Sixth Form College Teacher Pay: The NJC Spine
Sixth form colleges use their own nine-point NJC pay spine and Red Book conditions, not the STPCD. The figures and where 2026/27 stands.
Independent guidance, not affiliated with the DfE, Teachers' Pensions or any teaching union.
Short answer
Three kinds of sixth form, three pay systems
If you teach A-levels to sixteen to nineteen year olds in England, the salary you are on is determined less by what you do than by what kind of institution employs you. There are three, and they do not share a pay framework.
A school sixth form — the sixth form attached to a secondary school or academy — is part of that school. Its teachers are school teachers, paid on the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document ranges if the school is maintained, or on the trust's own pay policy if it is an academy. Nothing on this page applies to them; our teacher pay scales page does.
A general further education college is a college corporation that teaches everything from Level 1 vocational provision to higher national qualifications, with A-levels as one strand among many. Its lecturers are not covered by the STPCD and not covered by the sixth form college framework either. They are on locally bargained pay against an advisory Association of Colleges recommendation, and they are the subject of our separate page on how FE lecturer pay actually works.
A sixth form college is the third thing, and it is the one almost nobody outside the sector can place. It is a statutory corporation in the further education sector, like a general FE college — but it teaches almost exclusively sixteen to nineteen year olds, mostly on academic programmes, and it has its own national bargaining machinery, its own pay spine and its own conditions handbook. Its teachers are, in pay terms, much closer to school teachers than to FE lecturers, and the gap between a sixth form college salary and a general FE college salary is larger than the gap between a sixth form college salary and a school salary.
£49,700 vs £37,600
Median FTE salary for teaching staff, sixth form colleges vs general FE colleges, 2024/25 (DfE Further Education Workforce statistics, 14 May 2026)
That statistic is worth sitting with, because it undercuts the way the post-16 sector is usually discussed. The Department for Education's own workforce statistics for 2024/25, published on 14 May 2026, put the median full-time-equivalent salary for teaching staff at £49,700 in sixth form colleges and £37,600 in general further education colleges including tertiary. That is a gap of roughly £12,100 within what most people think of as one sector, and it is comparable in size to the much more widely discussed gap between college and school teacher pay. The DfE's parallel release built from teacher pension records, published on 23 April 2026, gives £48,800 and £38,800 on a slightly different basis, so the precise size of the internal gap moves with the dataset — but its existence does not.
Part of that is composition: sixth form college teachers are overwhelmingly graduate subject specialists teaching Level 3 academic courses, while general FE college teaching staff span a far wider range of levels, subjects and routes into the profession, including many who came from industry. Part of it is the bargaining machinery. This page is about the second part.
Why a sixth form college is its own legal category
A common shortcut is to say sixth form colleges were created by "the Sixth Form Colleges Act". There is no such Act. The legal history is slightly more convoluted and worth getting right, because it explains why the pay machinery ended up where it did.
Sixth form colleges were removed from local education authority control by the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 and incorporated on 1 April 1993, at the same moment as general further education colleges. Initially they were simply further education corporations with their own governance regulations — the Education (Government of Further Education Corporations) (Former Sixth Form Colleges) Regulations 1992. That single act of incorporation is the origin of everything distinctive about employment in this sector: it made each college its own employer, with its own board, setting its own terms.
The distinct statutory category came later. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 inserted sections 33A to 33Q into the 1992 Act, creating the sixth form college corporation as a legal form separate from the further education corporation, with the first tranche in force from 12 January 2010 and the remainder from 1 April 2010. The defining test is a proportion: to be designated as a sixth form college corporation, at least 80% of total enrolment must be above compulsory school age but under nineteen. Sixth form college corporations also have narrower supplementary powers than general FE corporations.
The final layer is the one that now matters most for pay. Following the post-16 area review programme from 2016, sixth form colleges were permitted to convert to 16-to-19 academy status. A college that converts stops being a further education sector institution and becomes an academy — which changes its VAT position, changes its funding route, and moves it out of the sixth form college bargaining framework and into the schools and academies world. Governance and pay travel together here, and the next few sections are largely about what happens when two otherwise identical colleges make different choices about it.
Which category am I actually in?
The sixth form college pay spine
Pay in standalone sixth form colleges is set through the National Joint Council for Staff in Sixth Form Colleges. The employers' side is the twelve members elected to form the Council of the Sixth Form Colleges Association. The staff side holds ten seats, six of them for teaching staff and four for support staff.
A correction worth making early, because it is a common error: the UCU is not a party to this machinery. The Red Book's recognition provisions list the NUT, ATL and NASUWT for teaching staff and UNISON for support staff. Since the NUT and ATL merged into the National Education Union in 2017, the teaching staff side today is in practice the NEU and NASUWT. The UCU is the dominant union in general further education colleges, under entirely separate Association of Colleges machinery, and it does not negotiate the sixth form college spine. If you are reading union guidance about "FE pay", check which sector it is about before applying it to a sixth form college contract.
The teachers' pay spine, 2024 to 2025
The spine has nine points. The table below sets out the two fully documented columns, September 2024 and April 2025, together with the confirmed endpoints of the current September 2025 scale.
| Spine point | 1 Sept 2024 (non-academised) | 1 April 2025 | 1 Sept 2025 (current) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Point 1 | £31,568 | £32,178 | £33,465 |
| Point 2 | £32,782 | £33,415 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 3 | £34,636 | £35,306 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 4 | £36,765 | £37,476 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 5 | £38,839 | £39,590 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 6 | £41,426 | £42,226 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 7 | £43,108 | £43,941 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 8 | £45,972 | £46,860 | Not separately sourced |
| Point 9 | £48,783 | £49,725 | £51,714 |
Why the middle of the last column is blank
Leadership, allowances and London
Above the teachers' spine sits a 27-point leadership spine, SFC-L1 to SFC-L27, which ran from £57,022 to £105,464 at September 2024, £58,124 to £107,502 at April 2025, and £60,449 to £111,802 from September 2025. Responsibility allowances range from £1,000 to £10,000 — the rough analogue of a TLR, though with a different structure and a lower ceiling than a TLR1.
Location allowances at April 2025 were £4,879 for Inner London, £3,252 for Outer London and £1,289 for the fringe, each having risen from £4,788, £3,190 and £1,265 respectively at September 2024. These are flat cash additions rather than the STPCD's separate regional pay scales, which is a structural difference: an Inner London school teacher is on a wholly different set of pay points, while an Inner London sixth form college teacher is on the national spine plus a fixed sum. On the 2025/26 numbers the college approach is markedly less generous in London — Inner London M1 under the STPCD was well over £7,000 above national M1, against £4,879 here.
There is one further element you may encounter and should treat as historic: a set of legacy Management Ranges A to D, three points each. These survive only as assimilation protection for teachers who were in post before 1 September 2016, and were last uprated in 2021/22. They are not a live appointment route.
The Red Book
Pay is only half of any employment framework, and the sixth form college sector's conditions document is the Red Book — formally, "Staff in Sixth Form Colleges — Teaching Staff: Conditions of Service Handbook". Support staff have a parallel document known as the Lilac Book. The Red Book is negotiated through the same National Joint Council and was most recently updated in August 2025.
Structurally, the Red Book is the sixth form college sector's nearest analogue to the Burgundy Book in maintained schools, and it covers seven areas: salary provisions, working time, appointment, travel and subsistence, miscellaneous matters including conduct, intellectual property and assaults on teachers, sickness and family leave, and retirement. What is striking, if you have come from a school, is how familiar the working time section is. It provides for 1,265 hours of directed time across 195 days — the same headline architecture as the STPCD — along with limits on evening teaching of up to six hours across two evenings, and provisions on undirected time, travelling time, breaks and the college year.
That alignment is the single clearest way to see why sixth form colleges are the post-16 institution that most resembles a school. A general further education college has nothing of the kind: no national conditions document, no directed time cap, and a 37-hour contracted week with contact hours agreed locally, which we cover in detail on our page about FE contracts, holidays and redundancy.
The Red Book is a recommendation, not a statute
How it compares with the STPCD
Here is the comparison almost nobody makes, because the two scales are published in different places by different bodies and on different timetables. At 1 September 2025, the last date on which both sectors had a settled scale:
| Comparison at 1 September 2025 | Sixth form college spine | STPCD, rest of England |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom of the qualified scale | Point 1 — £33,465 | M1 — £32,916 |
| Top of the classroom teacher scale | Point 9 — £51,714 | U3 — £51,048 |
| Number of points to the top | 9 | 9 (M1 to M6, then U1 to U3) |
| Barrier part-way up | None — a single continuous spine | Threshold application to move from MPR to UPR |
| Inner London uplift | Flat allowance of £4,879 | Separate, substantially higher pay scale |
The sixth form college spine was ahead at both ends — by £549 at the bottom and £666 at the top — and it gets there without a threshold assessment. For a teacher outside London, that is a genuinely competitive package, and it is the reason the sixth form college sector does not have anything like the recruitment crisis that general further education has.
What the sixth form college spine does well
Nine continuous points with no threshold barrier, so progression to the top of the classroom scale does not depend on an application being approved. Endpoints slightly ahead of the STPCD main and upper ranges at the last commonly settled date. A national conditions handbook with 1,265 hours of directed time across 195 days, which is the same protection school teachers have and which general FE lecturers do not have at all. And from September 2026, a contractual PPA entitlement for the first time.
Where it is weaker
London is paid as a flat allowance rather than a separate scale, which leaves Inner London sixth form college teachers materially behind Inner London school teachers. The framework is recommendatory rather than statutory, so a college can leave it. Settlements run behind the schools timetable — the 2026/27 award is still unsettled as we write, while schools have had 3.5% confirmed since July. And the PPA entitlement won in 2026 is deliberately unquantified, unlike the 10% school teachers conventionally receive.
For 2026/27 the position has diverged again, and in the schools' favour for now. School teachers in England have a confirmed 3.5% from 1 September 2026 — taking M1 to £34,069 and U3 to £52,835 — with a further 3% from September 2027, following the Government's acceptance of the STRB's 36th Report on 1 July 2026. Sixth form colleges have a claim lodged and no settlement. That is not evidence of the sector falling behind permanently; it is evidence that its bargaining round runs later. But it does mean that anyone comparing a college advert with a school advert this autumn is comparing a settled figure with an unsettled one.
The academisation split and the judicial review
The most instructive thing that has happened in this sector in a decade is the 2024/25 dispute, because it exposed the mechanism by which sixth form college pay actually gets funded — and briefly produced something you almost never see in British education: two different national pay rates for the same job, printed in the same document.
July 2024 — the 5.5% award lands, and colleges are left out
The Government accepts the School Teachers' Review Body's recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for school teachers from September 2024, and provides around £1.2 billion of additional funding to schools and academies to pay for it. Sixth form colleges that had already converted to 16-to-19 academy status are inside that funding settlement, because they are academies. Sixth form colleges that had not converted are outside it, as are general further education colleges. The same teacher, teaching the same A-level, to the same age group, in two colleges a few miles apart, is now funded to receive a materially different pay award depending on a governance decision taken by their employer's board.
September to November 2024 — the SFCA starts legal proceedings
The Sixth Form Colleges Association begins judicial review proceedings against the Department for Education over the exclusion, arguing that funding one group of 16-to-19 providers and not an otherwise identical group was irrational. The association went public with the challenge in late November 2024. It is worth pausing on how unusual this is: an employers' body suing the government on a point that would cost its own members money to implement, because its members could not recruit against schools paying more.
September 2024 — a two-tier pay scale actually appears on paper
This is the part that makes the episode unusually well evidenced. The National Joint Council's own published pay framework for sixth form colleges split into two parallel salary structures, headed 'Sixth Form Colleges (not in receipt of the Government's additional pay funding)' and '16 to 19 Academies (in receipt of the Government's additional pay funding)'. Point 1 of the teachers' spine was set at £31,568 for the first group, reflecting a 3.5% uplift, and £32,178 for the second, reflecting the full 5.5%. Two documented national rates for the same job in the same sector, distinguished only by academy status.
December 2024 to January 2025 — settlement, and the claim is dropped
A settlement was reached in December 2024, and FE Week reported on 6 January 2025 that the SFCA had dropped the judicial review. The Government confirmed £50 million for 2024/25 to increase college teacher pay, alongside an increased 16-to-19 funding rate for 2025/26. Bill Watkin, the SFCA's chief executive, was candid that the money 'will not enable colleges to match the pay award in schools and academies' but described it as 'a significant step in the right direction'. The Commons held a debate on 'Sixth-form Colleges: Pay Award' on 27 January 2025.
April 2025 — the two tiers merge, seven months late
From 1 April 2025 the non-academised sixth form college scale rose to £32,178 at point 1 and £49,725 at point 9 — exactly the rate the academised colleges had been on since the previous September. Parity was achieved, but only after a seven-month gap. Blended across the year, non-academised teachers received roughly 4.3% against the academies' 5.5%, and 4.3% is precisely the figure the NEU eventually settled the 2024/25 dispute on. The arithmetic is internally consistent, which is a useful check: the 2023/24 base of £30,500 at point 1 gives £31,568 at 3.5% and £32,178 at 5.5%.
2026 — the principle appears to have stuck
The durable outcome is not the £50 million, which was a one-off. It is the principle. In 2026 the SFCA's chief executive confirmed that the Government has accepted that colleges 'will be treated in the same way as schools when it comes to supporting the implementation of pay awards' — which is exactly what the judicial review was fought over. Whether that holds under funding pressure is a fair question, and the distribution mechanism for the money still runs through 16-to-19 funding rates rather than a direct pay grant. But the bare two-tier scale of September 2024 has not recurred.
The reason to set this out at length is that it explains a feature of the sector that otherwise looks arbitrary. Sixth form college pay is negotiated nationally but funded indirectly, through 16-to-19 funding rates rather than through a dedicated pay grant. When the Government funds a school teacher pay award, it does so through a route that reaches academies automatically and standalone colleges only if someone decides it should. In 2024 nobody decided it should, and it took litigation to correct. That is a structural vulnerability rather than a one-off administrative error, and it is worth understanding before you assume a nationally agreed college pay award is nationally funded.
The 2025/26 settlement
The 2025/26 round produced a 4% award across the board from 1 September 2025, applied to all pay points and to all location and responsibility allowances. The NEU consulted more than 4,300 members across 72 colleges and announced the result in November 2025.
- 4% on all points and allowances from 1 September 2025, taking the teachers' spine to £33,465 at point 1 and £51,714 at point 9.
- 93.9% voted to accept the pay offer, on a 62.9% turnout, across 72 colleges and more than 4,300 members consulted. Note that FE Week reported the acceptance figure as 93.8%; we have used the NEU's own 93.9% as the primary source, and the difference is immaterial either way.
- 86.6% voted to reject the SFCA's workload response, on a 61.4% turnout, in the same consultation. Reporting that treats this as a clean acceptance is only telling half the story.
- No national strike action followed in 2025/26, in sharp contrast to the eight days across 32 colleges the previous year.
The split result — accept the money, reject the workload package — is the most revealing thing about it, and it set up the negotiation that produced the PPA entitlement six months later. It is also a reminder that in a sector where pay is settled nationally but workload is largely a local matter, a pay ballot result tells you much less about morale than it appears to.
The one college that left the framework
Against the calm national picture, 2025/26 contained a serious local dispute worth knowing about, because it tests the limits of a recommendatory framework. Teachers at Capital City College Group's Angel campus in London struck for 19 days from October 2025 after the group moved away from SFCA frameworks and offered 2.5% rather than the national 4%. The dispute settled on 23 January 2026 with 4% backdated to September 2025 plus SFCA rates for the remainder of the year, amounting to roughly 7% in total.
But the settlement also confirmed that from September 2026, pay at Capital City College is negotiated locally, with national recommendations considered rather than automatically applied. The NEU representative Terry Sullivan described that as a setback, and it is easy to see why: the strike won the money and lost the principle.
Do not generalise the Capital City outcome
The PPA entitlement that was won in 2026
The workload strand rejected in November 2025 came back as an agreement in May 2026, and it delivered something the sector had never had: a contractual entitlement to planning, preparation and assessment time. A National Joint Council working party met on 27 November 2025, the working time agreement was finalised around 14 May 2026, and it takes effect from September 2026 — which is to say, now.
The agreement adds three things to the Red Book: PPA time, a "rarely cover" equivalent, and agreed principles on directed time and workload. The PPA wording provides that all teachers who participate in the teaching of students are entitled to reasonable periods of planning, preparation and assessment time as part of the 1,265 hours or pro rata equivalent; that it must be provided in units of not less than half an hour during the college's timetabled teaching week; and that a teacher should not be required to carry out any other duties during that time. Part of it should be protected time marked on teachers' timetables, during which teachers may in some cases work away from the college site.
This is not '10% PPA', and saying so would be wrong
The best evidence that the 2026 agreement is unquantified is that the unions immediately went back for numbers. The NEU's 2026/27 claim seeks to write into the Red Book a cap of no more than 20 hours of contact time per week and class size limits of 25 students for non-practical subjects and 20 for practical ones. You do not ask for a contact cap in the following round if you won one in the last.
Where 2026/27 stands, as at 18 September 2026
Unconfirmed at the time of writing
What is established is the staff side claim, lodged jointly by the NEU and NASUWT for 1 September 2026. It seeks an increase above RPI inflation on all pay points and allowances, described as a meaningful step towards real-terms pay restoration; at least 10% extra on the London allowances; the 20-hour contact time cap and the class size caps described above written into the Red Book; and accelerated workload talks over the autumn term with an agreed position by the end of the spring term in 2027.
On the funding side, two things are known. School teachers have 3.5% confirmed for 2026/27 and 3% for 2027/28, supported by £700 million in financial year 2026-27 and £1,115 million in 2027-28. Colleges and further education providers were allocated £485 million over two years — £120 million in 2026-27 and £365 million in 2027-28 — announced on 1 July 2026 and explicitly framed as helping colleges match the school teacher pay rise.
Two caveats belong with that. First, it is not yet clear how the Department for Education will distribute the £120 million. In previous years this kind of money has flowed through the 16-to-19 funding formula, which is a reasonable fit for sixth form colleges specifically but disadvantages general FE colleges with large adult and apprenticeship cohorts. Second, the widely quoted school-to-college pay gap of around £12,500 is a campaigning figure covering the college sector as a whole, and as the figures earlier on this page show, it substantially overstates the position for sixth form colleges in particular. We work through the competing gap estimates and their methodologies on our page about the FE and school teacher pay gap.
The other thing that appears to have survived from the judicial review episode is a principle. The SFCA's chief executive confirmed in 2026 that the Government has accepted that colleges will be treated in the same way as schools when it comes to supporting the implementation of pay awards. That is precisely what the 2024 litigation was about, and if it holds, it is a more valuable outcome than the £50 million that ended the case.
Sources and accuracy
The pay spine figures, leadership spine, responsibility allowances and location allowances are taken from the National Joint Council for Staff in Sixth Form Colleges pay framework as published by NASUWT, cross-checked against NEU sixth form college pay material. The Red Book content is taken from the published "Staff in Sixth Form Colleges — Teaching Staff: Conditions of Service Handbook" itself, including its constitution appendix setting out the twelve-employer, ten-staff composition of the NJC. The legal history comes from the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 and sections 33A to 33Q inserted by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, together with the Department for Education's guidance for sixth form colleges on becoming a 16-to-19 academy. The judicial review sequence is drawn from the SFCA's own account, FE Week's 6 January 2025 report, the NEU's press releases and the Commons debate of 27 January 2025. The 2025/26 ballot figures come from the NEU's published consultation result, with the FE Week variant noted in the text. The PPA agreement is taken from FE Week and Schools Week reporting of 7 May 2026 and the NEU's own guidance. Median salary comparisons come from the Department for Education's Further education workforce statistics for 2024/25, published 14 May 2026, and its Further education college workforce using teacher pension data release of 23 April 2026. STPCD figures are the confirmed 2026/27 values following the Government's acceptance of the STRB's 36th Report on 1 July 2026, with 2025/26 comparators of £32,916 at M1 and £51,048 at U3.
Two things on this page are explicitly not established and are flagged as such in the text: the intermediate points of the September 2025 spine, which we could not source directly and have not filled in by arithmetic, and the current number of sixth form colleges, for which the most recent figures we could verify date from January 2025. A third, the 2026/27 award, is genuinely unsettled rather than merely unverified. This is independent guidance for orientation, not employment or financial advice, and it is not affiliated with the SFCA, the Department for Education or any trade union. Your own contract and your college's pay policy govern your position, and your union branch is the right place to check how the national framework is being applied locally.
Frequently asked questions
Are sixth form colleges covered by the STPCD? +
Only if they have converted to 16-to-19 academy status. A standalone sixth form college corporation is a further education sector institution, not a school, and the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document does not apply to it. Its pay and conditions come instead from the National Joint Council for Staff in Sixth Form Colleges — a pay spine negotiated between the Sixth Form Colleges Association on the employers' side and the NEU, NASUWT and UNISON on the staff side. A sixth form college that has become a 16-to-19 academy is an academy, and academies have their own position on the STPCD: historically free to set their own pay, and now subject to a statutory pay floor power under the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. That single governance difference is the most consequential thing about pay in this sector.
Is sixth form college pay better or worse than school teacher pay? +
At the last point where both were settled, sixth form college pay was marginally ahead at both ends of the scale, which surprises most people. On 1 September 2025 the sixth form college teachers' spine ran from £33,465 at point 1 to £51,714 at point 9, against an STPCD range of £32,916 at M1 and £51,048 at U3 for the rest of England. The college figures are higher at both ends by a few hundred pounds. There is also a structural difference in favour of colleges: the nine-point spine is a single progression route, whereas school teachers must apply to cross the threshold from the Main Pay Range to the Upper Pay Range. The caveat is timing — schools have a confirmed 3.5% for 2026/27 and sixth form colleges do not yet have a settlement, so the comparison as at today favours schools until the college round concludes.
What is the Red Book? +
The Red Book is the conditions of service handbook for teaching staff in sixth form colleges — formally, 'Staff in Sixth Form Colleges — Teaching Staff: Conditions of Service Handbook'. It is the sixth form college sector's nearest equivalent to the Burgundy Book in maintained schools, covering salary provisions, working time, appointment and notice, travel and subsistence, conduct and copyright, sickness and family leave, and retirement. Support staff have a parallel document known as the Lilac Book. One critical difference from the STPCD: Red Book agreements have the status of joint recommendations to colleges and union branches rather than statutory requirements, and colleges commit to seeking maximum adherence rather than being legally bound. That distinction is why a college can, in principle, walk away from the national framework.
Do sixth form college teachers have 1,265 hours of directed time like school teachers? +
Yes, and this is one of the closest points of alignment between the two sectors. The Red Book's working time section provides for 1,265 hours of directed time across 195 days, the same headline structure as the STPCD, along with provisions on evening teaching of up to six hours across two evenings, undirected time, travelling time and the college year. That is a striking contrast with general further education colleges, which have no national conditions framework at all and where a 37-hour contracted week with contact hours set locally is the norm. If you are moving between a school and a sixth form college, the working time architecture will feel familiar in a way it would not in a general FE college.
Did sixth form college teachers win a right to PPA time? +
Yes, but be careful how you describe it. A contractual PPA entitlement was agreed between the NEU, NASUWT and the SFCA through the National Joint Council as the workload strand of the 2025/26 pay round, finalised in May 2026 and effective from September 2026. It provides that all teachers who participate in the teaching of students are entitled to reasonable periods of planning, preparation and assessment time as part of the 1,265 hours, in units of not less than half an hour during the timetabled teaching week, with no other duties required during that time, and with part of it marked on timetables as protected time. What it does not do is put a number on it. FE Week reported explicitly that the agreement does not specify a fixed percentage or number of hours, which makes it weaker than the school teachers' conventional 10% of timetabled teaching time. It is also carved out of the existing 1,265 hours rather than added on top.
How many sixth form colleges are left? +
Fewer than there were, and the number is genuinely hard to pin down currently. The best figures we could verify date from January 2025, when FE Week reported that 34 of an original cohort of roughly 90 to 100 colleges had converted to 16-to-19 academy status, with seven live conversion bids outstanding and around a fifth of the original group having merged into general further education colleges instead. On those numbers, academised colleges were on the point of outnumbering standalone ones for the first time. As a cross-check, the NEU's November 2025 pay consultation covered 72 colleges, which is consistent with a sector of roughly that size still on SFCA pay scales. We have not found a current September 2026 count and are not going to invent one.
Was there strike action in sixth form colleges? +
There was substantial national action in 2024/25 and none nationally in 2025/26. The 2024/25 dispute was over the two-tier award, and the NEU framed it as a dispute with the Secretary of State over funding rather than with the colleges themselves. Eight days of strikes took place across 32 sixth form colleges involving more than 2,000 teachers, with dates including 29 January, 6 February and 7 February 2025, and NASUWT balloted separately with 23 colleges voting to strike. The action was called off after written ministerial assurances on future pay parity across 16-to-19 providers plus the £50 million. In 2025/26 the 4% was accepted without a national dispute, but there was a serious local one: teachers at Capital City College Group's Angel campus struck for 19 days from October 2025 after the college moved away from SFCA frameworks and offered 2.5%.
Can I move from a sixth form college to a school without losing pension service? +
Normally yes, because both sit inside the Teachers' Pension Scheme. Sixth form colleges are participating TPS employers, as are general further education colleges, maintained schools and academies, so a move between them is a change of employer within the same scheme rather than a break in pensionable service. What you need to watch is any gap between the two jobs, because a break in pensionable service of more than five years breaks the final salary link on any pre-2015 benefits. What does not transfer is your pay point: there is no statutory portability of salary between the sixth form college spine and the STPCD ranges, so assimilation onto a school pay point is a matter for the school's pay policy and your negotiation, not a rule.
Is the sixth form college leadership spine the same as the school leadership range? +
No, and the shapes are quite different. Sixth form colleges use a 27-point leadership spine, SFC-L1 to SFC-L27, which stood at £60,449 to £111,802 from 1 September 2025. The STPCD instead sets a single statutory leadership group pay range with eight headteacher group bands sitting inside it, running much higher at the top for the largest schools. There is also a set of legacy 'Management Ranges' A to D in the sixth form college sector, but those survive only as assimilation protection for teachers in post before 1 September 2016 and were last uprated in 2021/22 — they are a historic artefact rather than a live spine, and you should not expect to be appointed onto one.
Related guides
FE Lecturer Pay Explained
The general further education college system — no STPCD, no binding national agreement, and an advisory AoC recommendation that was still unpublished for 2026/27 as we wrote.
The FE and School Teacher Pay Gap
£5,500, £10,500 or £12,500 — three credible estimates, three methodologies, and why sixth form colleges sit outside the headline figure.
FE Lecturers and the Teachers' Pension Scheme
Every English college participates in the TPS, including sixth form colleges — and the employer cost is a sector-wide story of its own.
FE Contracts, Holidays and Redundancy
What conditions look like in general FE, where there is no Red Book, no Burgundy Book and no directed time cap.
QTLS vs QTS: Teaching in Schools
The crossover qualification that lets a college teacher take a maintained school post on the qualified teacher scale.
Teacher Pay Scales 2026/27
The confirmed STPCD ranges this page compares against — M1 to M6, UPS, TLRs and London weighting.
The Teachers' Pension Scheme 2015 (CARE) Explained
How career average accrual works — the same scheme whether you teach in a college, an academy or a maintained school.
Targeted Retention Incentive Explained
The England schools scheme — separate from, and not interchangeable with, the FE version.