Anger at £1,600 fee for teachers' pay appeal

Teachers at independent schools are being forced to pay £1,600 to appeal if their applications for performance-related pay rises are turned down, a union said yesterday.

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers condemned the charges as "distasteful" and called for safeguards to ensure that the practice never spread to state schools.

Chris Keates, the union's deputy general secretary, said it was unfair to charge someone £1,600 to challenge a verdict that could at best result in them getting a £2,000 pay rise.

The charges have been set by Cambridge Education Associates, the company that holds the government contract to run its performance-related pay scheme.

CEA does not reimburse teachers even if their appeal succeeds – meaning that 80 per cent of their pay rise is swallowed up by the charges.

Since September 2000 experienced teachers in the state sector have been eligible for performance-related bonuses of more than £2,000. Many independent schools also introduced the scheme to compete for staff with state schools.

Ms Keates said: "It is a distasteful practice to charge individual teachers for something which should be an automatic entitlement." She added that the Government's policy of encouraging private-sector involvement in state schools made her concerned that the charges could spread.

A spokeswoman for CEA said the £1,600 charge reflected the actual cost of the appeal. She said: "It is an extremely rigorous case-by-case process. £1,600 is what an appeal costs. There is no extra fee being taken by CEA.

"CEA would not make charges to the maintained sector as this would break the terms of our contract with the Department for Education and Skills."