Gender Pay Gap in Teaching

Teachers will have all heard of the School Teacher’s Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD); it provides statutory guidance on pay and conditions for all teachers in England and Wales outlining the minimum and maximum pay grades, Headteacher group sizes and TLR payments, to name but a few. Surprisingly, here at the Kent-Teach office we discovered an STPCD document from 1945 which made for some interesting reading…

In 1945, men and women’s pay was categorised separately with men having higher starting salaries and higher annual increments than women. A male teacher’s minimum starting salary was £300 a year whilst a female’s was £270. The maximum salary for men was £525 and for women was £420, giving women less  earning potential across their career and less opportunity to be equal to their male counterparts. Women also received lower yearly increments than men.

Headteachers too were categorised by their gender and similarly to the current pay bands they were calculated on how many children were in a school. For schools with over 500 children on role, the maximum pay band for male Headteachers was £750 per year, compared to the top of the leadership pay band now being £108,283 per year Headteacher pay progressions is seemingly worlds away from opportunities in 1945. 

Of course, male and female teachers are now treated equally with access to the same pay banding and annual increases based on performance rather than their gender. However, the discovery of this document is even more poignant with the gender pay gap currently being a highly contentious and debated topic hitting the news on a regular basis. Also, in light of  the recent revelations that the BBC pays 96 of its top presenters over £150,000, of which only a third of stars being female it suggests that perhaps the times haven’t changed as much as we thought and that gender discrimination still exists; even within the teaching profession.

There are examples of how the pay gap affects current teachers with the National Union of Teachers reporting that female teachers are paid on average 18.1% less than men; they cite a number of reasons for this including that “career breaks” often impact on career progression. 

To create better wage transparency, organisations, including schools and Multi Academy Trusts, with more than 250 employees will be required to start publishing mean and median gender pay gap information by April 2018 under new legislation. The aim of publishing this information is to reduce the disparities in the earnings between the different sexes and challenge inequality in society. 

The introduction if this legislation is a positive step to reduce the gender pay gap and shows how much society has changed since 1945 where it was laid out in statute that women and men were not treated as equals. 

Interested in further information on new legislation that affects schools? Read this article on the Apprenticeship Levy.