The head of the UK's largest teachers' union has been responding to the notion that senior teachers could be paid up to £70,000 a year under a new performance related pay scheme.

Think tank Policy Exchange claimed last week that teachers needed to be rewarded for good results in the classroom and a higher base salary was the most effective way of doing this. A Department for Education spokesperson added that 89 per cent of people in teaching jobs believe the remuneration reform will be a good idea.

However, Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said that the figure is a fantasy as, under the government's pay system, it does not matter how hard a teacher works and how well their pupils perform, there is no guarantee of any pay progression. 

She explained it will be the responsibility of schools to designate the pay of its teachers, so the secretary of state for education cannot make the claim that teachers can achieve £70,000 within five to eight years of service. 

Ms Keates said the suggestion was merely another example of the "misleading propaganda" the government has issued in an attempt to misinform the public about teaching reforms and detract from highly damaging education policies.

Speaking about the fact that 89 per cent of teachers agree with a structured and incremental pay scheme, she said it was not surprising as teachers have been on a performance related scheme for more than ten years.

Ms Keates: "However, as an NASUWT survey of over 15,000 teachers demonstrated, what teachers do not support is the system recently imposed by the coalition government, which has replaced fairness, transparency and clear expectations with a system based on excessive managerial discretion and grace and favour, designed not to pay good teachers more, as the secretary of state claims, but to pay everybody less."