Guides

Shared Parental Leave for Teachers

Shared parental leave sits outside the Burgundy Book — what curtailing maternity leave costs, and why schools needn't enhance SPL pay after Ali and Hextall.

TP TeacherPay Updated 18 September 2026 18 min read

Independent guidance, not affiliated with the DfE, Teachers' Pensions or any teaching union.

Short answer

Shared parental leave is a statutory scheme that sits entirely outside the Burgundy Book — the phrase does not appear in the national agreement once. That single fact drives almost everything else. A teacher who curtails maternity leave to take SPL moves off an enhanced occupational scheme worth four weeks' full pay, two weeks at nine-tenths and twelve weeks at half pay plus SMP, and onto £194.32 a week for the transferred weeks — and no school is obliged to make up the difference, which the Court of Appeal confirmed in Ali and Hextall in 2019. Worse, the decision is close to irrevocable: regulation 8 of the 2014 curtailment regulations allows a curtailment notice to be withdrawn in only three narrow situations. None of which makes SPL a bad idea — for many families the flexibility is worth far more than the money, and SPL's discontinuous blocks fit the school year unusually well — but it does mean the arithmetic should be done before the notice goes in, not after.

→ Use the free Teacher Maternity Pay Calculator to model your own week-by-week numbers

This page assumes you already know roughly how teacher maternity pay works. If you do not, read our teacher maternity pay and pension guide first — it sets out the Burgundy Book bands week by week, the two separate eligibility tests, the pension treatment and a full worked example on a real salary. Everything here builds on that rather than repeating it.

What this page is about is the specific decision: whether to curtail maternity leave in order to convert the remainder into shared parental leave, what that costs, what it cannot be undone, and how to structure the leave around a school year if you decide to do it. It is a decision teachers face in a sharper form than most employees, because the occupational scheme they would be giving up is unusually generous and the statutory scheme they would be moving to is unusually thin by comparison.

Why the Burgundy Book is silent

The Burgundy Book's current revised edition was published in June 2023. Section 5 contains a detailed maternity scheme running to eligibility conditions, pay bands, notification requirements, return-to-work conditions and repayment provisions. Search the same document for shared parental leave and you will find nothing — the phrase does not occur.

This is not an oversight so much as a consequence of timing and structure. Shared parental leave was created by the Children and Families Act 2014 and brought into effect by three statutory instruments — the Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3050), the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3051) and the curtailment regulations (SI 2014/3052) — applying to children with an expected week of childbirth beginning on or after 5 April 2015. The national agreement has never been extended to cover it.

The same silence covers paternity leave, which has no Burgundy Book scheme at all, and very nearly covers adoption: paragraph 12.1 says only that the employer "may, at their discretion, extend to adoptive parents the relevant postnatal sections of this scheme." So the national agreement enhances exactly one form of family leave, and it is the one you would be giving up.

Your employer's own policy is the thing that actually decides this

Nothing prevents a local authority or academy trust from offering enhanced shared parental pay, and a growing number do — some mirroring their maternity scheme in full, others offering a partial enhancement, most offering nothing above the statutory rate. Because the national agreement is silent, there is no default to fall back on and no way to infer the answer. Before you model anything, ask HR in writing for the trust or authority's shared parental leave policy specifically, not its maternity policy, and ask whether the same terms apply to a partner as to a birth mother. If the answer is "we follow the statutory scheme", the comparison below is yours.

How SPL actually works

The mechanism is often described as "sharing maternity leave", which is close enough for conversation but misleading in one important respect: nothing is shared until something is given up. SPL is created by subtraction.

The mother curtails her maternity leave

She gives her employer a leave curtailment notice specifying a date on which her maternity leave will end early. She cannot curtail below the compulsory two weeks of maternity leave immediately after birth — four weeks if she works in a factory or workshop — which is why the ceiling on SPL is 50 weeks rather than 52.

The untaken balance becomes available as SPL

Whatever is left of the 52 weeks of leave and the 39 weeks of statutory pay becomes shared parental leave and statutory shared parental pay, up to a joint maximum of 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay. It can then be taken by either parent, at the same time or at different times.

Both parents check eligibility separately

The parent taking SPL must have been continuously employed by their employer for 26 weeks up to and including the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth, and still be employed in the week before the leave is taken. The other parent must satisfy the employment and earnings test: having worked in at least 26 of the 66 weeks before the due week and earned at least £390 in total across any 13 of those weeks, neither of which need be consecutive.

Leave is booked by notice, at least 8 weeks ahead

Each parent gives their own employer at least 8 weeks' notice, and may give a maximum of three notices to book or vary leave. A notice may request a single continuous block or a discontinuous pattern, and the two are treated very differently — see the block-booking section below.

£194.32

Statutory Shared Parental Pay per week, 2026/27 — or 90% of average weekly earnings if lower

The curtailment trap

This deserves its own section because it is the part that can genuinely hurt, and it is poorly covered almost everywhere.

Regulation 8 of the Maternity and Adoption Leave (Curtailment of Statutory Rights to Leave) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3052) is headed "Revocation", and it sets out the only circumstances in which a mother can withdraw a curtailment notice. There are three, each with its own deadline, and all of them additionally require the revocation to reach the employer before the curtailment date itself.

Gateway	Condition	Deadline for revoking
Neither parent is eligible	It turns out that neither the mother nor the partner is entitled to shared parental leave or statutory shared parental pay.	Within 8 weeks of the date the curtailment notice was given.
Notice given before the birth	The curtailment notice was served before the child was born.	Within 6 weeks of the date of birth.
The partner dies	The other parent has died.	Within a reasonable time of the date of death.

Outside those three gateways, curtailment cannot be undone

If you curtailed after the birth, both parents are eligible, and your partner is alive, there is no route back. The maternity leave you gave up is gone, and with it the Burgundy Book bands attached to the weeks you had not yet reached. Two further details sharpen this. Regulation 8(6) provides that a mother who revokes a curtailment notice may not give another one unless the revocation was made under the pre-birth gateway — so revoking on the ineligibility or bereavement grounds permanently forecloses SPL from her leave. And once you have actually returned to work, maternity leave cannot be restarted at all, whatever the notice position.

The practical consequence is a sequencing rule worth stating plainly. If there is any realistic chance you will change your mind, give the curtailment notice before the birth, because that is the one gateway with a genuine second chance built into it — six weeks from the birth to think again, which is exactly the period in which most people's view of what they want changes. Curtailing after the birth is a decision you are making once.

A related point that catches teachers specifically: curtailment ends your maternity leave, and with it the Burgundy Book's return-to-work condition becomes live. Paragraph 8.2 makes the occupational element conditional on being available or able to return for at least 13 weeks including periods of school closure, and paragraph 8.4 allows the employer to require a refund, at its discretion, of sums paid after the first six weeks if that condition is not met. SMP is never refundable. Moving onto SPL is not itself a failure to return, but if SPL is part of a plan that ends in resignation, that discretion is worth understanding before you start.

The worked comparison

Numbers make this concrete in a way that principles do not. The example below uses £46,940, the confirmed 2026/27 M6 point for England from our pay scales page, giving a weekly figure of £902.69. Statutory rates are the 2026/27 figures: £194.32 a week for SMP after the first six weeks and for ShPP throughout.

Assume a teacher with more than a year's continuous service, whose employer follows the Burgundy Book and offers no enhancement to shared parental pay. Compare staying on maternity leave for the full 39 paid weeks against curtailing at the end of week 6 so that her partner can take the balance as SPL.

Weeks	Stay on Burgundy Book maternity	Curtail at week 6, balance to SPL
1–4	Full pay — £902.69/wk — £3,611	Full pay — £3,611
5–6	9/10ths pay — £812.42/wk — £1,625	9/10ths pay — £1,625
7–18	Half pay plus SMP — £645.67/wk — £7,748	ShPP — £194.32/wk — £2,332
19–39	SMP only — £194.32/wk — £4,081	ShPP — £194.32/wk — £4,081
Total, weeks 1–39	£17,064	£11,648

£5,416

The cost of curtailing at week 6 in this example — the entire value of the half-pay band

The difference is £5,416, and it is not spread across the year. It is located entirely in weeks 7 to 18, the twelve half-pay weeks. That band is the only genuinely additive part of the Burgundy Book scheme — paragraph 8.3(d) gives half pay "without deductions" except where combined pay and SMP exceed full pay, so SMP sits on top of the half-pay figure rather than being swallowed by it. Weeks 1 to 6 are offset against SMP and weeks 19 to 39 are SMP alone, so curtailing inside either of those ranges costs comparatively little.

The single most useful piece of timing advice on this page

If you are going to curtail, curtail at the end of week 18, not before it. Weeks 19 to 39 of the Burgundy Book scheme pay SMP alone at exactly the same £194.32 a week that shared parental pay would pay. Across that range the two schemes are financially identical, so the leave can be transferred to a partner at no cost whatsoever. Curtail at week 6 instead and you give up £5,416 for nothing except an earlier start date. In the example above, curtailing at week 18 transfers 21 weeks of leave and pay to the partner while leaving the household total completely unchanged at £17,064.

Two caveats on that advice. It assumes the partner's employer offers no enhancement of its own — if it does, the arithmetic can point the other way and you should run both sides. And it assumes the reason for curtailing is financial flexibility rather than something time-critical, such as a partner's fixed-term contract ending or a specific window in which they can take leave. Where the timing is driven by something real, £5,416 may simply be what it costs, and that is a legitimate decision to make with your eyes open.

Why schools don't have to enhance

The obvious question is whether it is lawful for an employer to pay a mother on maternity leave four weeks of full pay while paying a father on shared parental leave £194.32 a week for the same period of childcare. It was litigated hard, and the answer is settled.

Ali v Capita Customer Management Ltd and Hextall v Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police were heard together and decided by the Court of Appeal on 24 May 2019, reported at [2019] EWCA Civ 900. Both employees lost, on all three routes they tried.

Not direct sex discrimination. The comparison a father on shared parental leave wants to draw — himself against a mother on maternity leave — is the wrong one. Maternity leave exists for reasons connected with pregnancy, childbirth and the health of the mother, not merely childcare. The correct comparator is a woman on shared parental leave, and she receives exactly the same statutory rate.
Not indirect sex discrimination. The Court held the claim was properly characterised as an equal terms claim rather than an indirect discrimination claim, and section 70 of the Equality Act 2010 prevented it being re-characterised.
Not a breach of the sex equality clause. Schedule 7, Part 1, paragraph 2 of the Equality Act 2010 provides that a sex equality clause does not have effect in relation to terms of work affording special treatment to women in connection with pregnancy or childbirth. That disposes of the equal pay route.

Section 13(6)(b) of the Equality Act 2010 sits underneath all of this: in a case where the claimant is a man, no account is to be taken of special treatment afforded to a woman in connection with pregnancy, childbirth or maternity. Note the current wording — "pregnancy, childbirth or maternity" — which was amended with effect from 1 January 2024; older commentary quotes the previous, narrower formulation.

Permission to appeal to the Supreme Court was refused in Hextall, reported in February 2020. Ali was not appealed. Nothing since has disturbed the position, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 does not change it.

The Department for Business and Trade's Shared parental leave and pay: employers' technical guide — last updated on 17 September 2026 — puts the same point at question 90: there is no legal requirement for employers to create occupational parental leave schemes, and it is entirely at their discretion whether to do so.

The asymmetry that is unlawful

The Ali and Hextall headline is so well known that it obscures the limit on it, which is where a teacher may actually have a case worth raising.

The lawful asymmetry is between maternity leave and shared parental leave, which are legally different things serving different purposes. There is no lawful asymmetry within shared parental leave. The DBT technical guide is direct about it at question 90: while a maternity scheme can only be offered to a woman on maternity leave, if an occupational scheme is offered to a mother on shared parental leave, it could constitute sex discrimination if that scheme were not offered to fathers or the mother's partner. Question 88 makes the same structural point from the other direction.

What to look for in your trust's policy

Read the policy for the distinction between "maternity leave" and "shared parental leave", and then for any distinction between a birth mother on SPL and a partner on SPL. A policy that enhances pay for a birth mother who has curtailed into SPL, but pays her partner the flat statutory rate for identical SPL weeks, is doing the one thing the guidance warns against. Some school policies drift into this without anyone intending it, usually by describing the whole package as a maternity scheme and then extending parts of it informally. It is worth raising with your union rather than assuming it must be lawful because Ali and Hextall exist.

Block-booking around school terms

Here is where SPL genuinely suits teaching better than it suits most jobs, and it is the strongest non-financial argument for it.

Maternity leave is a single continuous block running in calendar weeks from the day it starts. School closure periods sit inside it and tick down the entitlement in exactly the same way term-time weeks do. A teacher whose maternity leave straddles the summer spends six weeks of a finite paid entitlement on a holiday she would have had anyway.

Shared parental leave does not work that way. It can be taken in discontinuous blocks, with periods of work in between — which means it can be aligned to terms and half-terms rather than to arbitrary calendar weeks.

Continuous block notice

A notice requesting a single unbroken period of leave. The employer cannot refuse it — the DBT technical guide states that you cannot refuse such a notification. Give 8 weeks' notice and the block is yours. For a teacher this is the tool for the part of the plan that genuinely cannot move: a specific term, a specific half-term, the weeks around a partner's own leave ending. Use a continuous notice where the dates matter most.

Discontinuous pattern notice

A notice requesting several separate blocks with work in between — for example, the autumn half-term block and the spring term, but not the weeks between them. The employer may refuse, and the notice triggers a two-week discussion period in which alternatives can be proposed. If no agreement is reached, the leave defaults to a single continuous block or the notice can be withdrawn. Useful, but negotiable rather than guaranteed — so use it for the flexible part of the plan.

A worked pattern that comes up repeatedly: the mother takes maternity leave through to the end of week 18, keeping the whole of the valuable half-pay band, then curtails. The balance of 21 weeks of pay is available as SPL and the partner books it as two continuous blocks — one covering a full term, one covering the following half-term — using two of their three notices and leaving the third in reserve for a variation. The household total is unchanged, the child has a parent at home for considerably longer, and neither parent has taken a run of leave that evaporates across a school holiday.

A scheduling point specific to schools

Because school closure periods count as leave whoever is taking it, the calendar arithmetic rewards starting a block at the beginning of a term rather than partway through one. A block starting in the last fortnight of the summer term spends two of its weeks on teaching and then six on a holiday. The same block started in September buys eight teaching weeks. This is not a rule, just arithmetic — but it is arithmetic that can be worth several weeks of genuine time at home, and almost nobody does it deliberately.

Notices, SPLIT days and mechanics

Eight weeks' notice, always. Each parent must tell their own employer at least 8 weeks before the leave is due to start. In a school this effectively means planning across a half-term boundary, so work backwards from the date you want.
Three notices each. A parent may give a maximum of three notices to book leave, and a notice to vary a previously agreed pattern counts towards that total. A booking notice withdrawn on or before the 15th day after submission does not count, and a variation the employer itself requests does not count. Employers may accept more than three but need not.
20 SPLIT days each. Shared parental leave in touch days are an individual entitlement of 20 days per parent, per employer — entirely separate from and additional to the 10 KIT days attaching to maternity leave. For a teacher these are the natural way to attend an INSET day, a results day or a handover meeting without ending the leave.
The compulsory fortnight cannot be curtailed. Two weeks of maternity leave immediately after birth, four if the mother works in a factory or workshop. Adopters likewise cannot start SPL until two weeks of adoption leave has been taken.
Both parents can be off at once. There is no requirement to alternate. The 50 weeks is a joint pool, so two parents taking ten weeks simultaneously uses twenty of it.
The earnings threshold is £129 a week — the 2026/27 National Insurance lower earnings limit — and the partner's employment and earnings test is £390 across any 13 of the 66 weeks before the due week, which is a low bar deliberately.

What SPL does to your pension

The Teachers' Pension Scheme treats shared parental leave the same way it treats other family leave, and the test is the one set out in full in our maternity pay and pension guide: a period is pensionable unless you receive neither statutory pay nor at least half salary.

Because Statutory Shared Parental Pay is statutory pay, weeks paid at £194.32 remain pensionable even though the amount is nowhere near half salary. Teachers' Pensions states the position directly: shared parental leave is pensionable if you are being paid at least half pay or statutory parental pay. Weeks taken genuinely unpaid fail both limbs, become non-pensionable family leave, and are recorded by your employer as days excluded until you return to pensionable employment.

Contributions follow the same pattern as maternity leave, and it is a favourable one: your contribution rate is set by what you would have earned had you not been on family leave, while the deduction is taken from the reduced pay you actually receive.

An honest gap: we could not find a TPS buy-back for unpaid SPL

You will see it suggested that unpaid shared parental leave can be bought back into your pension within a time limit, with the employer meeting part of the cost. We checked the Teachers' Pension Scheme Regulations 2014 and both the member and employer family leave guidance, and we could not find any such mechanism for the TPS. The rule people are describing appears to be the Local Government Pension Scheme's Additional Pension Contributions arrangement for child-related leave — which is real, but applies to school support staff in the LGPS, not to teachers. Teachers' Pensions does offer Additional Pension and Faster Accrual as general flexibilities, but those are not a family leave buy-back. If unpaid weeks form a large part of your plan, ring Teachers' Pensions and ask about your specific case before you commit, rather than relying on this or any other page.

Paternity leave has changed

Two reforms are frequently merged into one, and getting them the wrong way round leads people to the wrong conclusion about what they are entitled to.

On 8 April 2024, the Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024 changed the flexibility of paternity leave: two weeks became available as two separate one-week blocks rather than a single block, the window to take it extended to 52 weeks from the birth, and the notice to take leave became 28 days.

On 6 April 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 made paternity leave a day-one right, removing the previous 26-week service qualification. The same reforms removed the old rule preventing paternity leave being taken after shared parental leave — a genuinely useful change for teachers, who often want to sequence leave around terms rather than in the order the legislation originally assumed — and introduced a Bereaved Partner's Paternity Leave entitlement of up to 52 weeks.

Leave is a day-one right; pay is not

This trips people up constantly. Paternity leave became a day-one right on 6 April 2026. Statutory paternity pay still requires 26 weeks' continuous employment up to the end of the qualifying week — the 15th week before the due date — plus average weekly earnings of at least £129. A teacher who started a new post in September and whose baby arrives in the spring may well have the right to the leave and no right to the pay. Shared parental leave was not made a day-one right and retains its own 26-week continuity test.

Statutory Paternity Pay for 2026/27 is £194.32 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings if lower — the same flat rate as ShPP and post-week-six SMP.

When SPL is actually the right answer

Having spent most of this page on the costs, it is worth being clear that SPL is frequently the right choice, and saying when.

When you curtail at week 19 or later. From week 19 the Burgundy Book pays SMP alone at exactly the ShPP rate. Transferring leave costs the household nothing, and buys a second parent real time at home. If nothing else on this page sticks, let it be this.
When the partner's employer enhances shared parental pay. Some do, and generously. Where the partner's scheme is better than £194.32 a week, the whole comparison inverts and curtailing earlier can leave the household better off.
When the school year makes blocks worth more than pay. The ability to take a discrete term rather than a run of calendar weeks is worth real money in childcare terms, and it is something maternity leave structurally cannot do.
When both parents want time, not one parent wanting more time. This is what the scheme was designed for, and it does it well.
When a partner's window is fixed. A fixed-term contract ending, a seasonal role, a deployment — where the partner's leave has to happen in a particular period, paying £5,416 for it may simply be the price of the thing you actually want.

And the cases where it usually is not: curtailing before week 19 purely to start SPL sooner, with no enhancement on the other side and no time-critical reason; curtailing after the birth when you are not yet sure; and curtailing without having read your own employer's policy first.

Sources and accuracy

The statutory scheme is the Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3050), the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3051) and the Maternity and Adoption Leave (Curtailment of Statutory Rights to Leave) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3052), all made under the Children and Families Act 2014 and applying to children with an expected week of childbirth beginning on or after 5 April 2015. The revocation gateways are regulation 8 of SI 2014/3052, including the restriction on re-curtailing at regulation 8(6).

Mechanics — the continuity and earnings tests, the 50/37 week maximum, the 8 weeks' notice, the three-notice limit, the treatment of continuous and discontinuous notices, the two-week discussion period, the 20 SPLIT days and the compulsory two weeks of maternity leave — are from the Department for Business and Trade's Shared parental leave and pay: employers' technical guide, last updated 17 September 2026, and from gov.uk. The non-enhancement point is question 90 of that guide and the equal-treatment-within-SPL point is questions 88 and 90.

Case law is Ali v Capita Customer Management Ltd and Hextall v Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police [2019] EWCA Civ 900, decided 24 May 2019, with permission to appeal to the Supreme Court refused in Hextall in February 2020. Statutory support is section 13(6)(b) of the Equality Act 2010 in its current form, amended with effect from 1 January 2024, and Schedule 7, Part 1, paragraph 2.

Burgundy Book material is from the revised edition published June 2023: Section 5 paragraphs 5.1 to 5.3, 8.1 to 8.4, and paragraph 12.1 on adoption. Statutory rates are the 2026/27 figures — £194.32 a week for ShPP, SPP and post-week-six SMP, with the lower earnings limit at £129 a week. Pension treatment is from the Teachers' Pension Scheme Regulations 2014 and Teachers' Pensions' family leave guidance.

Three limitations worth stating. First, we found no Teachers' Pension Scheme mechanism for buying back unpaid shared parental leave, and have said so rather than repeating the LGPS rule that circulates in its place — but a confirmatory call to Teachers' Pensions is sensible if that matters to your plan. Second, the exact calendar date on which the Supreme Court refused permission in Hextall is not published, so we have given the month it was reported. Third, and most importantly, the whole comparison on this page assumes an employer that follows the Burgundy Book maternity scheme and offers nothing above statutory shared parental pay. That is the common case but it is not universal, and the one document that settles it for you is your own employer's policy.

Figures use published income tax, National Insurance, student loan and Teachers' Pension Scheme rates for 2026/27, last checked 13 September 2026. Thresholds are set by HM Treasury, HMRC, the Student Loans Company and Teachers' Pensions and can change — always check gov.uk and teacherspensions.co.uk for the current figures before making a financial decision. This tool gives an estimate for guidance only and is not financial, tax or pensions advice.

This page is independent guidance for orientation, not legal, financial or employment advice, and is not affiliated with the DfE, Teachers' Pensions or any teaching union. Curtailment is close to irreversible and the sums involved run to thousands of pounds, so this is a decision worth taking slowly. The NEU and NASUWT both run member advice lines that handle exactly these questions, and they are the right call before the notice goes in rather than after.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Burgundy Book have a shared parental leave scheme? +

No. The phrase does not appear anywhere in the document. The Burgundy Book has a detailed occupational maternity scheme in Section 5 and nothing at all on shared parental leave, paternity leave or — beyond a single discretionary sentence at paragraph 12.1 — adoption. Shared parental leave sits entirely outside the national agreement and is governed by the general statutory scheme in the Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014 and the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014. That silence is the single most important fact for a teacher weighing up SPL, because it means curtailing maternity leave to take SPL moves you off the enhanced national scheme and onto the flat statutory rate for every transferred week, unless your own employer has chosen to offer something better.

How much is Statutory Shared Parental Pay in 2026/27? +

£194.32 a week, or 90% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower — the same flat rate as Statutory Maternity Pay after its first six weeks, and the same rate as statutory paternity and adoption pay. To qualify you need average weekly earnings of at least £129, the National Insurance lower earnings limit for 2026/27. Between the two parents there is a maximum of 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay available, which is simply the mother's 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of maternity pay less the two weeks of compulsory maternity leave that cannot be curtailed and the corresponding weeks of pay already taken.

Can I change my mind after curtailing maternity leave? +

Almost never, and this is the genuine trap. Regulation 8 of the Maternity and Adoption Leave (Curtailment of Statutory Rights to Leave) Regulations 2014 allows a curtailment notice to be revoked in only three situations: where neither parent is in fact entitled to shared parental leave or statutory shared parental pay, and the revocation is given within 8 weeks of the original curtailment notice; where the curtailment notice was given before the birth, and the revocation is given within 6 weeks of the birth; or where the partner dies, with revocation within a reasonable time. Every revocation must also reach the employer before the curtailment date itself. Outside those three gateways, curtailment is irrevocable. And once you have actually returned to work, maternity leave cannot be restarted at all.

Does my school have to pay enhanced shared parental pay if it enhances maternity pay? +

No. This was settled by the Court of Appeal in Ali v Capita Customer Management Ltd and Hextall v Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police [2019] EWCA Civ 900, decided on 24 May 2019. Both claims failed. Paying enhanced maternity pay while paying only statutory shared parental pay is not direct sex discrimination, because the correct comparator for a father on SPL is a mother on SPL — who receives exactly the same — rather than a mother on maternity leave. It is not indirect sex discrimination, and it does not breach the sex equality clause, because Schedule 7 Part 1 paragraph 2 of the Equality Act 2010 disapplies that clause for terms affording special treatment to women in connection with pregnancy or childbirth. Permission to appeal to the Supreme Court was refused in Hextall in February 2020. The Department for Business and Trade's own employers' technical guide says the same thing at question 90.

If my school does enhance shared parental pay, does it have to do so equally? +

Yes, and this is the flip side that gets much less attention than the Ali and Hextall headline. The DBT employers' technical guide is explicit at question 90 that while there is no legal requirement to create an occupational shared parental leave scheme, if such a scheme is offered to a mother on shared parental leave it could constitute sex discrimination if it were not also offered to fathers and mothers' partners. The lawful asymmetry is between maternity leave and shared parental leave, which are legally different things. There is no lawful asymmetry within shared parental leave itself. So a trust policy that enhances SPL pay for birth mothers but not for partners is on very weak ground, and is worth challenging through your union.

How do I fit shared parental leave around school terms? +

Better than most employees can, because SPL can be taken in discontinuous blocks with periods of work in between, which maps onto the school year unusually well. A parent can take a discrete half-term or term rather than an arbitrary run of weeks. The mechanics matter though: you get three notices to book or vary leave, and a notice requesting a single continuous block must be granted — your employer cannot refuse it. A notice requesting a discontinuous pattern can be refused, and triggers a two-week discussion period in which the employer may propose alternatives. So the tactical approach for a teacher is to use a continuous-block notice where the dates matter most to you, and save a discontinuous request for the part you are willing to negotiate.

Is shared parental leave pensionable in the Teachers' Pension Scheme? +

Paid shared parental leave is pensionable; genuinely unpaid shared parental leave is not. The test in the Teachers' Pension Scheme Regulations 2014 turns on whether you are receiving at least half salary or statutory parental pay — and because Statutory Shared Parental Pay is statutory pay, weeks paid at the flat rate remain pensionable even though the amount is far below half pay. Weeks taken entirely unpaid are non-pensionable family leave and your employer records them as days excluded. We could not find any Teachers' Pension Scheme mechanism for buying that period back afterwards, and we would rather say so than guess. Note that the buy-back arrangement people sometimes mention is a Local Government Pension Scheme rule, which applies to school support staff but not to teachers.

Can I take paternity leave after shared parental leave? +

Yes, since 6 April 2026. The old rule preventing paternity leave being taken after shared parental leave was removed by the Employment Rights Act 2025, which is a genuinely useful change for the way teachers tend to sequence leave around terms. The same set of reforms made paternity leave a day-one right from 6 April 2026, removing the previous 26-week service qualification. Be careful with the distinction though: paternity leave is a day-one right, but statutory paternity pay still requires 26 weeks' continuous employment up to the qualifying week and average weekly earnings of at least £129. Shared parental leave itself retains its own 26-week continuity test and was not made a day-one right.

Related guides

Teacher Maternity Pay and Pension Explained

The Burgundy Book bands week by week, the two eligibility tests, pension accrual and a full worked example — read this first.

Part-Time and Job Share Teacher Pay and Pension

If a phased or reduced-hours return is part of the plan, how pay and accrual are pro-rated.

TUPE for Teachers Explained

Whether your Burgundy Book maternity terms transferred when your school converted to an academy.

Should I Leave Teaching?

The wider financial picture if returning after leave is something you are genuinely weighing up.