It’s effectively a pay cut. Schools are already making staff redundant to manage budgets. It means that teachers have to fill the gaps, teach bigger classes, make do with less resources and so on. Working more for an in line with inflation pay rise.

A local primary school near us has made two-thirds of its teaching assistants resundant and two full-time classroom teachers. The remaining staff have been rallied and told to “pull together” and “plug the gaps”. For the children, of course.