Pay freeze for teachers

Teachers will pay the price for the schools funding crisis with a tough pay deal and a clampdown on merit bonuses, ministers were expected to announce today.

Education Secretary Charles Clarke was reported to be preparing a three-year pay deal which would amount to a real-terms wages freeze.

The offer, to be unveiled next week, would be worth just 2.5 per cent next April - well below what the main teaching unions have demanded.

Mr Clarke was also expected to say that fewer teachers will qualify for £2,000 merit payments. Presently they go to 97 per cent of eligible staff and have been derided as payouts for turning up.

The new regime would see the awards more carefully targeted, perhaps at only one in three eligible teachers. The move will allow ministers to shift £100 million out of the bonus fund and into school budgets.

The measures were intended to avoid a repeat of this summer's problems, which saw a £500 million shortfall in school budgets. Mr Clarke was today expected to set out a three-point plan to improve funding to schools.