Burgundy Book Sick Pay: How Many Sick Days Teachers Get (2026/27)

If you search for how much sick pay teachers get, you will find a great deal of confident-sounding text and very little of it sourced. The underlying document is not secret and not hard to read: it is the Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales, universally known as the Burgundy Book, in its revised edition published in June 2023 — the first substantive update in over two decades. The sick pay scheme occupies the whole of Section 4, running to eleven numbered paragraphs across six pages. This guide works through those paragraphs in order, quotes the provisions that matter, and is explicit about the places where the scheme does not apply to you.

Two things are worth saying at the outset, because they shape everything that follows. First, the Burgundy Book is a national collective agreement between the five teacher associations and the local authorities, negotiated through the CLEA/School Teachers' Committee. It takes effect through incorporation into individual contracts of employment — it is not legislation, and no statute compels an employer to apply it. Second, it is a minimum. Paragraph 2.2 of Section 4 expressly gives every employer discretion to exceed it. Nothing in this guide tells you what you will actually be paid; it tells you what the floor is for teachers whose contracts incorporate the agreement, and where to look to find out whether yours does.

The sliding scale, in full

Section 4, paragraph 2.1 is the heart of the scheme. It provides that, where the appropriate conditions are met, a teacher absent from duty because of illness — and the document is careful to note that "illness" here includes injury or other disability — shall be entitled to receive, in any one year, sick pay as follows:

The structure is straightforward enough, but the first row contains a condition that is very widely reported incorrectly. A large number of school HR summaries, union-adjacent explainers and aggregator pages describe the first-year entitlement as a flat "25 days full pay and 50 days half pay". The actual wording of paragraph 2.1 is that a first-year teacher receives "full pay for 25 working days and after completing four calendar months' service, half pay for 50 working days". The four-month qualifying condition attaches specifically to the half-pay element. It does not gate the 25 days of full pay, which are available from the start of service.

Read the other way, the scale is generous by most private-sector standards once you are established. A teacher in their fourth year or beyond has, on paper, roughly a full academic year of paid sickness absence available in a single sick leave year — 100 working days at full pay followed by 100 at half pay, against a directed working year of 195 days. Very few occupational sick pay schemes outside the public sector reach that. The difficulty for teachers is almost never the size of the entitlement; it is the definitional detail underneath it, which is where the next three sections go.

What "service" actually means — and why it travels with you

Immediately beneath the table, paragraph 2.1 adds a sentence that is easy to skim past and which materially changes many teachers' position:

For the purpose of the sick pay scheme, 'service' includes all aggregated teaching service with one or more LA.

That is a portability clause. Your place on the sliding scale is not determined by how long you have been at your current school. It is determined by your total aggregated teaching service with one or more local authorities. A teacher who spent six years at a maintained school in one county, took a year out, and has just started at a maintained school in another does not return to the 25-day first-year band. Their aggregated service places them in the fourth-and-subsequent-years band from day one of the new post.

This is one of the least-known provisions in the document, and it is worth checking how your new employer has recorded you. Payroll and HR systems default to length of service with the current employer because that is what almost every other entitlement is built on — continuous employment for statutory purposes, pay portability under the STPCD, redundancy calculations. Sick pay under this scheme is different, and if your record shows you as a first-year employee when you have a decade of aggregated teaching service behind you, the time to correct it is before you need it, not during a period of illness.

The clause is drafted by reference to service with local authorities, which reflects the era and the negotiating parties. Whether and how service with an academy trust aggregates is a question your employer's own policy has to answer, and different trusts and different authorities take different views. If your career has moved between maintained schools and academies, ask the question explicitly rather than assuming the aggregation happens automatically in either direction.

What "working days" actually means — not simply Monday to Friday

The scale is expressed in working days, and paragraph 2.3 defines the term precisely:

For the purpose of this scheme, 'working days' means teaching and non-teaching days within 'directed time', as specified within the STPCD/STPC(W)D.

This is the second point secondary sources routinely get wrong. The common error is to treat "working days" as meaning weekdays excluding school holidays, which is close enough to be plausible and wrong often enough to matter. The actual definition is tied to directed time under the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document — the time a headteacher may direct a teacher to be available for work. For a full-time classroom teacher in England, directed time is capped at 1,265 hours over 195 days in the school year, of which a maximum of 190 are days on which pupils are taught, the remainder being non-teaching days such as INSET.

The practical consequences run in both directions. A non-teaching INSET day within directed time is a working day for this purpose, and counts against your entitlement if you are absent on it. A weekday that falls outside directed time is not. Anything that is not within directed time — the vast majority of the holidays — is dealt with separately, and generously, by paragraph 7 on closure periods, covered further down this page.

For part-time teachers the definition does real work, because the days within directed time are the days you are contracted to work. A teacher working three days a week accrues the same headline allowance of working days, but those days are spread across a longer stretch of the calendar than they would be for a full-time colleague. How an individual employer operates that in payroll varies, and it is a fair question to put to HR in writing.

The sick leave year: 1 April to 31 March

Paragraph 4.1 is short and does four separate jobs. It is worth taking them one at a time, because each one catches somebody out.

The year runs 1 April to 31 March

For the purpose of calculating entitlement under paragraph 2, a year is deemed to begin on 1 April and end on 31 March of the following year. Note what this is not: it is not the academic year, and it is not your employment anniversary. It is the financial year. A teacher who has used 60 of their 100 full-pay days by February is close to the reset, whatever point of the academic year that happens to be.

Starting mid-year gives you the full entitlement

Where a teacher starts service after 1 April in any year, the full entitlement for that year applies. It is not apportioned. A teacher taking up a post in January receives the same allowance for the remaining three months of that sick leave year as a colleague who has been in post since the previous April — subject, of course, to the four-month qualifying condition on the first-year half-pay element, and to the carry-across rule below.

Being on sick leave on 31 March does not give you a fresh allowance

This is the provision that surprises people most, and it is unambiguous. Where a teacher is on sick leave on 31 March in any year, no new entitlement begins until the teacher has resumed duty, and the period from 1 April until the return to duty is regarded as part of the preceding year's entitlement. A teacher who exhausts their full pay in February and is still absent on 31 March does not roll over into a new 100 days on 1 April. The clock only restarts once they have actually resumed duty.

A new employer counts what your old one already paid

When a teacher moves to another employer, any sick pay paid during the current year by the previous employer must be taken into account in calculating the amount and duration of sick pay payable by the new employer. Changing schools mid-year does not refresh the allowance. This pairs with the aggregated-service rule above: your service travels with you and so does your usage.

Statutory Sick Pay is inside your sick pay, not on top of it

Paragraph 3.1 of Section 4 states the rule in a single sentence: sick pay shall include, where appropriate, Statutory Sick Pay, and shall not exceed the full (ordinary) pay of the teacher under the contract of employment.

This is frequently misunderstood, usually in a hopeful direction. SSP is not an additional payment sitting alongside your occupational sick pay. It is absorbed into it. While you are on full contractual sick pay you will typically see no reference to SSP on your payslip at all, because the occupational payment already includes it and the total cannot exceed your ordinary pay. SSP becomes visible as a distinct figure in two situations: when your occupational entitlement has been exhausted and SSP is all that remains payable, and where you were never entitled to occupational sick pay in the first place.

Paragraph 5 extends the same logic to state benefits. Where sick pay equals full pay, the amount of Employment and Support Allowance, equivalent social security payments, or any treatment allowance received from the Department for Work and Pensions is deducted. Where sick pay is less than full pay — that is, on half pay — deductions are made only so far as is necessary to ensure that sick pay together with ESA and equivalent payments do not exceed full ordinary pay. That second rule is the one that matters most to teachers on long absences: on half pay you can generally receive benefit income up to the point where the combined total reaches your normal salary, and no further.

Paragraph 5.3 adds a sting that is easy to miss. Deductions are made on the basis that the teacher is eligible to receive such benefits, payments or allowances whether or not they take the necessary steps to obtain them. In other words, if you are eligible for a benefit and do not claim it, your employer may still deduct as though you had. Not claiming does not preserve the money; it loses it. If you are moving onto half pay, finding out what you are eligible for is not optional housekeeping.

Statutory Sick Pay in its own right, after the April 2026 reforms

SSP itself changed materially in April 2026, and the changes are especially relevant to teachers who fall outside occupational cover — daily-rate supply teachers, and anyone whose entitlement has run out.

Sections 10 to 13 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 were brought into force on 6 April 2026 by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/373. Sections 10 and 11 deal with Great Britain (sections 12 and 13 make the equivalent changes for Northern Ireland). Between them they do two things:

• Waiting days are abolished. SSP is payable from the first qualifying day of sickness absence rather than from the fourth. The three unpaid waiting days that used to sit at the front of every claim are gone.
• The Lower Earnings Limit qualifying threshold is removed. SSP no longer depends on earning at or above the LEL, so low-paid and low-hours employees who were previously excluded entirely now qualify.

The rate structure was reworked to accompany the removal of the earnings threshold. SSP is now paid at the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of the employee's normal weekly earnings. For anyone earning comfortably above the threshold that means the flat rate; for a low earner it means 80% of what they actually earn, which is the mechanism that allows the LEL to be removed without paying people more when sick than when working. SI 2026/373 also contains transitional provisions bridging employees who were already absent across 6 April 2026, including those who had accrued waiting days before the change and those who were below the old earnings threshold.

The other two SSP facts worth holding on to are unchanged. SSP runs for a maximum of 28 weeks, and it is paid by the employer through payroll like wages, with tax and National Insurance deducted. When it ends, or when an employee was never eligible, the employer issues form SSP1, which the employee uses to support a claim for New Style Employment and Support Allowance or Universal Credit. An SSP1 should be issued in good time where a long absence is expected to outlast the 28 weeks, since a claim for New Style ESA can be made in advance of SSP ending.

Injury, accident or assault at work: an entirely separate ring-fence

Paragraph 9 of Section 4 is, in our view, the single most valuable and least understood provision in the scheme, and it is the one to check first if your absence has anything to do with something that happened at school.

Where absence is due to an accident, injury or assault attested by an approved medical practitioner to have arisen out of and in the course of the teacher's employment, full pay shall in all cases be allowed, for a period not exceeding six calendar months, subject to production of self-certificates, doctor's statements or Fit Notes from the day of the accident up to the date of recovery. The cover is drawn widely: it expressly includes attendance for instruction at physical training or other classes organised or approved by the employer, and participation in any extracurricular or voluntary activity connected with the school.

Then comes paragraph 9.3, which is what makes this genuinely different rather than merely a variation on the normal scale:

Absence resulting from accidents, injuries or assaults referred to in sub-paragraph 9.1 shall not be reckoned against the teacher's entitlements under paragraph 2 above, though such absences are reckonable for entitlement to Statutory Sick Pay.

Your ordinary sliding-scale allowance is untouched. A teacher assaulted by a pupil and absent for four months does not spend four months of their 100 full-pay days; those days remain fully available for unrelated illness in the same sick leave year. And paragraph 9.4 provides that "absence" for this purpose includes more than one period of absence arising out of a single accident, injury or assault — so a phased or interrupted recovery from one incident is treated as a single protected absence rather than as separate episodes.

Paragraph 9.2 deals with what happens at the six-month mark. Where a teacher is still absent after the initial six months, the question of an extension must be considered. If no extension is granted, the teacher then falls back onto the normal paragraph 2.1 entitlement according to their length of service — which, because of 9.3, is still intact.

Infectious disease, and the tuberculosis provision

Paragraph 10 creates a parallel ring-fence for infection contracted at work. Where an approved medical practitioner attests that there is evidence to show a reasonable probability that an absence was due to an infectious or contagious illness contracted directly in the course of the teacher's employment, full pay is allowed for such period as the practitioner authorises, and — the same critical words again — such absence "shall not be reckoned against the teacher's entitlement to sick leave under paragraph 2 above", though it remains reckonable for SSP purposes.

Paragraph 10.2 singles out pulmonary tuberculosis. Where absence is attested to be due to pulmonary tuberculosis and the teacher carries out an approved course of treatment, full salary is paid for the first 12 calendar months after attestation, with further full or half pay at the employer's discretion. The provision reads as a survival from an earlier public health era, and it has survived the 2023 revision intact.

Paragraph 10.3 covers two further situations. A teacher living in a household where another person has an infectious disease must notify the employer at once and take any prescribed precautions; if the approved medical practitioner considers it inadvisable for them to attend duty regardless, full pay is allowed during the enforced absence. The same applies where a practitioner considers it inadvisable for a teacher to attend for precautionary reasons due to infectious disease in the workplace. In both cases the absence is again not reckoned against the paragraph 2 entitlement.

Notifying your employer, and the Fit Note deadline

Paragraph 8.1 sets out conditions that must be met for entitlement to arise at all. It opens with the words "A teacher shall not be entitled to sick pay unless", which is worth taking seriously: these are conditions precedent, not administrative preferences.

• Notification is made to the employer as may be required, not later than the fourth working day of absence.
• A Fit Note is supplied not later than the eighth day of absence.
• A new Fit Note is supplied upon expiration of the current one.
• In cases of prolonged or frequent absence, the teacher undertakes any examination the employer may require by an approved medical practitioner nominated by the employer — at the employer's cost, subject to the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 and the Data Protection Act 2018, and with the teacher entitled to have their own doctor present if they wish.
• The teacher declares their entitlement to benefits under the relevant Acts, and any alteration to that entitlement.

Two details are worth drawing out. The notification deadline is expressed in working days — carrying the directed-time meaning from paragraph 2.3 — whereas the Fit Note deadline is expressed in plain days. They are different units, and the Fit Note deadline is the tighter of the two in practice. Second, paragraph 8.1(d) gives the teacher a right that often goes unexercised: where the employer requires an examination by its own nominated practitioner, the teacher's own doctor may be present at that examination at the teacher's request, and the cost of the examination is not borne by the teacher.

Paragraph 8.2 provides that where a teacher enters hospital or a similar institution, a doctor's statement or Fit Note on entry or discharge is submitted in place of periodic statements — so an inpatient stay does not require the usual rolling certification.

Holidays, closure periods and the half-day rule

Paragraph 7 governs what happens when illness meets a school closure period, and it is markedly more favourable than most teachers expect.

The foundational rule is in paragraph 7.1: for the purposes of paragraph 2.1, two half school days are deemed equivalent to one working day, and sickness during closure periods does not affect the period of a teacher's entitlement to sick leave, though it remains relevant to the deduction of benefits. In other words, your allowance of working days is not eroded by the holidays.

Paragraph 7.2 then sets the rate. The rate of sick pay applicable during a school closure is the rate applicable on the last day before the closure, which produces three outcomes:

Paragraph 7.4 then supplies a route out of the second and third rows, and it rewards acting promptly. A teacher who was ill immediately before a closure, has exhausted their entitlement or is on less than full pay, and recovers during the closure, is deemed for salary purposes to have returned to duty on the day they are certified medically fit by a doctor's statement obtained for that purpose — provided they actually return to duty on the first day after the closure. So a teacher on half pay who recovers three weeks into the summer holiday, gets a statement of fitness dated then, and returns on the first day of the autumn term, is treated as back on full ordinary pay from the date of that statement rather than from the first day of term. The condition has teeth in the other direction too: a teacher who does not return on the first day back must refund such sum as the employer at its discretion decides.

Finally, paragraph 7.5 deals with falling ill during a closure. A teacher who becomes ill in a closure period and becomes entitled to SSP, or becomes entitled to claim the benefits referred to in paragraph 5.1, has a duty to notify the employer in accordance with paragraph 8.1 as if the days of closure were working days — so the fourth-working-day notification rule and the eighth-day Fit Note rule apply through the holidays, for this purpose, even though the closure itself is not counted against entitlement.

When your entitlement runs out

Nobody plans for this, and it is the part of the scheme where the differences between employers matter most. Three provisions are relevant.

The employer's discretion and review obligation

Paragraph 2.2 provides that each employer has discretion to exceed the minimum entitlement for sick leave, and that employers "should review the position of teachers at an early opportunity and before their entitlements to paid sick leave expire". The discretion is genuinely discretionary — it cannot be demanded — but the review is framed as something the employer should do, and should do before the money stops rather than after. If your half pay is approaching its end and nobody has contacted you, requesting that review in writing, copied to your union, is the appropriate step.

Full salary for the notice period on an ill-health dismissal

Paragraph 6.1 is a genuine protection and is worth quoting more or less in full. Where a teacher has exhausted their entitlements under paragraph 2.1 in part or in full, and is given notice of the termination of their contract without returning to work, on the ground of permanent incapacity or for some other reason related to the sickness absence, they shall be paid full salary for the notice period with normal deductions only.

A teacher who has dropped to half pay, or to nil pay, therefore returns to full salary for the duration of their notice. That is not a small sum, because teachers' notice periods are long: Section 3, paragraph 4.1 sets a minimum of two months' notice, and three months in the summer term, terminating at the end of a school term; headteachers are under three months, and four in the summer term; and a teacher continuously employed for more than eight years is entitled to the additional statutory notice specified in the Employment Rights Act 1996. Paragraph 4.4, as amended in the 2023 revision, confirms that those notice provisions apply to termination for any reason other than gross misconduct — and the 2023 explanatory notes record the amendment as clarifying expressly that they do apply to dismissals for ill health and redundancy.

Ill-health retirement

Running out of sick pay and ill-health retirement are separate processes on separate timetables, and they frequently overlap badly, with an application still in progress as the pay stops. The Teachers' Pension Scheme has its own tiered ill-health benefits with their own medical tests, quite independent of the Burgundy Book, and an application takes time. If long-term incapacity is a realistic possibility, start that conversation while you still have pay coming in. Our guide to ill-health retirement for teachers covers the tiers and the process.

Separately, Section 3, paragraph 5.1 notes that the Education (Health Standards) (England) Regulations 2003 — and for Wales the equivalent 2004 Regulations — deal with the health standards of teachers and the powers under which, in certain circumstances, a teacher's employment may be suspended or terminated on medical grounds, and that employers must make known any other rules and procedures they have for termination on medical grounds. The 2023 revision added a footnote recording that those regulations must be applied in the context of Part 5 of the Equality Act 2010, which is where the duty to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee sits.

Your pension while you are off sick

Sick leave interacts with the Teachers' Pension Scheme at one clear threshold: half pay.

Teachers' Pensions guidance for employers states that sick leave is pensionable provided the member is receiving at least half their salary in respect of that employment. While that condition is met, contributions are deducted at the member's usual contribution tier — determined by reference to what they would be earning if they were not on reduced pay — but applied only to the actual pensionable earnings received. Service and salary are reported as though the member were receiving their usual full salary, so accrual continues at the full rate even though the contributions paid are lower.

Once a member is receiving less than half their salary, the position changes: the service is no longer pensionable, contributions must not be deducted, and those periods are reported as days excluded on service and salary returns. That is a hard edge rather than a taper, and it is another reason to know the exact date your half pay ends. Because the scheme is a career average arrangement, a period of non-pensionable service is a permanent gap in the accrual record rather than something that washes out later.

When sick pay can be clawed back, suspended or forfeited

Paragraph 11 sets out three circumstances in which sick pay is not simply paid and forgotten.

Third-party negligence

Paragraph 11.1 provides that if a teacher's absence is occasioned by the actionable negligence of a third party in respect of which damages are recoverable, the teacher must advise the employer forthwith, and the employer may require a refund of a sum equal to the aggregate of sick pay paid during the period of disability, or such part of it as is deemed appropriate, not exceeding the amount of damages recovered. Where a damages claim is settled on a proportionate basis, the employer will require full details and will determine the actual proportion to be refunded.

The practical scenario is a road traffic accident or a public liability claim: you receive sick pay from your employer and later recover damages that include loss of earnings for the same period. The clause prevents double recovery. Note the positive obligation to notify the employer "forthwith" — not when the claim settles.

Misconduct, breach of the scheme's conditions, or conduct prejudicial to recovery

Paragraph 11.2 allows the employer, in consultation with the governing body as appropriate, to suspend payment of sick pay where it takes the view that the disability occasioning the absence is due to the teacher's misconduct, or that the teacher has failed to observe the conditions of the scheme, or has been guilty of conduct prejudicial to their recovery. The paragraph builds in a procedure: the employer must inform the teacher of the grounds, and the teacher must then be given the opportunity to submit observations and to appear — accompanied by a representative if they wish — before the employer or governing body, which then decides. Where it decides against the teacher, the teacher forfeits the right to any payment or further payment of sick pay in respect of that period of absence.

"Conduct prejudicial to recovery" is not defined, and it is the kind of allegation where the right to be accompanied and to make representations is worth using in full. This is union territory.

Professional sport

Paragraph 11.3 provides that sick pay is not paid in a case of accident due to active participation in sport as a profession, unless the employer decides otherwise — though SSP may still be payable. The wording is narrow: it is participation in sport as a profession, not amateur or recreational sport, and not school sport, which is covered on the opposite side by paragraph 9.1's inclusion of extracurricular activity connected with the school.

Who the scheme does not cover

Before applying any of the above to yourself, check that Section 4 applies to you at all. Section 2, paragraph 1.1 defines "teachers" for the purposes of the whole document as all teachers, including headteachers, who work in schools or in centrally managed local authority services and who are remunerated on a full-time or part-time basis, other than two excluded categories:

• Category (a): those employed on a day-to-day or other short-notice basis — that is, teachers paid at a daily or hourly rate under the STPCD. Paragraph 1.2 then lists the provisions that do still apply to them: paragraphs 5 and 6 of Section 3, paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 of Section 6, Section 7, and paragraphs 1 and 2 of Section 8. Section 4 is not among them.
• Category (b): those employed on a temporary basis either for a period of one term or less, or as substitutes for permanently appointed teachers absent for reasons such as secondment, prolonged illness or maternity. Paragraph 1.3 provides that these teachers are covered by all sections of the document except paragraph 4 of Section 3 (the notice provisions), unless there is no other stated notice provision in their contract — so the sick pay scheme does apply to them.

The distinction matters enormously for supply teachers. A teacher on a daily or hourly rate through an agency or a supply pool falls in category (a) and has no Burgundy Book sick pay at all. A teacher on a fixed-term contract covering a maternity leave falls in category (b) and does. Since April 2026, at least, the category (a) group is better protected by SSP than it used to be: the removal of the Lower Earnings Limit means low-hours supply teachers who previously earned too little to qualify for SSP now do, and the removal of waiting days means SSP starts from the first qualifying day. Our guide to supply teacher pay covers the wider position.

Academies: the honest position

This is the section to read carefully if you work for an academy trust, because the answer is genuinely "it depends on your contract" and no general guide can improve on that.

The Burgundy Book is a collective agreement, not legislation. Section 1, paragraph 2 records that the CLEA/School Teachers' Committee is the agreed negotiating committee for the conditions of service of teachers employed by local authorities, and that both sides expect individual authorities to adopt the agreements negotiated there and to incorporate them in the contracts of service of their teachers. Incorporation into the contract is the mechanism throughout.

Paragraph 6 of Section 1, which was newly added in the 2023 revision precisely because academy trusts did not exist when the previous edition was published, states the academy position:

In academies, the academy trust is the employer. The conditions of service for teachers who transfer to an academy are protected by relevant legislation covering the transfer of staff. New employees taking up employment with academies will also generally have Burgundy Book conditions incorporated into their individual contracts of employment.

Read that precisely. For teachers who transfer to an academy on conversion, protection comes from the legislation covering staff transfers — TUPE — which carries existing contractual terms across at the point of transfer. For new employees, the text says Burgundy Book conditions "will also generally have" been incorporated into their individual contracts. "Generally" is a description of common practice, not a legal guarantee, and "incorporated into their individual contracts of employment" identifies the source of the obligation as the contract rather than the agreement itself. An academy trust that chose to write a different sick pay scheme into its contracts of employment would not be breaching the Burgundy Book, because it is not a party to it.

What this means in practice is simple to act on. If you are employed by an academy trust, the document that determines your sick pay is your contract of employment and the staff handbook or sickness absence policy it refers to — not this page and not the Burgundy Book itself. Ask HR for the current written sickness absence policy and read what it says about the scale, the sick leave year, and whether service with previous employers is aggregated. In the large majority of trusts you will find Burgundy Book terms reproduced or referenced, often because they were inherited at conversion. But you should confirm it rather than assume it, and the time to do that is while you are well.

The same reasoning applies, with a different starting point, to voluntary aided and foundation schools. Section 1, paragraphs 4 and 5 record that in voluntary aided schools the governing body is the employer and "in general, the Burgundy Book will have been incorporated into individual contracts of employment", and that in foundation schools transferring staff are protected by transfer legislation while new employees "will also generally have Burgundy Book conditions incorporated into their individual contracts of employment". Same mechanism, same caveat.

Part-time and less-than-full-time teachers

Section 5, paragraph 1 of the document confirms that the occupational maternity scheme applies regardless of the number of hours worked per week, and Section 2, paragraph 1.1 brings part-time teachers within the definition of "teachers" for the document as a whole. The sick pay scheme is not drafted with a separate part-time provision: the entitlement is expressed in working days, and paragraph 2.3 defines working days by reference to directed time.

For a part-time teacher, directed time attaches to the days they are contracted to work. The consequence is that the same nominal allowance of working days covers a longer stretch of calendar time, and that pay during those days is their part-time pay rather than a full-time equivalent. Employers operate this in slightly different ways in payroll, particularly for teachers on irregular or variable timetables, and it is a reasonable question to put in writing. Our guide to part-time and job-share pay and pension covers the wider pro-rata principles.

Sources, and how to check every figure on this page yourself

Every paragraph number cited above comes from the revised edition of the Burgundy Book published in June 2023, which is freely downloadable and only 60-odd pages long. The sick pay scheme is Section 4, beginning on page 7 of the document. If you take one action from this guide, download it and read those six pages: they are written in plain enough language, and you will be better informed than most of what is written about them.

Primary sources: Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales, Revised Edition, June 2023 (the Burgundy Book) — full PDF; Conditions of service for school teachers — Local Government Association; The Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/373; Employment Rights Act 2025, section 10; Statutory Sick Pay: what you'll get — GOV.UK; Statutory sick pay changes 2026 — Acas; Sick leave — Teachers' Pensions employer guidance; The Education (Health Standards) (England) Regulations 2003.

Where this guide is uncertain: the Burgundy Book's aggregated-service clause at paragraph 2.1 is expressed in terms of service "with one or more LA" and does not address service with academy trusts either way. We have not found an authoritative national statement resolving how academy service aggregates for this purpose, and it appears to be handled at employer level. Treat that as an open question to raise with your own HR team rather than a settled rule.