Assistant & Deputy Headteacher Pay UK 2026/27: Salary Scales

The counter-intuitive core rule

If you have read anything about school leadership pay, you have read about the unit score: a formula that counts pupils, weights them by key stage, adds units for complexity, and places a school into one of eight headteacher groups. It is presented almost everywhere as the machinery that determines leadership pay in an English school.

It is not. It determines exactly one thing, and it is worth being precise about what.

STPCD paragraph 6.1 requires an ordinary school to be assigned to a headteacher group by reference to its total unit score. Paragraph 9.1 then requires the relevant body to determine pay ranges "for the headteacher and for deputy headteachers and assistant headteachers in accordance with paragraphs 9.2 to 9.4". Read those two paragraphs together and the structure becomes clear: the unit score produces a headteacher group, and the headteacher group produces a broad pay range for the headteacher's post. Nothing in the STPCD subjects a deputy or assistant headteacher's range to any calculation at all.

What paragraph 9.2 requires instead is a judgement. The relevant body "must take into account all of the permanent responsibilities of the role, any challenges that are specific to the role, and all other relevant considerations", and "must ensure that there is appropriate scope within the range to allow for pay progression over time". That is the whole of the framework for setting a deputy or assistant head's pay — a duty to consider the role properly and to leave headroom.

And then there is exactly one hard constraint, in paragraph 9.4:

Notice what that constraint attaches to. It does not cap a deputy's pay at the headteacher's actual salary, or at the headteacher's range, or at any proportion of either. It caps it at the maximum of the headteacher group — a figure that is often considerably higher than what the headteacher is actually paid, because most heads sit somewhere inside their group range rather than at the top of it.

The consequence, which is genuinely counter-intuitive, is that the unit-score system reaches a deputy head's pay only as a distant ceiling. Everything between the statutory leadership minimum of £53,586 and that ceiling is governing body discretion. Our pathway to headship guide sets out the group bandings and what they mean for headteacher pay specifically; this page is about everything the group bandings do not decide.

What the unit score actually decides, so you can read it correctly

Because the group maximum is the one number that genuinely constrains your range, it is worth knowing how a school arrives at it. Under STPCD paragraph 6.2, an ordinary school's total unit score is built from pupil numbers weighted by key stage:

Those totals map onto the eight groups: up to 1,000 units is Group 1; 1,001 to 2,200 is Group 2; 2,201 to 3,500 Group 3; 3,501 to 5,000 Group 4; 5,001 to 7,500 Group 5; 7,501 to 11,000 Group 6; 11,001 to 17,000 Group 7; and 17,001 or more is Group 8. Special schools use a separate table with higher per-pupil units, modified by a staff-pupil ratio modifier under paragraph 7.7. Where a headteacher is permanently appointed to more than one school, paragraph 6.6 requires the unit scores of all of them to be combined into a single total.

So a 900-pupil 11-16 secondary scores roughly 9,000 units and sits in Group 6, with a maximum of £122,305 for 2026/27. A 210-pupil primary scores around 1,470 units and sits in Group 2, with a maximum of £86,796. Those two figures are the ceilings on what the deputies and assistant heads in those two schools may be paid — and they differ by £35,509.

This is the single most useful thing to establish about a school you are applying to. Work out its group — pupil numbers by key stage are public, on the school's own website and in DfE performance data — and you know the absolute ceiling on what any leadership post there can pay, before any conversation about your own range begins.

The three-stage process, and where non-headteacher posts fit

The DfE's non-statutory guidance Managing Teachers' and Leaders' Pay sets out the process governance boards "should adopt" when setting pay for new appointments "to headship or the wider leadership team". It is the closest thing to a published methodology, and reading it tells you exactly which levers a governing body is pulling when it decides your range.

The practical reading of that sequence for a candidate is straightforward: the range was decided before you applied, and it was decided by reference to the post and the school rather than to you. What is negotiable at offer stage is your position within the advertised range, not the range itself. Arguments pitched at the wrong stage are the most common reason leadership pay negotiations go nowhere.

The L1 to L43 spine, and why it is not in the STPCD

Every leadership advert you will read is written in L-points. "L6 to L10", "Leadership Scale L1 to L8", "Leadership Scale 12 to 16". So it comes as a surprise to most people that the L-spine does not appear in the statutory document at all.

We checked directly. STPCD 2025 contains a single statutory leadership group pay range expressed as a minimum and a maximum — £53,586 to £148,829 for 2026/27 outside London and the fringe — and the eight headteacher group ranges expressed as cash figures. There is no 43-point spine, no L-point table, and no mapping of groups to L-points anywhere in it.

The DfE's guidance states the position in terms: "Although there are no advisory pay range points in the STPCD, in order to give schools greater flexibility, governance boards are free to implement a system of pay points for school leaders." The L1 to L43 spine is a sector convention that survived the 2014 deregulation, is maintained and published by the unions, and is used by almost every school because the alternative — every school inventing its own leadership points — would make adverts unreadable.

Here are the anchor points of the advisory spine for 2026/27, outside London and the fringe, as published by NASUWT following the Government's acceptance of the STRB's 36th Report on 1 July 2026:

Mapping the headteacher groups onto L-points

Because the STPCD expresses headteacher groups in cash and adverts express posts in L-points, translating between them is a constant practical problem. The unions publish the mapping alongside the spine, and this is the 2026/27 position:

Two things are worth taking from that table. First, the groups overlap heavily — L18 is nominally the top of Group 1 and simultaneously the bottom of Group 5, and L24 is the top of Group 3 and the bottom of Group 7. An L-point on its own therefore tells you very little about a school's size; the same point sits at the ceiling of one school's structure and the floor of another's. (The cash figures in the right-hand column do not always match the top L-point exactly, for a reason explained in the next section.)

Second, for a deputy or assistant head the relevant number in this table is the right-hand end of the row. A Group 4 school can pay its deputy head up to £100,536, which is L27 territory — a long way above where most Group 4 deputies actually sit, and useful to know before you assume the advertised range is the school's limit rather than its choice.

The group maximum anomaly nobody explains

Here is a detail that catches out anyone who tries to reconcile a group's cash maximum against its top L-point, and which we have seen misreported repeatedly.

Every group's minimum equals its bottom L-point exactly. Group 1 opens at £60,619, which is L6 to the pound. Group 8 opens at £104,059, which is L28 to the pound. But every group's maximum except Group 8's is now lower than its nominal top L-point. Group 1's maximum is £80,652 while L18 is £81,457. Group 7's maximum is £134,834 while L39 is £136,184.

The cause is historical. The STRB recommended in 2015 that no pay uplift be applied to the maximum values on the leadership group pay range or on any of the eight headteacher group ranges. That restriction was applied to the maxima of the eight headteacher group ranges only — not to the corresponding points on the advisory spine, which have continued to be uprated every year since. A decade of divergence later, the two numbers no longer match.

The five consecutive points myth

A great many pay policies, union briefings and careers articles still state that a leadership pay range must consist of five consecutive points on the leadership spine. It is worth knowing precisely where that came from, because it was true, it stopped being true, and the belief has outlived the rule by more than a decade.

Why does the distinction matter in practice? Because the five-point convention was, for a deputy or assistant head, a form of protection: it guaranteed a defined amount of progression headroom above your starting point. Its removal transferred that guarantee into a much softer duty — paragraph 9.2's requirement that the relevant body "must ensure that there is appropriate scope within the range to allow for pay progression over time".

"Appropriate scope" is not a number, and it is the provision to cite if you are offered a range whose top is a point or two above your starting salary. A range with effectively no headroom does not satisfy paragraph 9.2, even though no specific span is required. Many schools have continued to use five-point ranges out of habit, which is fine — but if yours has not, the question to ask is not "where are my five points?" but "what scope for progression does this range actually give me, and over what period?"

What real adverts actually pay

Because the ranges are locally determined, the only honest way to describe leadership pay is to look at what schools are currently advertising. The following are live and recently-live posts on the DfE's Teaching Vacancies service, read on 17 September 2026. This is an illustrative snapshot of one job board on one day — not a survey, and not representative in any statistical sense.

Assistant headteacher

Nearly £35,000 between the bottom of the lowest range and the top of the highest, for the same job title. Even comparing like with like — the bottom of each advertised range, which is the figure most relevant to what you would actually be paid in year one — the spread is £27,428, from £49,781 to £77,209.

Deputy headteacher

The pattern that jumps out is not really about the titles. It is that the school type and size explain almost everything: primaries cluster at the bottom of the spine, special schools and alternative provision sit in the middle, and large secondaries occupy the top. That is exactly what paragraph 9.4 predicts, because the group maximum — which is a function of pupil numbers and key stage weighting — is doing the work.

The comparison that should give every aspiring leader pause

Put two real, current things side by side and the financial logic of the first step into leadership starts to look very strange.

The gap is more than £30,000, in favour of the classroom teacher. Some of that is regional — the TLR is flat nationally while the Inner London base salary is not — but the regional adjustment does not come close to explaining it away, and the same comparison works with a National U3 plus a mid-range TLR1 against the bottom of a small school's assistant head range.

Nor does it require crossing regions to find the anomaly. In our snapshot, The Thetford Academy advertised an assistant principal post topping out at £81,457 while Enderby Danemill Primary advertised a deputy headteacher post topping out at £61,534 — £19,923 in favour of the nominally junior title, in schools about eighty miles apart.

None of this means the leadership move is a mistake. It means the move should be evaluated on the actual numbers for the actual post, rather than on an assumption that seniority tracks pay. Two specific things are invisible in a headline comparison and both cut against the leadership post:

• Your TLR does not come with you. STPCD paragraph 20.1 provides that a TLR may be awarded to a classroom teacher, and leadership group members are not classroom teachers for that purpose. A head of department on a substantial TLR1 gives it up entirely on appointment to an assistant headship. See our head of department pay guide for what those TLRs are actually worth.
• Directed time protection ends. Paragraph 51.4 disapplies the working time provisions — the 195 days and the 1,265 hours — for headteachers, deputy and assistant headteachers, leading practitioners and holders of acting allowances for those duties. The contractual ceiling on directed work is replaced by a professional expectation with no numerical limit.

Assistant head or deputy head: what actually differs in pay terms

We have deliberately covered both tiers on one page, because the pay mechanism is identical for each and separating them would mean saying the same things twice. What differs is not the framework but the positioning within it.

Within a single school, a compliant structure will place the deputy's range above the assistant head's, because the stage 2 prompt asks boards to consider "the appropriate differential between the pay ranges for different leadership posts" and because posts of different weight should be differentiated. Both are capped by the same paragraph 9.4 ceiling, and both sit below the headteacher's range except in exceptional circumstances. In a large school with several deputies and several assistant heads, the ranges frequently overlap between the two tiers, which is entirely lawful.

Between schools, the tiers tell you almost nothing. A deputy headship in a Group 2 primary is capped at £86,796; an assistant headship in a Group 7 secondary is capped at £134,834. The school's group is a far better predictor of pay than the job title is, which is why "assistant head" and "deputy head" are close to useless as salary signals on their own.

On the non-financial side, the substantive differences — portfolio versus whole-school scope, and the deputy's role in running the school in the headteacher's absence — are covered in our pathway to headship guide rather than repeated here.

The deputy-to-headship pay cliff

The deputy-specific problem in this framework is not the move up from assistant head. It is the move out, into headship — and it is well enough evidenced that NAHT has put it directly to the STRB.

In its supplementary evidence to the STRB's 36th remit, NAHT wrote: "We also note again how the current pay system means that many deputy head teachers cannot afford to seek promotion in a smaller school, because a successful application would result in a pay cut for increased responsibility."

The arithmetic behind that sentence is unavoidable. A first headship is very commonly at a smaller school than the one you are currently deputy in — that is the conventional route, and it is sound professional advice. But the group ceiling moves with the school, not with you:

On aspiration to headship, the most widely quoted figures come from NAHT's report Fixing the leadership crisis: time for change, published in December 2021 on a survey of 2,047 school leaders: "More than half of assistant and deputy head teachers (53%) say they do not aspire to headship, with more than a fifth (23%) undecided." The same report noted that the 53% had risen by about a third since 2016, when it was 40%.

Pay is one driver among several and it would be misleading to present it as the only one. The 2021 report identified a lack of professional recognition and trust, unsustainable workload and high-stakes inspection as drivers of attrition and of declining aspiration, and reported that 32% of assistant and deputy heads cited concerns that leadership or headship pay is insufficient. What NAHT does attribute squarely to the pay structure is the specific cliff described above, and the broader erosion: "since 2010, the salary of a school leader in percentage terms has declined by 15% against consumer prices index (CPI) inflation and a massive 27% against retail prices index (RPI) inflation."

What the official data says, and its limits

There is exactly one official statistic on assistant and deputy headteacher pay, and it is bluntly constructed.

The DfE's School Workforce in England release for 2025/26, published on 4 June 2026 from the November 2025 census, reports: "Other leadership teacher (excluding headteachers) average salary was £69,596, an increase of 4% since 2024/25."

Two caveats are essential. First, the DfE's "average" here is a median, not a mean — the release defines it explicitly as "the salary in the middle of that list". Sources that describe £69,596 as an average salary in the arithmetic-mean sense are misreading it. Second, the category combines deputy and assistant headteachers into one bucket, and the DfE publishes no separate figure for each. A small-primary assistant head and a large-secondary deputy are averaged into a single number, which is why it should not be used as a benchmark for any individual post.

For context, the same release gives a median classroom teacher salary of £51,047 and a median headteacher salary of £86,803, both also up 4%. So the official picture is roughly £51,000 for a classroom teacher, £70,000 for a deputy or assistant head, and £87,000 for a headteacher — a gap of around £18,500 for the first step into leadership and around £17,200 for the second.

That first gap is the one to interrogate, because it is not what a middle leader actually experiences. A head of department at the top of the Upper Pay Range with a substantial TLR1 is already at or above the £69,596 median before any promotion, which is precisely why the first move into the leadership group so often feels financially neutral despite the national statistics suggesting an £18,500 jump.

Negotiating a leadership pay range

Everything above points towards a fairly specific set of things worth doing, and a couple worth not bothering with.

• Work out the school's group before you apply. Pupil numbers by key stage are public. Multiply by the paragraph 6.2 weightings, check the group table, and you know the paragraph 9.4 ceiling on any leadership post there. This is the most useful five minutes of preparation available to you.
• Negotiate within the range, not about the range. Stage 2 decided the range before the post was advertised; stage 3 decides your position within it. An argument about the range is an argument with a decision already minuted, and it will not succeed at offer stage.
• Ask what scope for progression the range gives, and over what period. Paragraph 9.2 requires 'appropriate scope within the range to allow for pay progression over time'. A range whose top is one point above your starting salary does not obviously satisfy it. The old five-consecutive-points rule is gone, but the duty that replaced it is real.
• Ask which year's pay scale the advert quotes. Our snapshot found schools simultaneously advertising the same L-points at 2026/27 values, 2027/28 values, and values matching neither — plus trusts running their own scales entirely. Get the cash figure for your actual start date.
• Price the total package, not the salary. You lose any TLR on joining the leadership group, and you lose the 1,265-hour directed time protection. If you are moving from a TLR1-holding post, compare total to total or you will overstate the increase by five figures.
• Ask about differentials within the leadership team. The DfE's stage 2 prompts tell boards to consider 'the appropriate differential between the pay ranges for different leadership posts' and to 'consider the equality implications of any decisions over differentials'. A school should be able to explain how your range relates to your colleagues'.
• Check the pay policy and the appeals route. STPCD paragraph 2.1 requires every relevant body to adopt a pay policy setting out how it determines pay, and paragraph 11.2 requires a written pay recommendation as part of the appraisal report for leadership group members, with the same constraints on withholding progression that apply to classroom teachers.

One thing not to spend effort on: pay portability. Your leadership salary is not portable. Moving schools means a fresh determination against that school's group and that governing body's judgement of the post, not a transfer of your current figure. That is a consequence of the same discretion that produces the variation documented on this page, and it applies in both directions.