Negotiating Your Starting Teacher Pay Point: What the STPCD Actually Says

The rule almost nobody reads

Nearly every teacher in England believes the same thing about starting pay: that there is a scale, that the school works out which rung you belong on, and that the answer is essentially arithmetic. Years of experience in, pay point out. Arguments about starting salary are therefore usually conducted as arguments about whether the arithmetic was done correctly.

The statutory document does not work like that, and has not since 2014. Paragraph 13.1 of the STPCD 2025 reads: "A teacher on the main pay range must be paid such salary within the minimum and maximum of the main pay range set out below as the relevant body determines." The obligation the word "must" attaches to is that your salary falls inside the range. Which figure inside the range is, in the document's own words, as the relevant body determines.

For 2026/27, the main pay range for the rest of England runs from £34,069 to £46,940 — a span of £12,871. That is the territory in which the determination is made. Nothing in paragraph 13.1 requires the relevant body to pick one of six particular numbers within it, and nothing requires the determination to be a function of years served.

Understanding that changes the nature of the conversation entirely. If starting pay were arithmetic, the only useful thing to do about an unwelcome answer would be to check the sum. Because it is a determination, made by a body exercising discretion under a policy it wrote itself, there is something to engage with — a policy to read, a rationale to ask for, a case to make, and a decision that can be appealed.

The advisory points are genuinely advisory

If paragraph 13.1 hands the decision to the relevant body, where do M1 to M6 come from? The same paragraph answers it: "At Annex 3, advisory pay points for the main pay range are set out to help support decisions about pay for teachers on the pay range." Paragraph 14.1 says the equivalent thing about the upper pay range.

The word carrying the weight is "advisory", and the phrase carrying the rest of it is "to help support decisions". The Department publishes a point structure because schools found a bare range unhelpfully open-ended, and because a common reference structure makes national comparison, recruitment advertising and budget planning far easier. It does not publish them as steps a school is obliged to use.

This has three practical consequences that are worth separating out, because they pull in different directions.

First, a school can place you between points, or on a point of its own devising. Nothing prevents a relevant body from determining a salary that does not correspond to any Annex 3 figure. In practice this is rare, but it is available — and it can be a useful middle path in a negotiation where a school feels it cannot justify a full extra advisory point but recognises a genuine case.

Second, a school is entitled to adopt the advisory points as binding on itself. Most do, in their pay policies, and there is nothing wrong with that. A pay policy which says "the school will use the advisory pay points set out in the STPCD" has converted an advisory structure into a local rule the school must then follow consistently. If that is what your school's policy says, arguing that the points are only advisory will not help you: they are binding on that school because that school chose to bind itself.

Third, and most usefully, the question to ask is which of those two worlds you are in. A pay policy that adopts the advisory structure but says nothing about where new appointees enter it has left the entry decision open even though the ladder is fixed. That is the most common shape, and it is the one where a case is most worth making.

The missing rule: how prior experience should be credited

This is the core finding of this guide, and it is a finding about an absence rather than a provision.

There is no paragraph in the STPCD that tells a school how to treat a career-changer's fifteen years in industry. There is no paragraph telling it how to treat six years teaching in Dubai, Sydney or Nairobi. There is no paragraph telling it how to treat a return after a career break, time spent as an unqualified teacher or cover supervisor before gaining QTS, or relevant professional experience in a related field. We went looking for one in the current document specifically and it is not there.

The document does mention qualifications and experience in one place — in the criteria for determining the value of a special educational needs allowance, which refers to qualifications or experience bringing added value to the role. But that is about the size of a specific allowance for a specific designated post, not about where a teacher enters the main pay range. On the general question of crediting prior experience at appointment, the national framework is silent.

That silence is not an oversight; it is the design. The 2013-14 reforms deliberately moved these decisions from national prescription to local discretion, on the theory that schools are better placed than the Department to judge what a particular candidate's background is worth to a particular post. Whether that theory was correct is a matter of long-standing dispute. What is not in dispute is the consequence for you: nobody at national level has decided what your prior experience is worth, so the school gets to, and the school's answer is constrained only by its own policy and by equality law.

Two things follow from this that are worth internalising before any conversation about starting pay.

The first is that you should stop looking for an entitlement, because there is not one, and arguments framed as entitlement ("I should be on M4 given my experience") will be met, correctly, with the observation that no such rule exists. The second, and more encouraging, is that the absence of a rule cuts both ways. There is equally no rule saying a career-changer must start at M1. A school that tells you "we have to start you at M1, those are the rules" is mistaken about its own powers — there is no such rule either. It may have a policy to that effect, which is a different and entirely legitimate thing, but the STPCD does not require it.

Pay portability ended in September 2013

The other thing teachers frequently believe, particularly those who trained some years ago or who have heard it from a longer-serving colleague, is that a new school has to broadly match what they were earning. This used to be broadly true. It has not been true in England for well over a decade.

Pay portability — the principle that a teacher's salary followed them from school to school, so that a new employer was expected to place them at a comparable point — was removed from the STPCD from September 2013, as part of the same package of reforms that dismantled the mandatory pay spine in favour of ranges. Since then there has been no national requirement for a new school to match, or even to have regard to, what you were previously paid. A school can lawfully appoint a teacher currently earning at the top of the main range onto a lower point, and some do.

This is the provision whose absence costs teachers the most money in practice, because it operates silently. You do not get told that pay portability has been abolished; you simply receive an offer at a point lower than you expected, and have no framework in which to object.

There is a genuine and important qualification, though, and it is the reason the rest of this guide is worth reading rather than despairing over. Removing something from the national document did not prohibit schools from doing it. A great many schools and trusts have written pay portability into their own pay policies voluntarily — sometimes in full, sometimes as a commitment to appoint at no lower than a teacher's current point, sometimes as a discretion to be exercised where the school wishes. Where a school has done that, the policy binds it, because a relevant body is expected to determine pay in accordance with its own policy.

So the protection you lost nationally in 2013 may well exist locally at the school you are applying to. You will not find out by asking whether pay portability applies, because the person you ask may well not know the term. You find out by reading the pay policy.

What schools genuinely must do

Against all that discretion, the framework does impose real, checkable obligations. They are procedural rather than substantive — they constrain how the decision is made and documented rather than what it is — but procedural obligations are exactly the ones you can hold a school to.

Every relevant body must have a published pay policy

STPCD paragraph 2.1 requires the relevant body to adopt a policy setting out the basis on which it determines teachers' pay and the date by which it will determine annual pay reviews, and to establish procedures for addressing teachers' grievances about pay in accordance with the ACAS Code of Practice.

The statutory guidance expands this at guidance paragraph 4: all relevant bodies — governing bodies, and local authorities where they are the relevant body — must have a pay policy; pay and appraisal policies should be reviewed annually and kept up to date to reflect uplifts to the national framework and legal or structural changes; teachers and recognised union representatives should always be consulted on formulating the policies and on any changes; and, in the guidance's own words, "Teachers should always have ready access to copies of the relevant body's pay policy."

The policy must be detailed enough to be usable

Guidance paragraph 7 sets a standard for the content, and it is a more demanding one than most teachers realise. The pay policy "should set out how all pay decisions are made, either as part of a regular review or in other circumstances, with sufficient detail for an individual to appreciate what evidence and other factors will be taken into consideration when a pay decision is made."

Read that against your own school's policy and you have a workable test. The standard is not that the policy exists, or that it recites the STPCD. It is that an individual can read it and understand what evidence and what factors will be weighed. A policy that says only "the governing body will determine starting salaries" does not meet the standard set in guidance paragraph 7, and pointing that out — courteously, and preferably through your union rather than personally during a job application — is a legitimate thing to do.

The same guidance paragraph requires the pay policy to describe the information to be included on pay statements and how teachers can obtain additional information, and to set out the procedures that apply when a teacher seeks a review of a pay decision.

The determination must be made at the right time and confirmed in writing

Paragraph 3.1 requires a determination of remuneration whenever a teacher takes up a new post, as well as annually from 1 September. Paragraph 3.2 requires that when determining remuneration the relevant body "must have regard to its pay policy and to the teacher's particular post within its staffing structure". Paragraph 3.4 then requires written notification within one month at the latest, including where the staffing structure and pay policy may be inspected.

Paragraph 3.2 is more useful than it looks. "Must have regard to its pay policy" means a determination made without reference to the policy, or in conflict with it, is procedurally defective — and that is one of the recognised grounds on which a pay decision can be appealed.

Equality law sits over the whole thing

Guidance paragraph 6 states that procedures for determining pay "must comply with all the requirements of discrimination legislation", and requires the pay policy to make clear the relevant body's compliance with four named instruments: the Employment Relations Act 1999, the Equality Act 2010, the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, and the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002. It adds that procedures "should also be consistent with the principles of public life — objectivity, openness and accountability."

Three of those have particular bite at the point of appointment.

The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate in the terms on which employment is offered, on grounds of a protected characteristic. That covers direct discrimination, and it also covers indirect discrimination: a pay policy provision applied to everyone which nonetheless puts people sharing a protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage, and which the school cannot justify as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. A starting-point rule which, say, credits only unbroken recent teaching service could in principle have a disparate effect on people who have taken career breaks. Whether a particular provision is unlawful is a fact-sensitive legal question and not one this page can answer for your situation — but it is a legitimate question to raise, and a reason to seek union advice rather than to let it go.

The Part-time Workers Regulations mean a part-time teacher must not be treated less favourably than a comparable full-timer in respect of contractual terms including pay, unless the treatment can be objectively justified. Pro-rating salary to the contracted fraction is normal and lawful; being placed on a lower point on the range because you are part-time is a different thing entirely and much harder to justify.

The Fixed-term Employees Regulations apply the same principle to teachers on fixed-term contracts — a maternity cover appointment, a one-year post. Being appointed at a lower point on the range because the contract is fixed-term, rather than for any reason connected to the role or the individual, is exactly the kind of treatment those regulations exist to prevent.

Get the pay policy before you need it

Everything above converges on a single practical action, and it is one almost nobody takes: read the school's pay policy before you accept the job.

It is an entirely ordinary request. Guidance paragraph 4 says teachers should always have ready access to the policy; many schools publish it on their website alongside their other statutory policies, so you may not need to ask at all. Where it is not published, asking the school office or the recruiting head for a copy is a routine administrative request, not an opening move in a negotiation. If you would rather not ask before an offer, the window between offer and acceptance is the other natural moment — and it is the moment at which your position is strongest, because the school has decided it wants you and has not yet secured you.

What to look for, in rough order of usefulness:

• What it says about appointing new staff. Does it specify an entry point? Does it give a range of discretion? Does it say nothing at all? Each answer tells you a different thing about whether there is a conversation to be had.
• Whether it mentions previous salary or pay portability. A voluntary portability commitment is the single most valuable thing you can find in there, and it is not rare.
• What discretionary factors it lists. Shortage subjects, relevant experience, specialist skills, difficulty of recruitment to the post — these are the hooks your case has to hang on, because a school can much more readily say yes to something its own policy already contemplates.
• Whether it adopts the STPCD advisory points or sets its own structure. This tells you whether you are arguing about which point, or about a figure.
• Who actually decides. The headteacher, a pay committee, the full governing body, or a trust-level panel — this determines who your case needs to reach and how long it will take.
• The pay appeals procedure. Worth reading before you need it, and worth knowing exists.

Building a case that can actually succeed

Once you know what the policy says, the case almost writes itself, because a good case is simply a demonstration that what you bring matches something the school has already said it values.

How to have the conversation without damaging the relationship

There is a real and understandable fear here: that asking about pay before you have even started will mark you out as difficult, or in the worst case cost you the offer. It is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing, because the concern is not baseless — how you ask genuinely matters.

Timing. The strongest moment is after a verbal offer and before formal acceptance. Before an offer, pay questions can read as presumption. After acceptance, your leverage is gone and the determination will usually already have been made. In between is a narrow window in which the school has committed to wanting you and you have committed to nothing.

Framing. Ask about the determination, not about your worth. "Could I ask how the starting point was determined, and whether there's scope under the pay policy for the governing body to consider my previous experience?" is a question about process. It is answerable, it does not require anyone to concede anything, and it does not put the head in the position of having to defend a judgement about you personally.

Accept the constraint gracefully when it is real. Internal parity is a serious issue, not an excuse. A head who appoints you above a colleague who has been there for four years doing the same job creates a genuine problem, and may also create an equal pay exposure. Budgets are genuinely tight. Where you are told no for one of those reasons, pressing harder will not change the answer and will change the relationship. What you can usefully do instead is ask what would need to be true at the next pay review, and ask that the conversation be recorded.

Consider the other levers. If the pay point genuinely cannot move, there may be other things that can. A time-limited recruitment allowance or a contribution to relocation costs under STPCD paragraph 27 is a different budget line, carries no internal-parity implication in the way a higher pay point does, and is expressly permitted for exactly this purpose. A TLR for a genuine additional responsibility is another. Neither is a substitute for the right pay point, but both are real money, and both are much easier for a school to say yes to.

When the answer is no

Often it will be, and it is worth being clear-eyed about that rather than ending on false encouragement. Most schools appoint most new teachers at the point their policy indicates, and most requests to depart from that are declined. That is not a failure of your case; it is the ordinary operation of a system where budgets are fixed and internal consistency matters.

Three things are still worth doing.

Establish what happens next. Ask when your pay will next be determined — paragraph 3.1 requires an annual determination with effect from 1 September, and the pay policy must state the date by which annual reviews will be made. Ask what evidence would support progression at that review. You have converted a closed conversation into an open one with a date attached.

Know that the decision is appealable. A starting point determination is a pay decision, and pay decisions go through the school's dedicated pay hearings and appeals procedure rather than the general staff grievance procedure. The recognised grounds include that the decision-maker incorrectly applied the school's pay policy, incorrectly applied a provision of the STPCD, failed to have proper regard to statutory guidance, failed to take proper account of relevant evidence, took account of irrelevant or inaccurate evidence, was biased, or unlawfully discriminated. Our guide to teacher pay appeals sets out how that process works. Appealing a starting determination as a brand-new appointee is a significant step and not one to take lightly, but it exists, and it is worth knowing it exists.

Talk to your union before doing anything formal. This is the standing advice throughout this area, and it is genuine rather than defensive. Union regional officers see dozens of school pay policies, know which local employers apply portability voluntarily, know what has succeeded at a particular trust before, and can tell you whether a given argument is worth running. That local knowledge is worth considerably more than any general guide, including this one.

The broader point to take away is simply this. The reason so few teachers negotiate a starting point is not that the framework forbids it — it plainly does not, since paragraph 13.1 hands the decision to the relevant body with only a floor and a ceiling attached. It is that almost everyone believes the number was calculated rather than decided. Once you know it was decided, and you know which document sets out how, you are in a position to ask a sensible question. Sometimes the answer will be yes.