Divisive plans to transfer responsibility for teachers’ wages to Wales are the only way to save national rates, Welsh education union Ucac president Ioan Jones insisted yesterday.

Mr Jones said the move would scupper Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove’s dangerous plans to let individual headteachers set pay.

The transfer proposed by the Silk commission on devolution is opposed by the NUT and Nasuwt teaching unions, which say the weak Welsh economy would drag down pay.