‘deciding’ on teacher pay

RED LINE Case is left outside house LEARNING CURVE With Mirror’s Matthew ACCOUNTANTS, business bosses and academics are among those trousering £300 a day plus expenses to decide on pay and conditions for struggling teachers.

Ministers claimed this year’s paltry 1% pay rise, representing a real-terms cut for the profession for the seventh year running, was awarded on the recommendation of the School Teachers’ Review Body.

The committee met 19 times between September and April, totting up a total of £56,250 in fees and £11,203 expenses.

Members are appointed by the Education Secretary, though the chairman’s appointment is a joint decision with the Prime Minister.

While ministers repeatedly and publicly deferred responsibility for the pay decision to the “independent” committee, in reality they ordered it to stick to the 1% austerity cap.

Education Secretary Justine Greening wrote to chairwoman Dr Patricia Rice in October last year that the body should “have regard” to “the need to ensure that the proposals reflect the Government’s policy that public sector pay awards in 2017-18 are limited to an average of 1%”.

The STRB said in a statement that it