Short answer
Why this calculator exists right now
The National Education Union planned a formal strike ballot of teachers in state-maintained schools in England over pay and school funding, due to run from 3 October to 15 December 2026, after indicative ballots in which 96% of teacher and leader members rejected the government's pay offer and 90.5% said they were prepared to take industrial action. On 24 September 2026 the union's executive paused that ballot, after the government said it would not claw back schools' savings from the fall in employer pension contributions. The ballot is paused rather than cancelled, and no new timetable has been announced. Local and trust-level disputes, such as those on our academy trust pages, still lead to strike days.
The underlying dispute isn't really about the headline percentage. The government accepted the STRB's recommendation of a 3.5% uplift to all pay and allowance ranges from 1 September 2026, followed by 3% from 1 September 2027 — but schools are expected to fund roughly the first 1% of each award from existing budgets. The NEU put the cost of that expectation at around £460 million across state-maintained schools for 2026/27, and framed the dispute as being about funding as much as about pay. The September decision to let schools keep the pension contribution savings, estimated by the IFS to add around £500 million to real-terms school funding, is what led to the pause. Our pay rise tracker covers the STRB process and the award itself in full.
Whatever your own view on industrial action, knowing the real cash cost of a strike day — precisely, not roughly — is the first practical question most teachers actually have before deciding how to vote or how to plan around a strike date.
1/365th
Standard strike-day deduction basis for annually salaried teachers
The legal basis for the deduction
A teacher on lawful strike is not entitled to be paid for the period they're on strike — that much is uncontroversial, and it's reflected in ACAS guidance on industrial action and in the Employment Rights Act 1996, which treats a worker's participation in industrial action as a lawful basis for withholding wages rather than an unlawful deduction. The genuinely contested question, historically, has been how much an employer may withhold for a single day. Two separate sources answer it for teachers.
The Burgundy Book. The Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales — universally known as the Burgundy Book, and incorporated into the contracts of teachers in maintained schools — provides for pay deduction at 1/365th of annual salary for unauthorised absence, a category that expressly includes strike action. For most maintained-school teachers this is the direct contractual answer, and it's the basis local authority payroll teams work from.
The Apportionment Act 1870, as interpreted in Hartley. For anyone whose contract doesn't incorporate the Burgundy Book, the position rests on statute. In Hartley and others v King Edward VI College [2017] UKSC 39, teaching staff who had taken a single day of strike action in November 2011 were docked 1/260th of annual salary — the employer's working-days basis. They argued the correct figure was 1/365th. The Supreme Court agreed, holding that sections 2 and 7 of the Apportionment Act 1870 apply to annual teaching contracts: salary is deemed to accrue from day to day at an equal rate across the calendar year, and that default applies unless the contract, in clear terms, says otherwise. Nothing in the teachers' contracts did.
Why the 1870 point matters more than it sounds
The calculation most people get wrong
It's a genuinely common assumption that because teachers work roughly 195 term-time days a year, a strike day should be docked at 1/195th of salary — treating your pay as if it were earned only across the days you're actually in the classroom. That's not how it works. Your annual salary is treated as accruing evenly across the full calendar year (the same basis used for daily-rate calculations for unpaid leave and other partial-year adjustments), and strike-day deductions follow the same convention. Using 1/195ths would cost you more per day, not less.
| Basis | Deduction on a £38,000 salary | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1/365th (calendar days) | £104.11 | The standard and legally confirmed basis |
| 1/260th (weekdays) | £146.15 | Rejected for teachers in Hartley absent clear contract wording |
| 1/195th (term-time teaching days) | £194.87 | A common misconception — would cost you most |
The gap between the first and last rows on a single day is nearly £91 — and on a multi-day programme of action, the difference compounds quickly. This is the single most valuable thing to check if a real deduction on your payslip doesn't match this calculator.
Gross deduction vs your real take-home cost
Almost every discussion of strike-day cost quotes the gross deduction, and almost every teacher then overestimates what they'll actually lose. The pay you don't receive would itself have been taxed, would have carried employee National Insurance, would have had a pension contribution taken from it, and — if you have a student loan — would have carried a repayment. All of those fall away with it.
Take the £38,000 example. The gross deduction is £104.11. That salary sits in the 8.9% Teachers' Pension contribution band, so about £9.27 of pension contribution isn't taken. Taxable pay falls by roughly £94.84, saving about £18.97 in basic-rate income tax. National Insurance at 8% on the lost gross pay saves a further £8.33. The net reduction in what actually reaches your bank account is therefore around £67.50 — roughly 65% of the headline figure.
With a student loan, the gap widens further
None of this makes a strike day free, and the calculator above deliberately reports the gross figure, since that's what appears on your payslip and what your employer is actually withholding. But if you're weighing up whether you can afford a day of action, the gross number overstates the hit to your household budget by a substantial margin.
How the deduction is processed, and when it lands
The mechanics are more predictable than most teachers expect, and knowing the sequence makes it much easier to spot an error.
The union gives formal notice to your employer
Following a successful ballot, the union must give the employer notice of the action. Since 18 February 2026 that notice period is 10 days, reduced from 14 by the Employment Rights Act 2025. Your school therefore knows a strike date is coming well before it arrives, and payroll usually knows too.
The school records who was actually absent
You are under no obligation to tell your employer in advance whether you intend to strike, and you can decide on the day. What the school records is who did not attend on the strike day. Deductions should only be applied to staff who actually took part — not to everyone in a balloted union, and not to anyone who was already on pre-booked leave, sick leave or maternity leave covering that date.
Payroll applies the deduction at the next available cut-off
School and local authority payroll cut-offs typically fall somewhere between the middle and the third week of the month. A strike falling after that month's cut-off will normally be deducted from the following month's pay instead, which is why a deduction sometimes appears a month later than teachers expect. Some employers will, on request, spread a multi-day deduction across two or three pay periods — worth asking about in advance rather than after the fact.
It appears as a separate, itemised line on your payslip
Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 you're entitled to an itemised pay statement showing the amount and purpose of every variable deduction. Wording varies between payroll systems — "strike deduction", "unauthorised absence", "industrial action", or occasionally a negative-hours adjustment — but it should be visible and identifiable, not silently folded into a reduced gross figure.
Tax, NI and pension recalculate automatically on the reduced pay
Because the deduction reduces your gross pay for the period, PAYE recalculates on the lower figure in the same payslip. You don't need to claim anything back. If a deduction is later found to be wrong and is refunded, the tax and NI corrections follow automatically through PAYE in the same way.
What happens to your pension on a strike day
Teachers' Pensions guidance to employers is explicit: absence due to industrial action cannot be classed as reckonable service in the scheme, and strike days carry no associated pensionable pay. Employers are required to report them as "days excluded" in their monthly data submissions. In practical terms, no contribution is taken and no pension accrues for that day.
- No contribution, no accrual. There's no pensionable pay for the day, so nothing is deducted and nothing is added to your career average pot.
- You cannot buy the day back. Unlike support staff in the Local Government Pension Scheme, who can use Additional Pension Contributions to restore pension lost during absence, the Teachers' Pension Scheme has no buy-back facility for strike days.
- Your Normal Pension Age is unaffected. A strike day doesn't reset or alter your NPA, your scheme membership, or your transitional protection position.
- It isn't a break in service. Teachers' Pensions guidance specifically confirms that members past Normal Pension Age cannot treat strike days as a break in service for the purpose of taking benefits.
- Death-in-service cover continues. In-service death grant coverage is not interrupted by a strike day.
- It may shift your contribution tier for the period. Reduced pensionable pay can move a member into a different tier, and Teachers' Pensions asks employers to check this before running payroll — though it only bites if your pay sits right on a band boundary.
Put in proportion: one strike day removes roughly 1/365th of one year's accrual from a career average pot built over decades. The effect on an eventual pension is measured in pence per year, not pounds. It's a real effect, and worth stating accurately rather than hand-waving, but it is not a reason in itself to make a decision either way. Our Teachers' Pension Scheme guide explains how the accrual mechanism works.
Action short of strike, and partial days
Full strike days are the simple case. Action short of a strike — refusing to cover absent colleagues, declining tasks outside directed time, working strictly to rule — is where the pay position gets genuinely uncertain, and where teachers most often assume wrongly that pay cannot be touched.
A full strike day
You withdraw your labour entirely for the day. The employer withholds 1/365th of annual salary. The legal position is settled, the arithmetic is predictable, and the deduction should appear as a single identifiable line on your payslip. Nothing else about your employment — continuous service, sick pay entitlement, maternity pay, annual leave calculations — is affected, because those are based on your contracted salary rather than pay actually received in a given period.
Action short of a strike (ASOS)
You attend and perform most of your duties but withdraw specific ones. In Miles v Wakefield Metropolitan District Council [1987], the House of Lords held that an employer faced with partial performance may decline to accept it — and if it does, the employee is entitled to no pay for that period even though work was performed. In practice most schools accept the work and pay in full, but they are not obliged to, and an employer that gives clear advance notice it will refuse partial performance can lawfully deduct.
The practical upshot is that ASOS carries more pay risk than its "short of a strike" label suggests, and less predictability. If action short of a strike is called, the two documents that matter are your union's specific guidance on exactly which duties are and aren't covered by the instruction, and any letter your employer sends stating whether it intends to accept partial performance. Read both before the action starts, not after a deduction appears.
Partial strike days. Some disputes have involved action covering part of a day rather than a whole one. There's no single national convention for this in teaching, and employers vary between deducting a proportion of the daily rate and treating any participation as a full day. Where it has arisen, the principle from Hartley — that the deduction should fairly represent the time actually withdrawn — is the starting point for an argument, but a school that gave clear advance notice of a full-day deduction may well apply one. Ask payroll in advance and involve your union rep if the answer looks disproportionate.
Ballot and notice rules as they stand in 2026
The legal framework around industrial action ballots changed meaningfully in early 2026, and a lot of guidance written during the 2023 disputes is now out of date. Three points matter for any future ballot, including the paused NEU one.
The 40% support threshold for education has gone. Under the Trade Union Act 2016, ballots covering "important public services" — a list that included education — required not only a 50% turnout but also that at least 40% of all those entitled to vote actively voted yes. Section 69 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 removed that additional threshold with effect from 18 February 2026. This is a genuinely significant change: in the 2023 round it was the 40% test, not the turnout test, that several ballots were measured against.
The 50% turnout threshold remains in force. The Employment Rights Act 2025 provides for it to be repealed as well, but that provision has not been commenced and no commencement date has been confirmed. The government is required to consider the impact of electronic and workplace balloting before removing it. So a ballot still needs at least half of those entitled to vote to actually do so.
Notice is now 10 days, and a mandate lasts 12 months. The notice a union must give an employer before action was reduced from 14 days to 10 from 18 February 2026, and the period for which a successful ballot mandate remains valid was extended to 12 months. In practical terms, a successful ballot could support action across most of the following academic year without a re-ballot.
This is general information, not legal advice
Union hardship and strike funds
Unions sometimes make payments to members taking part in official action, usually from a dedicated strike or hardship fund. This is discretionary, varies between unions and between disputes, and is generally substantially less than a day's pay — it exists to prevent genuine hardship for members who cannot absorb the loss, not to replace income. Eligibility typically depends on being a member in good standing with subscriptions up to date before the dispute began, which is one reason joining a union mid-dispute rarely confers the same protections.
Whether a fund is available for any particular round of action is a decision the union takes at the time, so the only reliable answer is the one your own union gives for the specific ballot. Don't build a household budget around an assumed payment.
A practical checklist before a strike day
- Run your own salary through the calculator above so you know the gross deduction per day, not a rough guess.
- Work out the net figure too — roughly two-thirds of the gross for a basic-rate taxpayer in the Teachers' Pension Scheme, less again if you have a student loan.
- Check whether your school's payroll cut-off means the deduction lands this month or next, so it doesn't arrive as a surprise alongside other commitments.
- If several days of action are called, ask payroll in advance whether deductions can be spread across pay periods.
- Check with your union whether a hardship or strike fund applies to this specific dispute, and what the eligibility conditions are.
- If action short of a strike is called, read both the union's instruction and any employer letter about partial performance before the action begins.
- Keep the payslip. If the deduction doesn't match 1/365th of your annual salary per day, raise it with payroll in writing and copy your union rep.
This tool doesn't take a position on striking
What a strike day doesn't affect
A single unpaid strike day has no effect on your continuous service, your entitlement to sick pay, maternity pay or annual leave calculations — all of which are based on your normal contracted salary rather than pay actually received in any given period. Participation in lawful, properly balloted official industrial action is protected, so it is not a disciplinary matter and should not appear in a reference as misconduct. It does not affect your appraisal outcome or your eligibility to apply for the Upper Pay Range, and it is not a factor a school may lawfully take into account in a pay progression decision.
Frequently asked questions
How much pay do you actually lose per strike day as a teacher? +
The standard basis is 1/365th of your annual salary for each strike day — a calendar-day basis, not a working-day or term-time-day basis. On a £38,000 salary that's about £104 per strike day in gross terms. Your take-home pay falls by considerably less than that, because the lost gross pay would itself have carried income tax, National Insurance, a pension contribution and (if you have one) a student loan repayment. Enter your own salary in the calculator above for the gross figure.
What is the actual legal basis for the 1/365th deduction? +
Two things. First, the Burgundy Book — the national conditions of service agreement covering teachers in maintained schools in England and Wales — provides for deduction at 1/365th of annual salary for unauthorised absence, which includes strike action. Second, and more importantly for teachers whose contracts don't expressly say otherwise, the Supreme Court held in Hartley and others v King Edward VI College [2017] UKSC 39 that sections 2 and 7 of the Apportionment Act 1870 apply to teaching staff on annual salaries, so salary is treated as accruing at an equal daily rate across the whole calendar year. The teachers in that case had been docked 1/260th and successfully argued the correct figure was 1/365th.
Is the strike-day deduction based on term-time days (1/195ths) since that's what teachers actually work? +
No — this is a common misconception. Even though a teacher's contracted working pattern is usually term-time only (around 195 days), salary under an annual contract is treated in law as accruing evenly across all 365 days of the year, which is the basis the Supreme Court confirmed in Hartley v King Edward VI College. Using 1/195ths would actually produce a LARGER deduction per day, not smaller, so the standard approach is more favourable to staff than the 'term-time only' logic might suggest.
Can my employer deduct 1/260th instead? +
Only if your contract, in clear terms, displaces the equal-daily-apportionment principle — which is exactly the argument the employer lost in Hartley. Section 7 of the Apportionment Act 1870 does allow the parties to contract out of apportionment, but the Supreme Court found nothing in ordinary teaching contracts that did so, and held that the default of calendar-day apportionment therefore applied. Academies and free schools aren't bound by the Burgundy Book and can in principle write their own terms, but the Apportionment Act argument still applies to any annually salaried post whose contract is silent. If a real deduction on your payslip is materially higher than 1/365th, that is worth raising with payroll and with your union.
When will the deduction actually show up on my payslip? +
Usually in the next pay period after the strike whose payroll cut-off hasn't already passed. School payroll cut-offs typically fall somewhere between the middle and the third week of the month, so a strike late in a month often lands on the following month's payslip rather than the current one. It should appear as a distinct, labelled line (wording varies — 'strike deduction', 'unauthorised absence', 'industrial action') rather than being silently absorbed into your gross pay.
Does a strike day affect your Teachers' Pension? +
A strike day is not reckonable service in the Teachers' Pension Scheme and carries no pensionable pay, so no contribution is deducted and no pension accrues for that day. Teachers' Pensions guidance to employers requires strike days to be reported as 'days excluded'. Unlike support staff in the Local Government Pension Scheme, who can buy back lost pension through Additional Pension Contributions, there is no facility in the TPS to buy back a strike day. It does not affect your Normal Pension Age, your scheme membership, or your in-service death grant cover.
Could a strike day change my pension contribution tier? +
In principle yes, though rarely in practice for one or two days. Teachers' Pensions guidance notes that strike days reduce a member's pensionable pay for the period, which can move them into a different contribution tier, and it asks employers to check the tier before running payroll. Because the tiers are banded on annual pay rather than marginal, the effect only bites if your pay was already sitting very close to a band boundary.
What about action short of strike — can pay be docked for that too? +
Yes, potentially, and this is one of the more misunderstood parts of industrial action. In Miles v Wakefield Metropolitan District Council [1987] the House of Lords held that where an employee offers only partial performance of their contract, the employer may decline to accept it and withhold pay for that period as if the employee had not worked at all. In practice most schools continue to accept and pay for work during action short of a strike, but they are not legally obliged to, and an employer that gives clear advance notice it will refuse partial performance can deduct. If your union calls action short of a strike, read its specific guidance and any letter from your employer carefully before the action begins.
Do you get strike pay from your union? +
Some unions operate a strike fund or hardship fund for members in good standing during industrial action, but availability, eligibility and the amount vary by union and by the specific dispute, and any payment is typically much less than your normal daily pay. Treat it as partial mitigation, not replacement income. Check directly with your union (NEU, NASUWT, NAHT, ASCL) for what is available in a specific ballot rather than assuming a previous dispute's arrangements carry over.
Can my school refuse to tell me how much will be deducted? +
No — you're entitled to know how your pay is calculated, and the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives you the right to an itemised pay statement showing the amount and purpose of any deduction. If a strike goes ahead, your payslip should show the deduction clearly, and you can ask your school's payroll team for the calculation in advance.
If I'm part-time, is the deduction still 1/365th? +
The same principle applies to your own annual salary — you're docked 1/365th of your actual pro-rata annual salary for a full strike day you would otherwise have worked. What matters is that you are only docked for days you were contractually due to work: a part-time teacher who doesn't work Fridays isn't docked for a Friday strike. Enter your pro-rata annual salary (not the full-time equivalent) in the calculator above for the right figure.
Related guides
Teacher Pay Rise 2026/27 Tracker
The confirmed STRB pay award and how the process works.
Take-Home Pay Calculator
See your full monthly take-home pay, and model a strike deduction against it.
Teacher Pay Scales 2026/27
Full Main Pay Range, Upper Pay Range and Leadership pay tables.
Teachers' Pension Scheme Explained
How career average accrual works, and why one day barely moves it.