NEW Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson must urgently address teachers’ pay, the National Education Union said today as the government starts work on recruiting 6,500 new teachers to stem the staff retention crisis.

Ms Phillipson wrote to all education workforces to “make clear the valuable role they will play in this government’s agenda for change,” ahead of a reception with key education stakeholders later this week and a formal meeting with teaching unions in the coming days.

Her letter said that she aimed “to understand the scale of the challenges you are facing, and the support needed to fix them,” but it did not mention pay.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede, who called on the new government to publish a report of independent recommendations for teachers’ pay immediately and in full, insisted that “the pay issue is on her desk” and that her predecessor Gillian Keegan was guilty of a “complete abdication” of duty for failing to publish the conclusions of the School Teachers’ Review Body.

“We need to know what teachers are being offered this year and head teachers must be able to plan budgets,” Mr Kebede added.

“The teacher recruitment and retention crisis is deep and severe. Workload is an enormous challenge too — teaching is simply not compatible with family life anymore.”

He said the NEU would ask Ms Phillipson to establish an independent commission on recruitment and retention that could make recommendations to restore the profession over the course of this parliament.

Jack Worth of the National Foundation For Educational Research said ministers would “need to develop a long-term strategy to improve the attractiveness of teaching as a profession to enter and to stay in.”