Here’s everything you need to know about teacher pay.
The School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) is an independent group that makes recommendations on the pay of teachers and leaders in maintained schools in England and reports to the Secretary of State for Education and the Prime Minister.
Each year the STRB recommends a pay award based on different factors including the economy, school workforce data and evidence from organisations including the DfE, employers, and unions.https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/category/trade-unions/
The government then considers the recommendations in depth and makes a decision on what pay award teachers receive.
In order to give schools and teachers more certainty over pay and their budgets, the Education Secretary asked the STRB’s to make recommendations for a multi-year pay award for the next two years.
Are teachers getting a pay rise?
The STRB recommended that from September 2026, teachers and leaders will receive a pay award of 3.5%, followed by a further 3% increase from September 2027. These recommendations have been accepted in full, reflecting the crucial role teachers play in breaking the link between background and success for pupils.
This means school teachers will see an increase in their pay of 17% since this government took power - equating to almost £7,900 over four years - with the average school teacher salary rising to over £52,800 from September 2026 and over £54,400 from September 2027.
You can calculate how your salary could change following pay award here.
Will teachers at all schools receive the pay award?
The pay award applies to maintained schools currently, but most academies also choose to follow the statutory pay arrangements in practice.
Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, the government will ensure all teachers in academies as well as maintained schools can rely on a core pay offer and will require academies to have regard to the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document, expected to be implemented by September 2027.
We will continue to increase flexibilities into the national pay and conditions framework so that all schools can innovate to attract and retain brilliant teachers.
Is the pay award fully funded?
This multi-year pay deal award is backed by a significant additional investment of £700 million in 2026-27 and £1.1 billion in 27-28, meaning a total of £1.8 billion more for schools over the next two years, on top of the funding increases which the government has already provided through the 2025 Spending Review.
Like the rest of the public sector, schools will need to play their part in getting maximum value from their budgets.
Schools will be expected to find approximately the first 1% of pay awards in both 2026–27 and 2027–28 through continued efforts to maximising value of their budgets.
To aid schools financial planning in 2026-27, the above diagram illustrates how teacher and support staff pay is funded: productivity gains and smarter spending (first 1%); the next portion comes from schools’ existing budgets as per our affordability assessment in the 2026 Schools’ Costs Technical Note, and the remainder is funded by the additional £700m announced alongside the teacher pay award.
In 2027-28, the same principles will apply: the first 1% from maximising value in schools’ budgets, the next portion from existing budgets as per the SCTN and the remainder covered by additional funding of £1.1bn.
How can schools maximise and get better value from their budgets?
We know this is not an easy task. Schools are already working hard to manage pressures on budgets. That’s why we are providing support through the Maximising Value for Pupils programme.
Through the programme we are using the collective weight of the entire school system to help every school get more from every pound, so that money reaches the classroom where it matters most. This includes help to cut the cost on things like energy and recruitment, as well as providing better banking solutions.
For example:
- DfE Energy for Schools - already taken-up by over 1,000 schools - can save a typical primary school £4,900 per year and a typical secondary £23,200.
- Our new Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment framework caps supplier margins, with schools able to save between 5% and 24% on supply teacher costs.
- Over 460 schools and trusts have already used our free Banking Comparison Tool since its launch, with one trust going from £16,000 to over £1 million a year in returns after reviewing their arrangements
When will teachers receive their pay rise?
The pay award now goes through a 12 week period of consultation with unions and employers’ organisations. The school teachers' pay conditions (STPCD) which sets out teachers pay and conditions, will then be published in mid-October for schools to implement. The pay award will be back-dated to 1st September.
Will school support staff get a pay rise?
The teacher pay award only applies to school teachers, but the additional funding schools will receive also takes into account the current pay offer for support staff, which is currently under negotiation.
Unlike teachers, most school support staff are currently employed on the pay and conditions of the National Joint Council (NJC) for Local Government Services. The NJC is a negotiating body made up of representatives from trade unions and local government employers. NJC employees have been offered a 3.3% pay increase from 1 April 2026, which remains subject to agreement through the NJC collective bargaining process.
The School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) is expected to be established from this autumn to give support staff like teaching assistants, caretakers and cleaners a stronger voice. The body will bring together employer and employee representatives to negotiate pay, terms and conditions, and to advise on training and career progression.
Will further education teachers get a pay rise?
The Department for Education does not set further education pay. However, we are providing £485 million in additional funding over two years to support colleges and other further education providers to address immediate staffing pressures, boosting opportunity for learners and driving skills for growth.
What else are you doing to ensure teaching is an attractive profession?
We are continuing to work alongside schools and colleges to re-establish teaching as the attractive, expert profession it should be.
This includes investing hundreds of millions of pounds to offer tax free financial incentives and professional development to attract and keep brilliant teachers alongside targeted action to improve teachers’ wellbeing.
This is working with the latest figures showing the government is on track to meet its manifesto pledge to recruit and retain an additional 6,500 expert teachers with 4,654 more secondary school, special school and college teachers.
We have made strong progress on teacher recruitment and retention with one of the lowest rates of schoolteachers leaving in the history of the school workforce census – at 2,100 fewer teachers than last year, and there has been a 13% rise in people training to teach, with the STEM recruitment target surpassed for the first time since it was introduced.
How are you improving working conditions for school teachers?
We are also making changes to the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document. This includes enabling maintained schools to offer modest non-consolidated recognition payments to staff, as academies already do, so they too can offer recognition schemes to reward their staff; increasing flexibility on INSET days so that schools can structure training in the way which works best for staff and pupils, and clarifying the protections for leaders' working time, including the right to uninterrupted breaks and expectations that weekends and, public holiday should ordinarily be preserved as non-working time.